The most boring topic that will make you the most money
I know. Site speed. Not sexy. Nobody gets excited about it. Store owners want to talk about a new design, a Facebook campaign, a new product. Nobody comes to me and says, "Let's talk about load times."
But after years of working with Shopify stores, I can tell you with confidence: improving speed is the thing that brings the biggest return on investment. More than a redesign, more than additional advertising budget, more than almost anything else.
The numbers you need to know
According to a well-known Google study that has become the industry standard: when load time increases from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of a visitor bouncing increases by 32%. From 1 to 5 seconds? 90%.
And it's not just abandonment. Google measures your site's performance through metrics called Core Web Vitals — mainly how fast the main content appears, how stable the page is (no layout shifts), and how fast it responds to clicks. These metrics directly impact your Google ranking. Slow site = lower position in search results = less traffic = fewer sales. And on mobile, which is 70%+ of traffic in most stores, the problem is even more acute.
How to increase sales by 40% without touching the products
A client came to me with a question I hear all the time: "How do we increase sales?" He tried everything. Campaigns, discounts, new products. Traffic was decent but conversions were low.
The first thing I did? I checked the site speed. The mobile score was low. Pages loaded slowly. Customers on mobile waited more than 5 seconds for a full load.
We sat down and worked on it. We removed unused apps that were still loading scripts. We compressed images. We improved the template code. We implemented lazy loading for images below the fold (the part of the page you only see after scrolling down). We cleaned up unnecessary CSS and JavaScript.
Unsexy tasks. None of them changed the site design by even a single pixel.
The result: a 40% increase in revenue in the following quarter. Same traffic, same products, same prices. The only thing that changed is that customers didn't bounce along the way.
The video that's worth thousands of shekels a month
Another story. An American client with a beautiful Shopify store. Truly beautiful. High-quality product videos on every page. The problem? The videos were heavy. Each product page weighed tens of megabytes.
The client didn't understand why the site was slow. "I invested in the best content." And that's true, the content was excellent. The problem wasn't the content but the format.
What did we do? We converted the videos to a lighter format without compromising the visible quality. We added lazy loading so that videos only load when the user reaches them and not the moment the page opens. We ensured that the thumbnails were light.
Simple actions that took a little time. The result: load time dropped by more than 50%, and the client reported a noticeable improvement in orders within weeks.
What is slowing down your Shopify store
After dozens of optimizations I've performed, these are the usual suspects:
Unused apps: This is the number one problem. Every app installed on Shopify adds code to the site. Even if you remove it, sometimes the code remains. I've seen stores with 15 apps installed when only 4 are actually in use. The rest just weigh it down.
Heavy images: An image directly from the camera can weigh 5-10 MB. It needs to be compressed before uploading. On Shopify, WebP format is the standard — Shopify converts automatically, but the original size still affects processing time.
Videos hosted on the site: A video on the Shopify server = a heavy page. It's better to host videos on YouTube or Vimeo and embed them. This way, the video loads from their servers, not yours.
Heavy template code: Some themes (paid and free) come with many features you don't use. Sliders, animations, effects. Each one adds code that loads on every page.
Custom fonts: Any font that doesn't come from Google Fonts or the system adds a network request and weight. Two fonts with three weights each? That's already noticeable.
Third-party apps for pop-ups and reviews: A pop-up that appears as soon as you enter the site, a review widget, live chat — each one loads a separate script. It's worth asking: does the customer really need all this?
Old theme: And one that many people don't know. Shopify made a significant upgrade to the theme system called Online Store 2.0. New themes like Dawn, Horizon, and Refresh are built on the new architecture and are significantly faster than old themes. If your store is running on a theme installed before 2022, that is sometimes the number one reason for slowness, and it's worth checking for a move.
How to check site speed (for free, without being a techie)
You don't need to be a developer to check. Here are three free tools:
Google PageSpeed Insights — enter the site URL, get a score from 0 to 100 for mobile and desktop. Below 50 on mobile? There's a problem. Above 70? Reasonable. Above 90? Excellent. The tool also shows your Core Web Vitals and gives a specific list of what to fix.
GTmetrix — provides a more technical breakdown. Shows exactly how much each page weighs, how many network requests there are, and what takes the most time. Excellent if you want to see the "weight" of the site.
Shopify's speed report — inside the admin dashboard, under Online Store > Themes, there is a button that gives a built-in speed score. It's less detailed than Google, but gives a general picture and compares you to similar stores.
My tip: check the main page and your most popular product page. The home page isn't always representative — sometimes it's fast but product pages are slow because of images or apps that only run there.
What you can do yourself (without a developer)
A few things every store owner can do today:
Delete unused apps. Go to Apps in the Shopify interface, go over the list, and ask yourself about each one: have I used it in the last month? If not, delete it.
Compress images before uploading. Use a free tool like TinyPNG or Squoosh. Upload the image, the tool reduces the size, download and upload to Shopify. Takes 30 seconds per image.
Remove sliders from the home page. A slider with 5 large images looks pretty, but most people see only the first image. One strong image loads faster and usually converts better.
Move videos to YouTube. Instead of uploading a video directly to Shopify, upload it to YouTube and embed it. It saves significant weight.
When you need a developer
The things I mentioned above will help, but sometimes the problem is deeper. If after you've cleaned apps and compressed images the score is still low, you probably need someone to get into the code.
Things that require a developer: cleaning code left over from removed apps, template code optimization, setting up lazy loading correctly, improving Critical CSS, and moving to more efficient formats for images and videos.
This isn't a huge project. In most cases, it involves a few focused hours of work that produce immediate results.
The bottom line
Site speed is not a feature. It's not something you add on. It is the foundation upon which everything else stands. The best campaign in the world won't help if the customer arrives at the site and bounces after 3 seconds.
The good thing? Improving speed is mostly a one-time effort. You invest once, and enjoy the results over time.
Want to know what's slowing down your store? I can look at the site and give you a clear picture in a short call. No obligation, no big words. Just look at the numbers and decide.
