5 Best Practices to Keep Your Shopify Page Load Speed in Check

Irene Wanja | Sep 20, 2022

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In today’s competitive ecommerce landscape, providing an excellent shopping experience is essential to success. Customers expect fast load times, easy navigation, and a personalized experience. And if they don’t get it from your store … they’ll quickly go to a competitor. That’s why it’s important to have some best practices in place to ensure your online store provides a great experience for shoppers. So let’s dive into some speed optimization practices you can implement on your store to improve the experience for your customers!

1. Remove unused apps

When you first set up your Shopify store, you may be tempted to add a bunch of apps that you think you might need. However, over time, you may find that you no longer need some of these apps or that there are better alternatives available. If you keep these unused apps installed on your store, they can slow down your page loading speed and make it harder for customers to navigate your site. Therefore, it’s a good practice to remove any unused apps from your store. You can do this by going to the “Apps” section of your Shopify admin panel and deleting the app. This will help to keep your store running smoothly and ensure that customers have a positive experience when they visit your site.

2. Ditch nonessential code

Any shop owner knows that customers expect a fast, seamless browsing experience when they visit an online store. In order to provide this, it’s important to keep your code clean and free of any unused elements. Not only does this help to improve page loading speed, but it also ensures that your code is lean and easy to maintain. While it may be tempting to leave unused code in your Shopify store, it’s important to remember that even small snippets of unused code can add up over time, slowing down your site and causing frustration for your customers. 

It’s important to keep your Shopify store lean and clean – meaning, get rid of any unused code. This is because code can slow down your page loading speed, which can negatively impact your customers’ experience. Loading speed is especially important if you have an ecommerce store, as studies have shown that even a one second delay in loading time can result in a 7% loss in conversions. In addition, code that is no longer being used – known as “dead weight” – can clutter up your store and make it more difficult for customers to find what they’re looking for. So, if you have any code on your Shopify store that you’re not using, it’s best to remove it. This will keep your ecom store running smoothly and help ensure that customers have a positive experience. 

3. Get rid of 404 error pages

If you’re running an ecommerce store, then it’s a good practice to remove 404 Error pages from your store. This is because 404 Error pages slow down your store loading speed by having additional pages that are irrelevant and provide no information to the user. By removing these pages, you can increase your store’s loading speed and improve the user experience. Additionally, you can also use 301 redirects to redirect users to the relevant page if they land on a 404 Error page. This will help to ensure that users always land on the correct page and don’t get lost within your store.

4. Upload small images

Uploading images to a website can be both time-consuming and complicated, but it is worth the effort to ensure that your pages load quickly and efficiently. One way to optimize your images is to keep them small in size. Large images take longer to load, and can bog down your website’s performance. Additionally, keep the file format in mind when saving your images. JPEGs are generally smaller in size than PNGs, and thus will load more quickly. Another way to speed up your page loading times is to compress your images. There are a number of free online tools that can help you accomplish this, such as TinyPNG or JPEGmini. By taking the time to optimize your web images, you can improve your website’s overall performance and give your visitors a better experience.

5. Keep web fonts to a minimum

When it comes to web fonts, less is definitely more. Although fonts are an important part of any website’s design, it’s important to use them sparingly. That’s because each font you use on your website adds to the overall page loading time. And since customers are typically impatient when it comes to online shopping, you want to do everything you can to make sure your pages load as quickly as possible. One easy way to do this is to reduce the number of web fonts you use on your Shopify store. Stick to just one or two fonts for the entire site, and limit the number of font weights and styles you use. This will help keep your page loading times down and improve the overall shopping experience for your customers.

Wrap-up

Maintaining a fast page loading speed is important for any ecommerce store owner. Not only does it improve the user experience, but it can also help to improve search engine rankings and conversion rates. To ensure that your pages load quickly, consider removing unused apps, unused code, 404 error pages, uploading small size images and using less web fonts. By taking these steps, you can help to ensure that your pages load as quickly as possible, giving your users the best possible experience.