To speed up your Shopify store, separate what Shopify controls from what you control, measure real visitors, then remove the biggest costs: apps, heavy themes, large images, fonts and tracking scripts.
To speed up your Shopify store, start by separating what Shopify controls from what you control. Shopify runs the servers, the content delivery network and the caching, so hosting advice does not apply to you. What slows most stores sits on your side: apps, a heavy theme, large images, extra fonts and third-party scripts. Measure first, then remove the biggest cost before touching anything else.
In short
Shopify's developer documentation describes the platform side: a CDN backed by Cloudflare, Brotli or gzip compression, HTTP/3 and TLS 1.3, and images cached on servers worldwide. You cannot tune this, and you do not need to.
| Shopify handles | You handle |
|---|---|
| Servers and hosting | Theme choice, number of sections |
| CDN, caching, compression | Apps and the code they leave behind |
| Serving images in a format the browser supports | Size and number of uploaded images |
| Platform updates | Fonts, tracking scripts, tags |
Checkout is different: you customise it in the checkout and accounts editor and with apps, not by editing theme code. This guide covers the home page, collections and products.
Use two tools, and expect them to differ a little.
Shopify's web performance reports show Core Web Vitals from real visitors. A summary sits under Online Store, then Themes, and the full reports under Analytics, then Reports, by date, page, page type and device. Charts mark app installs, theme updates and new code, so you can link a change to a drop in score. Data lags by up to 36 hours, covers 90 days, needs the Reports staff permission and needs visitors: a store in private mode has no scores.
PageSpeed Insights gives field data from real Chrome users over 28 days, plus lab data from one simulated run. Lab data has no INP, and a small store may have no field data. Use the lab run to find causes and field data to judge results.
web.dev defines the three metrics: LCP (loading), INP (responsiveness) and CLS (visual stability). Our guide to speeding up WooCommerce explains them plainly, and its advice on images, fonts and scripts applies here too. Test pages that earn money, on a phone, and save the numbers first.
Shopify's performance advice is to keep only apps that create enough value to offset their cost, and to remove the rest. Removal is not always clean: Shopify says some apps add theme code that is not removed on uninstall. Apps using app blocks and app embeds can be switched on and off in the theme editor.
Our guide to the best Shopify apps covers choosing replacements.
It can. Shopify recommends an up-to-date, optimised theme and says its free Horizon family and Online Store 2.0 themes are optimised for web performance. It also says animations, page transitions and many sections can slow pages. Its theme performance data shows how popular themes perform on real stores and notes that apps, tag managers and customisations affect the score too.
The Theme Store requires an average Lighthouse performance score of at least 60. That is a minimum, so test a theme with your own products. Remove unused sections, try animations off and read how to choose a Shopify theme before switching, since settings do not carry over.
Images. Shopify's image guidance says images are not compressed on upload, so size them yourself: 2048 by 2048 pixels usually displays best for square product images, and its performance advice is JPEG for photos and PNG for graphics with transparency. Show fewer high-quality images per page, and avoid oversized or autoplaying video, as Shopify's site speed guide says. Shopify's CDN serves WebP or AVIF where browsers support them.
Lazy loading. Lazy-load only images below the first screen. Never lazy-load the likely LCP image, such as the main banner. Give it fetchpriority="high" and give images width and height so the page does not jump, as web.dev advises. Themes using Shopify's image_tag filter get responsive sizes automatically.
Fonts. Shopify recommends system fonts, which need no download; change fonts under Theme settings, then Typography. For custom fonts, web.dev suggests WOFF2, as few files as possible and preloading only the most important. A separate Arabic font is one more file, so check what your Arabic pages request.
Every pixel, chat widget, review badge and tag adds code. Shopify says poor INP most likely means too much JavaScript from theme, app or third-party code, and advises removing unused or low-value tags from your tag manager. web.dev adds that tags add up, non-essential ones should fire after the page loads, unused ones should be removed, and each needs an owner.
Shopify's customer events run pixels in a sandbox without editing theme code, though custom pixels are unsupported by Shopify. Remove A/B test anti-flicker snippets when no test is running, and avoid apps that game Lighthouse: Shopify's developer guidance warns against them.
Every product page widget is code: reviews, upsells, pop-ups, sticky bars. Keep what earns its place, and reserve space for app content so the layout does not shift (web.dev on CLS). Shopify says to paginate collections with many products so fewer load at once. If pages start slowly, a developer can profile the theme with Shopify's Theme Inspector for Chrome.
| Order | Action | How to check |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baseline home, collection and product pages | Saved report and PageSpeed numbers |
| 2 | Remove unused apps and leftover code, in a copy | Event markers, LCP, INP |
| 3 | Resize the biggest image on key pages | LCP in field data |
| 4 | Audit tags, pixels and widgets | INP in the reports |
| 5 | Cut unused sections and animations | Before and after on the copy |
| 6 | Reduce fonts | CLS, LCP |
| 7 | Paginate big collections | Collection page scores |
| 8 | Change theme only if it is the cause | Compare on your own products |
Mistakes to avoid: chasing a perfect Lighthouse score, installing a speed app instead of removing code, testing only the home page, testing once, editing the live theme and keeping apps from old trials.
Do not chase 100. Passing the three Core Web Vitals for real visitors matters more, and your product and collection pages count more than a perfect lab score on the home page.
Shopify's reports use real visitors over their own date range. PageSpeed Insights combines 28 days of field data with one simulated run. Compare trends, not single numbers.
No. The CDN picks a format and caches images worldwide, but Shopify says images are not compressed on upload, and how many you show is your choice.
Only if the theme was the cause. Keep the same app and script habits and a new theme slows down the same way.
Take your baseline today, then remove one unused app in a duplicate theme and measure again. Read how to choose a Shopify theme before replacing yours, and our Shopify SEO guide for the search side of the same pages. You can browse Shopify themes on DevMarket and test each on your own products first.
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