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Site Performance
Why This Matters
Your store takes 4.2 seconds to load on mobile. You don't notice because you test on fast Wi-Fi. Your customers on 4G in the suburbs are watching a blank screen, and 53% of them leave before your homepage finishes rendering. Every second you shave off load time increases conversions by 7% — that's real revenue you're currently throwing away.
Google uses site speed as a ranking factor. A store that loads in 1.8 seconds outranks an identical store that loads in 3.5 seconds, all else being equal. Faster sites get more organic traffic, and that traffic converts at higher rates because the shopping experience feels responsive and professional.
The good news: most speed problems come from three fixable sources — unoptimized images, unused apps injecting JavaScript, and missing caching. You can cut your load time in half in under 90 minutes without touching any code. This is the highest-ROI technical improvement you'll make.
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.
Deliverables
- 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
- 1Run your homepage through Squoosh.app (free, browser-based) and convert every image to WebP format at 80% quality. A typical product image drops from 400KB to 90KB with no visible quality loss. Do this for your top 20 product images and watch your LCP score improve by 30-50%.
- 2Audit your installed apps by checking your site's source code: right-click > View Source and search for 'script src.' Count the third-party scripts. If you have more than 8, you're carrying dead weight. Uninstall any app you haven't actively used in the last 30 days.
- 3Sign up for Cloudflare's free tier and point your domain to it. This adds a global CDN, automatic JavaScript minification, and browser caching in under 10 minutes of DNS configuration. Stores on Cloudflare's free tier typically see a 40-60% improvement in Time to First Byte for visitors outside their hosting region.