The Shopify speed checklist: 12 fixes for faster stores

Measure with Shopify's web performance reports, then work through 12 practical fixes, from apps and scripts to images, fonts, video and redirects.

A slow Shopify store is usually slowed down by what has been added to it rather than by Shopify's hosting. Apps, tracking scripts, oversized images, heavy themes and crowded page templates are the usual culprits. Shopify already handles the content delivery network, image compression and modern image formats, so the gains lie in what you control. Measure with Shopify's own web performance reports, fix the biggest problems on your most-visited pages first, and resist the urge to chase a perfect score.

Measure first: Shopify's web performance reports

Shopify measures store speed with Google's Core Web Vitals, using data from real visitors rather than simulated tests. You will find the Web performance reports in the admin under Analytics, then Reports: searching the report list for contentful, next or cumulative brings up each one, and a summary also appears on the Themes page under Online Store. The three metrics and Shopify's thresholds are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), for loading speed: good is 2.5 seconds or less; poor is over 4 seconds.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP), for responsiveness to taps and clicks: good is 200 milliseconds or less; poor is over 500 milliseconds.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), for visual stability: good is 0.1 or less; poor is 0.25 or more.

Figures are reported at the 75th percentile, so a good result means at least three quarters of visits had a good experience. The summary covers the last 30 days, data can lag by up to 36 hours and only 90 days are kept. Stores in private mode or with little traffic may show no data or noisy data; in that case, use Google's PageSpeed Insights. Use the page URL and page type breakdowns to see which templates struggle, and check the trend after every app install or theme change.

The 12 fixes: apps, scripts and theme

1. Remove apps that do not earn their keep. Every app that loads code on the storefront has a cost. List what each app does for sales and remove those that are not essential. Shopify notes that uninstalling an app does not automatically remove its code from your theme, so ask the developer for full removal steps or have the theme checked for leftover snippets.

2. Audit third-party scripts and your tag manager. Chat widgets, review widgets, heatmaps, pixels and forgotten tracking tags all add JavaScript that slows loading and hurts INP. Remove unused or low-value tags, and if you use an A/B testing tool, switch off its anti-flicker snippet when no test is running.

3. Use a current, well-built theme. Shopify recommends an up-to-date theme such as the Horizon family or an Online Store 2.0 theme, and its help centre includes a theme performance data table. If your theme is old or heavily modified and the reports stay poor after the other fixes, changing theme may be the real fix.

4. Keep page templates lean. Shopify advises against adding too many sections to templates, and every slideshow, carousel and featured collection adds work. Turn on pagination for large collections so fewer products load at once, and compare performance with and without animations or page transitions.

The 12 fixes: images, media and code

5. Size images for where they appear. Shopify's CDN compresses images and serves modern formats where supported, but it cannot rescue a page that shows dozens of large images. Upload sensibly sized files, use JPG for photos and PNG only where you need transparency, and reduce the number of high-resolution images on any one page.

6. Use responsive image markup. Developers should output images with Shopify's image_url and image_tag filters, which generate srcset along with width and height attributes, and add a sizes attribute so phones download smaller files. Explicit dimensions also stop the layout jumping as images load.

7. Lazy-load below the fold, never the hero. Images further down the page should be lazy-loaded. The main above-the-fold image, often your LCP element, should load straight away, and Shopify's theme guidance suggests giving it a high fetch priority.

8. Trim your fonts. Every font family and weight is another download. Use fewer weights, host fonts on Shopify's CDN rather than an external font service, or use a system font stack, which needs no download at all.

9. Handle video carefully. Avoid autoplaying large hero videos, give video elements a poster image and avoid preloading video that may never be watched. For YouTube or Vimeo embeds further down the page, lazy-load the embed or use a facade: a lightweight preview image that loads the real player only when clicked.

10. Tidy Liquid and theme code. Liquid is rendered on Shopify's servers for every request, so inefficient code delays the first byte. Shopify's developer guidance is to avoid deeply nested loops over products and variants, limit loop sizes, move metafield lookups out of loops and defer non-critical JavaScript.

11. Fix redirect chains and outdated links. Each redirect forces the browser to make another request, which can add hundreds of milliseconds. Shopify URL redirects only work from URLs that no longer exist, so keep them for genuinely retired pages, and point menus, banners and ad links straight at the final URL.

12. Reserve space for late-loading content. Review widgets, announcement bars, cookie banners and app blocks that push content down cause layout shift. Give these elements a reserved minimum height so the page does not jump, which directly improves CLS.

What not to obsess over

• A perfect score. Shopify states that there is no such thing as a perfect speed score and advises optimising for your business needs instead.
• One-off lab tests. Lighthouse and similar tools are useful for diagnosis, but they simulate a single device and connection. Your real-visitor reports are the better guide.
• Small week-to-week movements. Lower-traffic stores see bigger swings, so judge the trend over several weeks.
• Speed booster apps that game scores. Shopify's developer guidance warns against tools that manipulate Lighthouse or PageSpeed results without making the store faster for customers.
• Features that earn money. If a review widget or product video clearly helps sales, keep it and make it load efficiently rather than deleting it.

How Farioxa can help

Farioxa's website and store management services include Shopify performance reviews: reading your web performance reports, auditing apps, scripts and theme code, and carrying out fixes such as image, font and template clean-ups. Where a new theme makes more sense, we can plan and build the move.