This document provides tips on optimizing the page speed of Shopify ecommerce sites. It discusses how page speed affects conversion rates and suggests steps like choosing a lightweight theme, compressing images, lazy loading images, and migrating tracking codes to Google Tag Manager. It also recommends testing page speed using tools from Google PageSpeed Insights. Faster sites have benefits like lower bounce rates and more items added to carts.

1. Ultimate Guide To Shopify Ecommerce PageSpeed Optimization
Table of Contents:
● How Does PageSpeed Affect Ecommerce?
● How to Optimize Shopify Ecommerce PageSpeed
● Improving the Shopify Store Performance Test
● Conclusion
How Does PageSpeed Affect Ecommerce?
The average time to fully upload a mobile landing page is 22 seconds. According to a new
analysis, 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes more than three seconds to
load, which can be taken care of by a ​San Diego digital marketing company​.
Buyers expect a faster mobile experience. If there is too much friction, they will leave their
cart and move on, which affects ecommerce the most.
● An 8.4% increase in conversion rate for retail sites came from a 0.1-second
improvement of mobile site speed (Google 2020)
● 9.1% more shoppers added items to their basket when mobile site speed increased
by just 0.1 seconds (Google 2020)
How to Optimize Shopify Ecommerce PageSpeed
By following these steps, you can significantly speed up the Shopify site:
● Choose A Lightweight Theme
● Reduce Large Image Sizes
● Compress Images

2. ● Replace GIFs With Static Images
● Lazy Load Images
● Migrate Tracking Codes To Google Tag Manager
● Run Your Store Through Google PageSpeed Insights
1) Choose A Lightweight Theme:
Choosing a lightweight Shopify theme can instantly put your website in a great position from
a performance standpoint. Some themes can get out of the box with unnecessary bolts, and
damage your site. In contrast, a lighter theme will set your site up for stronger performance.
2) Reduce Large Image Sizes:
Resizing large image assets is a great way to speed up a Shopify site. ​While reviewing many
Shopify sites​, we noticed that many businesses have the potential to use a large number of
images. This is understandable because images are an integral part of ecommerce stores.
While images are a great way to improve and brand your store's UX, they often come with a
performance trade-off. Image files are usually much larger than standard HTML or CSS.
Using a large number of images on a page makes the page heavier, which takes users
longer to download than a small image.
3) Compress Images:
Images can also be made free when the images are not suppressed. It is very common to
see Shopify stores that no compression has been applied to the uploaded images which
lead to overly large sizes.
By using compression, you can be sure that your image assets will have file sizes much
smaller than the original image. The small size of the file will allow browsers to load your
website content faster.
4) Replace GIFs With Static Images:
The undeniable trend we've seen with slow Shopify stores is the use of GIFs. GIFs can be
extremely valuable as they provide a more interactive experience for users.
We've seen instances where using just two or three GIFs accounted for 10MB + of the same
page. These files have significantly increased the page weight so we recommend replacing
them with static images where possible. This can result in significant resource savings and
improved ​Shopify web developer ​
speed improvements.
5) Lazy Load Images:
Because many Shopify​ ​
uses a lot of images, they are several examples of slow loading. This
will speed up your shopping website because not all of your site's images will be loaded at
once, only on the page when a user scrolls down the page.

3. 6) Migrate Tracking Codes To Google Tag Manager:
Google Tag Manager is a solution that lets you easily add and remove tags from your
website without touching any code. This is a great way to organize all of your website's
tracking code in one place.
Also, one of the great things about Google Tag Manager is that all the code loads
inconsistently. This means that the code entered through Google Tag Manager will not
interfere with the content of your site.
It means that you could consider going through a "tag migration" to move some of your
tracking code to Google Tag Manager. You can do this by taking the following steps:
● Add Google Tag Manager to your Shopify Store
● Apply these tags to Google Tag Manager
● If you do not find a built-in tag, you can select "Custom HTML" and add your tag
● Set your trigger correctly. This is often set to "All Pages"
● Post changes to your Google Tag Manager
● Go back to Shopify and remove any apps you added via Google Tag Manager
● Go to your store and check that your new tags are working properly.
7) Run Your Store Through Google PageSpeed Insights:
Google Page Speed ​​Insights is a tool for measuring Google's site speed. It analyzes your
site and provides recommendations about your site's performance, as well as both
measurements of how you can improve your site's speed. To run the test, simply go to Tools
and enter the page for which you want to view performance data.
Improving the Shopify Store Performance Test
Methodology:
Collect data points such as First Content Paint, Time to Interactive, Page Size, Image Size,
and Total Applications. All performance data is for the mobile version of the site. Then
compared the top and bottom 20% of pages based on Google Page Speed ​​Score.
Top 20%:
● First Content Paint: 2.78 seconds
● Time to Interactive: 8.98 seconds
● Page Size: 2.01 MB
● Image Size: 1.11 MB
● Total Requests: 72
Average 20%:
● First Content Paint: 3.8 seconds
● Time to Interactive: 22.1 seconds
● Page Size: 4.41 MB
● Image Size: 2.1 MB

4. ● Total Requests: 171
The bottom 20%:
● First Content Paint: 5.89 seconds
● Time to Interactive: 30.37 seconds
● Page Size: 5.54 MB
● Image Size: 2.59 MB
● Total Requests: 235
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES OF PAGE SPEED TESTING TOOL:
Use ​Shopify web developer​
if you are looking for some additional ways to improve the
performance of your website. The following resources below should also help.
Page Speed Testing Tools:
● Pingdom
● Google PageSpeed ​​Insights
● WebPageTest.org
● Chrome DevTools
● Google Lighthouse
● Think with Google
Conclusion
If you want to improve the speed of your Shopify store, this can be a great adjustment.
Improving image optimization, reducing requests, and implementing slower loading can be
great ways to speed up your site.