The Shopify Speed Score is a general indicator of your Shopify store's performance.

It measures your web performance based on Google Lighthouse’s assessment of:

• Your Shopify store’s homepage,
• The product page with the most traffic,
• The collection page with the most traffic.

By assessing the product and collection pages in addition to the homepage, your Shopify store's speed score serves as a dedicated metric not just for loading speed and web performance but also for the shopper experience.

So if you want to improve your Shopify Speed Score, you’ll need to optimize the page speed of 1) your homepage, 2) your product pages, and 3) your collection pages.

It’s also important to note that Google Lighthouse is different from Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

Google Lighthouse works exclusively with lab data, whereas Google PageSpeed Insights utilizes user experience data in conjunction with lab data.

This means Google PageSpeed Insights reflects more “real world” and “practical” results than Google Lighthouse.

How do I know my Shopify Speed Score?

Note: You won’t get a Shopify Speed Score if your Shopify store is password protected. Shopify will only give your store a speed score after you’ve removed password protection from your online store.

Source: Shopify

The Shopify Speed Score can be found in the Analytics section.

From the admin panel, go to Analytics - Reports. Search for “Online Store Speed.”

Click on the Online Store Speed metric.

There, you’ll see your Shopify-calculated store speed. This 100-point score serves as your actual Shopify speed score.

Does a Shopify Store's speed Score Affect Online Business Performance?

As mentioned earlier, the Shopify Store's speed Score indicates site loading speed and web performance.

It’s commonly known in SEO and online entrepreneurship that the faster a site loads, the better patronage you’ll get from the market. This, in turn, results in more conversions and purchases.

Various factors influence a Shopify store's speed score, including the theme, media files, and third-party apps used. This causation can be attributed to the internet’s preference for instantaneous things. In the online world, where information is readily accessible, people have grown accustomed to convenience and speed.

A lower speed score does not automatically equate to poor store performance, as other factors like user engagement and conversion features also play a crucial role. So, make sure your site provides that.

While a one-second lag behind the competition'’s Shopify store speed may not result in a perceivable dip in sales for smaller stores, this

What Is a Good Shopify Speed Score?

It can be difficult to determine a good Shopify Speed Score.

Source: Gymshark

How to Improve Shopify Site Speed Score

Use an Optimized Shopify Theme

Your Shopify theme makes up a significant chunk of your site’s performance.

That’s because a site is essentially built on these Shopify templates. So if a Shopify theme has clunky and inefficient code, it would also affect your site’s load speed.

A clean and optimized theme will allow your site to load quickly, allowing visitors to experience your site as intended.

Choosing an Optimized Theme for Faster Shopify Site Speed

You can count on Shopify-made themes like Dawn to load your site efficiently.

Furthermore, Shopify-made themes are always compatible with Shopify’s latest updates. This ensures an error-free, blazing visitor experience with minimal downtime.

But if you find Shopify-made themes too limited for your liking, you may utilize SalesHunterThemes for your online store.

SalesHunterThemes creates snappy, optimized themes that create fast-loading sites without stripping them of some much-needed features and style.

The theme Shine has a Google PageSpeed Insights performance score of 80 on mobile and 95 on desktop.

A surefire way to get speedy themes is to run their respective demo stores through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

Go to the Shopify theme store and pick out a theme you want.

Click on “View demo store.”

Copy the demo store’s link and paste it into Google PageSpeed Insights.

You’d want to be primarily looking at the Performance metric. If the demo store has a score higher than 85, you’re good to go. In addition to performance, ensure the theme maintains visual stability to provide a seamless user experience.

Optimize Your Store’s Code

Your site is likely built on a well-selected Shopify theme. If you haven’t tinkered with the code’s theme, then the store’s code is not something you have control over.

As a non-coding specialist, you can ensure your site has optimized code by choosing a fast theme and minimizing 3rd-party app use. (We’ll talk about the latter one later in this guide.)

However, if you plan to acquire the help of coding specialists to build custom tools or themes for your site, make sure you obtain ones that generate optimized code.

Ask for some of their previous work, and if it includes custom page building, run those pages through a speed test. (We’ll discuss speed tests later in this guide.)

Sites with optimized code are lighter and load faster than their non-optimized counterparts.

Compress Your Files and Media

Source: Optimizilla

Compressing your files and media makes your site load much faster.

That’s because whenever files are requested (e.g., whenever images or videos have to load), these need to be downloaded for the visitor’s current web browser session.

Hence, if a site uses smaller-sized files, it loads faster.

Here are some tips for ensuring the smallest media file size possible without compromising visual quality:

Use WEBP images

These are smaller than JPGs and PNGs by a good margin. You may use free online conversion tools to turn images of any format into WEBP files. Photo tools, such as GIMP and Photoshop, can export to WEBP as well.

Use compression tools

There are two main compression types: lossy image compression and lossless image compression.

The former involves minimizing image resolution to result in imperceivable quality loss while achieving significant file size reduction. Various photo editing tools and image compressors can do the job.

The latter deals with rewriting the image file to achieve a smaller file size without reducing the image’s quality at all.

You may use both techniques for the best results.

Don’t crank the resolution to max

It’s nice to have large, high-resolution file sizes if you want to use your media assets for billboards and large print formats.

But for the web, you wouldn’t want to crank the resolution to the max. A 4K image won’t have more noticeable detail than a 1600p one, especially when viewed on mobile devices.

Your site will blaze much faster after following the above-mentioned tips.

Minimize Your Third-Party App Usage

Additional customization and functionality add weight to your site, making it load slower.

