In the following article, I tell you How to improve the loading speed of your Shopify Website? And here we list some of the actions that you can take to improve the loading speed of your online store and that we at Webrito carry out daily to optimize the Shopify Ecommerce of our clients.
How to improve the loading speed of your Shopify Website?
We are going to go point by point indicating which parts of the eCommerce we are going to review and what we are going to adjust in each of the parts to reduce the loading time of the store.
Images
Poor optimization of images causes a noticeable slowdown in loading speed. To ensure that the images are not posing a problem for the page, we will check that:
Image format
We will check that the images that have been uploaded to the Ecommerce are in PNG or JPG format. These formats are supported by all browsers and are not a problem.
For elements such as the icons in the main menu or the logo, we will use the SVG format.
Image compression
We make sure that the uploaded images have been properly compressed.
When we upload an image to our eCommerce, we must compress it to speed up the loading process, this process is important since the image must not only be compressed but must not “break”. From Webrito.com, we check that the ratio between compression and quality is correct, thus ensuring that the image does not interfere with the loading speed but neither does it impoverish the UX or the brand image.
Re-dimensioning of images
We take care of making it easier for Shopify to read the code. So that the images are always displayed at the indicated size.
Content
The applications, texts, functionalities and in general everything that makes up the website falls within the content. Also, the images, although we have preferred to treat them separately because of the importance they represent.
It is important then that the content is organized, designed and implemented correctly to avoid affecting the loading speed of the page.
Lazy loading
We carry out the implementation of Lazy Loading or lazy loading. It consists of the following:
As a general rule, when a website is opened, the browser loads all the necessary resources to display the page properly. During this process, all objects are retrieved, not only those that are in the visible area but also those that are outside of it. Among other things, this leads to unnecessary loading time.
Making the implementation of Lazy Loading. We only load the elements that are shown on the user’s screen. As the user navigates through the page, we load the objects, but never before. These elements also include images that will only load when the user approaches them.
With the use of this technique, we can significantly increase the loading speed of the web.
Sources
Fonts can be large files that take time to load. Some search engines hide the text of our page until the font file has been loaded, which implies that the load of the content, in this case, the text, increases.
To avoid this, from CRISP, we add the necessary code to tell search engines to show a default font while loading the correct font.
Redirects
It is important to avoid redirects, as much as possible. If we come from another platform or domain, it is inevitable to have to do redirects to maintain the health of our SEO, but we should always prevent the same URL from being redirected more than once.
Going overboard with redirects is as bad as not doing them. We must avoid 404 errors, not only because they influence our score against Google, but also because they reduce the quality of our UX.
Shopify templates
Shopify templates incorporate many functionalities and sections that allow the user/merchant to customize their page and make their Ecommerce a unique store.
In any case, it is most likely that, as a merchant, you do not use all of these functionalities. Despite this, every time someone accesses the web, these deprecated functionalities are being loaded.
From Webrito.com, we review the topic in search of these sections and functionalities that our clients do not need and we remove them from the topic in order to improve the loading speed.
Apps
We have to look for many of the functionalities that the themes do not include in the Shopify apps. These are third-party applications that we install in the theme or in the Shopify backend and that we use to offer the user a better experience on the web, either by offering services, facilitating the purchase process or many other things.
Applications often add scripts to our code that can seriously affect the loading speed of a website.
From Webrito.com, we can do the following:
In the event that as a merchant you have not installed the application, we suggest various apps that we have worked with and that we fully trust. Apps that will cover the needs and at the same time guarantee that the speed of the web is not completely affected.
- In the event that we consider that development on our part can cover the needs in the same way, we will also propose it to the client.
- In the case of being an app that we do not recommend, we will proceed as in the first case, to suggest some applications or custom development.
- Finally, the last case is the one in which you have already uninstalled the application. After being uninstalled, the applications may leave traces of code in our theme. In that case, we could take care of removing the excess code.
Code
Finally, we do an inspection of the code to clean up CSS and JS. Some of the actions we take in order to ensure that the web code is clean are:
- Remove deprecated code
- Remove duplicate scripts
- CSS optimization is the use
- JS optimization is the use
- Server response time reduction. There is no need to worry about this factor, as Shopify offers competitive response times.
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network). This factor shouldn’t concern us either, as Shopify always uses CDNs.
We hope this article has helped you understand how the speed loading of a web page works and helps you optimize your eCommerce.
Conclusion
I hope now you got your answer “How to improve the loading speed of your Shopify Website?” At Webrito.com, we specialize in Shopify, and we consider it to be an e-commerce platform with incredible potential. If you need help at any time, don’t hesitate to contact us. Please leave a comment in the below box.
