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Site Performance
Why This Matters
Every second of load time costs you sales. A 1-second delay in page load reduces conversions by 7%. A 3-second delay loses over half your visitors.
Site speed isn't just about user experience — it's also a Google ranking factor. Faster sites rank higher, get more organic traffic, and convert more of that traffic into sales.
Common speed killers: unoptimized images, too many apps/plugins, heavy themes, no caching, and slow hosting. Most stores can cut their load time in half by optimizing images alone.
What You'll Do
Run a speed audit on your site, identify the biggest performance bottlenecks, and fix the top issues.
How To Do It
How to Read PageSpeed Insights and Fix the Top 3 Issues
This takes about 60-90 minutes. Every second of load time you shave off directly increases your conversion rate.
1. Run your first PageSpeed audit (5 min)
Go to pagespeed.web.dev and enter your homepage URL. Run both mobile and desktop tests. Focus on the mobile score first — that is what Google uses for ranking, and most of your traffic is mobile.
You will see a score from 0-100: - 90-100 (green): Excellent. Minor tweaks only. - 50-89 (orange): Needs work. Likely losing customers to slow load times. - 0-49 (red): Urgent. Your site is actively costing you sales every day.
2. Understand the metrics that matter
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long until the main content is visible. Target: under 2.5 seconds. If this is slow, your hero image or largest page element is too heavy.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How much the page jumps around while loading. Target: under 0.1. Images without dimensions and late-loading fonts cause this.
- First Input Delay / Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How fast the page responds to clicks. Target: under 200ms. Too much JavaScript causes this.
PageSpeed shows many metrics, but focus on these three:
3. Fix the top 3 speed killers (45-60 min)
Fix #1: Optimize images (20 min) Images are the #1 speed killer on most e-commerce sites. Do this: - Convert all images to WebP format (25-35% smaller than JPEG at the same quality). Use Squoosh.app (free, browser-based) to convert. - Resize images to the maximum display size. A 4000px image displayed at 800px is wasting bandwidth. Resize to 2x the display size max (1600px for an 800px display slot). - Enable lazy loading: images below the fold should load only when the user scrolls to them. Most platforms have a setting for this.
Fix #2: Remove unused apps and scripts (15 min) Every app you install adds JavaScript that runs on every page load. Go to your app list and: - Uninstall any app you are not actively using - For apps you keep, check if they inject scripts on every page or just the pages where they are needed. Some review apps load on every page even though reviews only show on product pages. - Disable any built-in features you don't use (live chat widgets, announcement bars, etc.)
Fix #3: Enable caching and a CDN (10 min) If you are on Shopify, this is handled for you. For WooCommerce: - Install a caching plugin (WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache — both free) - Sign up for Cloudflare (free tier) and point your domain to it. This gives you a global CDN, which serves your site from the server closest to each visitor.
4. Re-test and document (5 min)
Run PageSpeed Insights again after your fixes. Document your before and after scores. Set a monthly reminder to re-test — new content, apps, and theme updates can quietly degrade performance.
By the end of this step, you should have:
- A PageSpeed Insights audit completed for your homepage and top product page (mobile + desktop)
- Images optimized to WebP format and properly sized across your store
- Unused apps/plugins removed and caching/CDN enabled
- Before and after speed scores documented
Recommended Tools
Google PageSpeed Insights
Free tool from Google that analyzes your page speed and gives specific optimization recommendations.
Try Google PageSpeed InsightsGTmetrix
Detailed performance reports with waterfall charts showing exactly what's slowing your site down.
Free basic reports
Try GTmetrixCloudflare
CDN, caching, and security in one. The free plan alone can significantly speed up your site globally.
Generous free plan
Try CloudflarePro Tips
- 1Compress and resize all images. Use WebP format — it's 25–35% smaller than JPEG at the same quality.
- 2Remove apps and plugins you're not actively using. Each one adds JavaScript that slows your site.
- 3Enable browser caching and use a CDN. These two changes alone can cut load time by 40–60%.