Shopify has rolled out their Online Speed Scores report across all merchant stores and understandably it sent store owners into a frenzy. And why wouldn’t it - seeing “your store is performing slower than most Shopify stores” certainly *sounds* like reason for panic, right?
Well, not really, if we're being real here. In an episode of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast about these scores, our friend Kurt Elster breaks down the value of these speed results and how Gymshark, a Shopify Plus merchant and success story recently valued in the billions of dollars, has a speed score of 6. S-I-X.
See - we told you not to panic :)
Why Does Speed Matter?
Your store's speed can directly affect your store's conversions. According to Walmart, they found that for every 1 second improvement in page load time, conversions increased by 2%. Also your site's speed is a part of Google's algorithm at this point and they even have tools available to measure your pages speed. Google's crawlers also primarily crawl the web on mobile now so ensuring that your site is fast for mobile devices is the goal.
What Effects Online Speed Scores?
All this isn't to say website speed isn't important, because of course it is. Making sure you're diligent about things like image sizes, lazy loading images, app overload, videos, javascript frameworks and much more goes a long way to ensuring your Shopify store loads as quickly as possible. And using benchmarks like your page load time, and page size, are much more valuable metrics in terms of your site's performance.
Page speed also has an affect your SEO (search engine optimization) rankings, but does having a 100/100 score in a Lighthouse report or the new Shopify reports mean top rankings? Not quite.
While page speed can affect your site, it’s not the only SEO factor. Ensuring that you're satisfying the user’s intent and having the right content makes much more of an impression, rather than striving for the elusive 100/100 score.
Where To Find Your Online Store Speed?
In your Shopify admin, under Online Store --> Themes there's a section that shows your score with a bit of information on what affects your score.
Or you can head to the Online Store Speed score directly by going to this URL by replacing YOURSTORE with the name of your store -
https://YOURSTORE.myshopify.com/admin/reports/online_store_speed
and there you can view the report yourself to see what your current score is and how it's changed over time.
There are a lot of resources out there to learn about page speed and how to help yours along, it get overwhelming.
More Information on Shopify Site Speed
- You can test your page speed yourself with the Shopify Performance Analyzer
- Shopify's own site on Improving Your Speed Score
- Shopify Blog on Shopify Performance Improvements
Not sure where to start with Your Store's Speed?
The Shop Critique team is here to assist you with understanding your store's speed and offer best practices for increasing performance, conversions and your SEO long term.