STOP chasing the maximum PageSpeed for your Shopify store

The most popular query from our clients today is the PageSpeed optimization for their Shopify stores. The intention itself is, indeed, very good: optimizing your store performance will give your website a significant boost in user experience, will make your store load faster, and it will lead to increase in your CVR and SEO positions.

What is not right about PageSpeed optimization today - is the success measuring indicators choice. Most requirements I hear include making the "PageSpeed score" as closest to 100 as possible, and it is a fundamentally wrong approach.

First of all, let's talk about the best store PageSpeed possible for a standard Shopify theme: we always keep track of the newest changes in the Shopify's team Dawn theme, because this theme is ideal in terms of structure and optimization, and it was created using the Evergreen Web standards. Even though this theme was created in the most optimized way possible - it still gets ~50 PageSpeed points, and this takes us to my next point.

PageSpeed score makes LITERALLY NO impact at your store SEO rankings or CVR. Performance indicator that really matters is the Core Web Vitals indicator This is a "real world" indicator that shows the actual user experience on your website. It is a composite score that includes various parameters, like the website server response speed, content paint speed and others. By taking a look at this indicator - you will be able to tell for sure, if your website provides great experience for your customers, and if search engines will treat it as a good option to show in the search results.

By chasing the general PageSpeed score perfection - lots of Shopify merchants are getting into the certain individual's hands, who injects the malware code to their website, and makes the Pagespeed score look good, but makes the website completely unusable, and ruins the Core Web Vitals metrics. Usually, it's very hard to recover the website after changes like this, because engineers like these usually don't use any version control tools, and don't try to keep the code clean.

As a conclusion - in case you are thinking about the Pagespeed optimization for your website - start with checking your Core Web Vitals using the PageSpeed Insights tool and Google Search Console tool. In case you see issues with your Core Web Vitals - reach out to a team that knows how to address issues like these (it's a very creative process; it requires lots of experience, readiness to work on the edge of possible, and significant amount of time).

We, at INSO.codes, are always ready to consult you about your website performance, and give you an advice, so feel free to reach out to us if you need any help.

‍