It’s best to keep the bells and whistles to a minimum to ensure a better-performing website.

Some things you can do include:

• Cut down on the third-party apps. Remove app-generated sections that add little to no value to your website. You’d just be adding unnecessary load speed.
• Audit your site. Assess which third-party apps have significant benefits to your site. For example, would removing the third-party testimonials app result in fewer conversions? Assessing these things will allow you to make better and more holistic decisions for your site.
• Replace web fonts with similar system fonts. Browsers need to download the respective web fonts before they’re displayed. Whereas system fonts are already on the visitor’s device, allowing them to be shown immediately.

How to Check Shopify Page Speed Test

As mentioned earlier, you can see your Shopify score speed in Shopify’s Analytics section.

But you can also make the Shopify page speed test with other tools, such as Google PageSpeed insights.

Copy your published site’s URL and paste it into PageSpeed insights. Run the test and wait for the results.

Note: You’ll need to disable password protection; otherwise, these tools will just analyze the Shopify password page.

Other Tools to Make the Shopify Page Speed Test

The Shopify Speed Score, Google Pagespeed Insights, and Google Lighthouse will, more or less, give you roughly the same score.

It can help to acquire a “second opinion”—one that’s not powered by Google.

Some other tools to help you measure Shopify Site Speed include:

• GTMetrix. GTMetrix gave Gymshark a 54 Performance Grade after performing the test in Vancouver, Canada.
• Pingdom. Pingdom gave Gymshark a 69 Performance Grade after performing the test from Washington, D.C.
• DebugBear. The website testing tool gives Gymshark a 24 on the “Real User Score” and a 51 on the “Lab Score.”

See how different these scores are from Gymshark’s Shopify Speed Score of 22.

Also, despite Gymshark’s stellar traffic and website authority, the site hasn’t scored above 70 on any of these speed tests.

Which begs the question:

Is Speed Everything?

It’s not the end of the world if your site doesn’t have satisfactory speed scores.

Speed isn’t everything.

There are other crucial areas of your site that you wouldn’t want to compromise for an incremental speed boost.

Other Crucial Factors to Consider for Your Shopify Store

These other areas include your store’s engagement, its conversion features, and the overall user experience.

Store Engagement

Factors such as the store’s unique web design, website animations, marquee text, and captivating website media all drive store engagement.

It doesn’t matter if a bland, non-engaging website loads 10 milliseconds faster than a much more engaging one.

Your effort to improve Shopify site speed will all be for naught if you compromise website engagement.

So, don’t be afraid to use some crucial third-party apps. Add some low-impact customization to your website to make it stand out from the competition.

Conversion Features

At the end of the day, a site should aim to convert visitors. This is a marketing goal that will dictate the company’s success and growth.

It helps to add conversion elements to a site, even if it means an incremental performance dip.

Conversion features include testimonials, email sign-up forms, countdown timers, and cross-sell and upsell popups.

User Experience

The website’s user experience helps mold the online brand experience. In turn, a positive user experience will result in better brand affinity.

Note: Site speed is only a part of the overall user experience.

You should also consider website navigation and proper web design.

It also helps to have some added functionality. For example, if you’re a cosmetic business, a before-after section on your website can improve the user experience and their perception of the product. This is something the Shine theme provides without needing to install a third-party application.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good Shopify speed score?

How fast can your shop perform with the Google Lighthouse metrics? A good Shopify speed score is over 50, speeds over 70 are really good! The Shopify Speed Score is essential to a successful merchant and the speed feature for Shopify will be available in 2020. It displays the speed score of a Shopify shop, showing the importance of establishing an effective website.

How do I fix my Shopify speed score?

The Shopify speed score is calculated on a weighted average of the homepage’s, most visited product page’s, and most visited collection page’s Google Lighthouse scores.

Hence, merchants would need to optimize their homepage, product pages, and collection pages. This means using a fast Shopify theme, compressing media files, removing unnecessary third-party apps and resources, and optimizing the site code for these pages.

How do I check the speed of my Shopify store?

The Shopify speed score is located in Analytics - Reports - Online store speed.

But you can also check your Shopify store’s speed using Google PageInsights, Google Lighthouse, Pingdom, GTMetrix, and DebugBear, among many others.

Just make sure to remove your store’s password before doing so, though. Or else, these sites would just assess the password page.

Does a good Shopify site speed impact conversions?

Storeify Speed score is an indication as to site performance. So remember that the map isn’t an area according to Alfred Korzybski. Your site performance affects conversions and not your Shopify speed scores. Shopify speed scores do not correlate directly with actual speeds, but are measured more in line with site structure. The more efficient a website is, the better it is to serve customers, and this may include people who have abandoned slower rivals. A Deloitte study showed the speed improvement of website speed grew conversion rates by 9.6%. Consumer spending on Fastloads was about 20% higher.

Why is my Shopify store so slow?

Your site speed depends on various factors, such as the theme you're using, how large your media files are, and how much resources potential customers have to download when visiting your Shopify store.

Optimizing in these areas can improve Shopify site speed.

Conclusion

The Shopify store speed is detrimental to many aspects of store owners' online businesses.

A good site speed improves user experience, engagement, and ultimately, conversion rates. Stellar web performance also impacts SEO.

However, Shopify stores shouldn't solely focus on their store speed. While a good Shopify speed score can mean better site speed, there are other areas that should never be compromised--especially for a Shopify store.

These include the Shopify site engagement and conversion features. They may often come at the compromise of site speed, but they are detrimental to a stellar user experience, and, ultimately, business goals.