“My store is slow” is one of the most common messages I get. Usually it comes with a screenshot of a speed score in red and a list of fifty warnings that nobody understands.
Here’s the honest truth: you don’t need to fix all fifty. In most Shopify stores, a handful of problems cause most of the slowness. Fix those, and the store feels fast to real people, which is what actually matters.
First, measure the right thing
Speed tools test your store under very specific conditions, and the score can jump around from one test to the next. Use them as a guide, not a grade.
What I care about most:
- How fast the first screen appears on a phone. That’s the moment a visitor decides whether to stay.
- How quickly the page responds when someone taps a menu, a variant or Add to Cart.
- Whether things jump around as the page loads (that annoying moment when you try to tap a button and it moves).
Open your store on your own phone, on mobile data, with the cache cleared. If it feels sluggish to you, it feels sluggish to your customers, whatever the score says.
1. Images are almost always the biggest problem
A single product photo straight from a camera can be several megabytes. Multiply that by a homepage slider, a few collection images and a lifestyle banner, and the page is enormous.
What helps:
- Upload images at a sensible size (around 2000 px wide is plenty for most product photos).
- Compress them before uploading. Free tools like Squoosh or TinyPNG work well.
- Avoid huge sliders on the homepage. One strong image beats five rotating ones, for speed and for sales.
2. Apps you forgot you installed
Many apps add code to every page of your store, not just the page where you use them. Some leave that code behind even after you uninstall them.
I start every speed project with an app audit: what’s installed, what’s actually used, and what’s still loading even though it was removed months ago. Removing two or three unused apps often makes a bigger difference than any clever technical trick.
3. Too many fonts and font weights
Every font family and every weight (regular, medium, bold, italic) is another file to download. Two font families with a few weights is plenty. Your theme’s built-in fonts are usually the fastest choice.
4. Heavy homepage sections
Video backgrounds, Instagram feeds, review carousels, countdown timers, pop-ups. Each one is reasonable on its own, but together they slow the homepage to a crawl. Ask of each section: does this help someone buy? If not, it’s costing you speed for nothing.
5. Theme code that has grown over time
Stores that have been running for a few years often carry leftovers: old sections, snippets from past apps, custom code added for a sale two seasons ago. Cleaning these up takes care, because it’s easy to break something, but it keeps the store lean.
What I don’t recommend
- Chasing a perfect 100 score. Past a certain point, you’re trading real features for a number.
- “Speed booster” apps that promise instant results. Some help a little; some add their own code and make things worse.
- Removing things that sell (good photos, reviews, clear product info) just to gain a few points.
The short version
Compress your images, remove apps you don’t use, keep fonts simple, trim the homepage and clean up old code. Do those five things and most stores go from frustrating to fast.
If you’d like me to look at your store and tell you exactly what’s slowing it down, book a free meeting. No obligation, just a clear list of what to fix first.
Shopify consultant, developer and tester. I build Shopify stores that look great, load fast and are tested before a single customer sees them.
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