How important is a good Shopify speed score?
You may have noticed a new feature called "Online store speed" that appears in your dashboard on the page
The theme displays a number from 0 to 100. For many stores, large and small, this number will be very low. But surprisingly when you're using your store normally it really doesn't feel that slow.
It's also quite annoying when you set up a brand new store, invested your money in buying a premium theme, only to see a very low score and feel that something is wrong. After all, when you buy something new, you expect it to work!
Don't worry though, because things aren't that bad. It is indeed worth considering the speed score, but if possible. I'm going to explain how the speed score works, what you should pay attention to and what you can ignore, and finally I'll explain some easy ways to improve your speed score.
Shopify's speed score is not something that Shopify built themselves, the data and testing was actually done by a popular tool from Google, called Lighthouse. This is a free tool and most web developers and SEO experts will use it as an indicator of the speed and friendliness of a website.
This is a good tool to use when building a regular non-ecommerce website. But remember this is just a robot - it generates reports based on very general factors. Three things must be taken into account:
Lighthouse measures the speed of many different types of websites across the web and compares them based on specific "best practices". He doesn't know what platform or technology you use, he doesn't know what the purpose of your website is.
Imagine comparing a compact car to a truck. One is intended for short trips around the city and the other for transferring goods. You wouldn't expect them to be able to compete on weight or fuel efficiency.
Shopify is the truck in this scenario, it does much more than the average site. It usually has hundreds of products, meaning it has to load much more dynamic information on each page. Shopify has marketing tools connected to it, it has applications and scripts. It has currency converters, wish lists, customer accounts and much more.
A site that ranks 100 on Google Lighthouse has none of that. It probably just shows some information with pictures and text, and has a contact form at the bottom. Almost no interaction is needed with the site, so it can be very easy.
If he only had the option to compare with other stores, we would see much higher numbers. Shopify does write if it is faster or slower than similar stores, so this kind of helps to understand the real situation.
There are tools that measure your actual loading speed, such as:
What are best practices? This is basically what the web development industry has agreed to be the 'right way' to build websites. And in general they are a good set of rules to follow. However, it doesn't always work when you use unique technology like Shopify.
Shopify does things a little differently than WordPress for example (and more than 50% of the internet uses WordPress). So many of the suggestions that Google Lighthouse will offer simply cannot be implemented on a Shopify site.
Shopify also has a unique business model. With a normal website you need to purchase server storage. You then have access to various functions of that server and the files on it. Shopify does not have this as it provides the software and hosting as a package.
This means that certain suggestions from Google Lighthouse cannot be implemented. For example, you might see something about server response time or cache policy, but you can't do anything about it on Shopify. So you will never be able to tick those boxes in the Google Lighthouse ranking system.
in fact, Shopify even does some of these things, but they're not visible to Google Lighthouse so it thinks it's not happening.
Because of the above reasons, it is literally impossible to do all the things Google recommends you do to get a perfect score. So don't waste your time and money trying to optimize things to get that number.
However, it is good that Shopify compares to 'similar stores'. These are stores with a similar number of products, sales, traffic and other statistics.
This means ignore the number, but pay attention to what they write in the note right next to it - "same speed as similar stores on Shopify". So you may get a number of 30 but it will say that this speed is average for similar stores. If this is the case, there is no need to worry.
The theme displays a number from 0 to 100. For many stores, large and small, this number will be very low. But surprisingly when you're using your store normally it really doesn't feel that slow.
It's also quite annoying when you set up a brand new store, invested your money in buying a premium theme, only to see a very low score and feel that something is wrong. After all, when you buy something new, you expect it to work!
Don't worry though, because things aren't that bad. It is indeed worth considering the speed score, but if possible. I'm going to explain how the speed score works, what you should pay attention to and what you can ignore, and finally I'll explain some easy ways to improve your speed score.
Shopify Speed Score is actually Google Pagespeed Insights
Shopify's speed score is not something that Shopify built themselves, the data and testing was actually done by a popular tool from Google, called Lighthouse. This is a free tool and most web developers and SEO experts will use it as an indicator of the speed and friendliness of a website.
This is a good tool to use when building a regular non-ecommerce website. But remember this is just a robot - it generates reports based on very general factors. Three things must be taken into account:
1. Lighthouse ranks your store on the same scale as a small image site
Lighthouse measures the speed of many different types of websites across the web and compares them based on specific "best practices". He doesn't know what platform or technology you use, he doesn't know what the purpose of your website is.
Imagine comparing a compact car to a truck. One is intended for short trips around the city and the other for transferring goods. You wouldn't expect them to be able to compete on weight or fuel efficiency.
Shopify is the truck in this scenario, it does much more than the average site. It usually has hundreds of products, meaning it has to load much more dynamic information on each page. Shopify has marketing tools connected to it, it has applications and scripts. It has currency converters, wish lists, customer accounts and much more.
A site that ranks 100 on Google Lighthouse has none of that. It probably just shows some information with pictures and text, and has a contact form at the bottom. Almost no interaction is needed with the site, so it can be very easy.
If he only had the option to compare with other stores, we would see much higher numbers. Shopify does write if it is faster or slower than similar stores, so this kind of helps to understand the real situation.
2. This is a score based on best practices, not an actual performance indicator
There are tools that measure your actual loading speed, such as:
- https://tools.pingdom.com
- https://gtmetrix.com
What are best practices? This is basically what the web development industry has agreed to be the 'right way' to build websites. And in general they are a good set of rules to follow. However, it doesn't always work when you use unique technology like Shopify.
Shopify does things a little differently than WordPress for example (and more than 50% of the internet uses WordPress). So many of the suggestions that Google Lighthouse will offer simply cannot be implemented on a Shopify site.
Shopify also has a unique business model. With a normal website you need to purchase server storage. You then have access to various functions of that server and the files on it. Shopify does not have this as it provides the software and hosting as a package.
This means that certain suggestions from Google Lighthouse cannot be implemented. For example, you might see something about server response time or cache policy, but you can't do anything about it on Shopify. So you will never be able to tick those boxes in the Google Lighthouse ranking system.
in fact, Shopify even does some of these things, but they're not visible to Google Lighthouse so it thinks it's not happening.
3. It is not possible to get a score of 100
Because of the above reasons, it is literally impossible to do all the things Google recommends you do to get a perfect score. So don't waste your time and money trying to optimize things to get that number.
However, it is good that Shopify compares to 'similar stores'. These are stores with a similar number of products, sales, traffic and other statistics.
This means ignore the number, but pay attention to what they write in the note right next to it - "same speed as similar stores on Shopify". So you may get a number of 30 but it will say that this speed is average for similar stores. If this is the case, there is no need to worry.
