In this blog Emma takes you through the importance of PageSpeed. It's a key part of a successful migration and therefore something we keep working on within our Syncer Framework.
The speed of your website is crucial. Visitors have a short attention span: if your site takes longer than three seconds to load, the chance is high they'll bounce. On top of that, Google rewards fast websites with a better ranking. So a fast site is not only good for your visitors, but can also help your visibility.
Yet improving your PageSpeed score is often a challenge. Fortunately, on top of an optimised theme, you also have your own influence on your website's performance. In this article you'll read how to make your website faster and which improvements have the biggest effect.
The highest possible PageSpeed score is great, but not always achievable. Sometimes you have to balance functionality and speed. On top of that, a site with a low score can still load quickly. Don't get fixated on a perfect 100 score; for stores in particular it's practically impossible.
There are different tools to measure your website's speed. The most commonly used are:
Google PageSpeed Insights: gives insight into speed and optimisation opportunities
Lighthouse: available via Chrome Developer Tools. Provides extensive and realistic measurements
GTmetrix: offers in-depth analyses of load times and improvement points
WebPageTest: ideal for advanced tests, such as load times by region
By regularly testing your speed, you get insight into improvement points and can optimise them. We also advise: test your website multiple times in the same tool. The results can vary. Take an average rather than the worst score.
Images are often one of the biggest culprits behind a slow site. From the theme, images are loaded as efficiently as possible, but we don't have influence over everything. With these steps you optimise them:
Use the right size: upload images in the exact dimensions in which they're displayed
Compress your images: remove unnecessary metadata and reduce the file size without quality loss. Handy tools for this are TinyPNG and CompressJPEG
Use modern formats: formats like WebP or AVIF offer better compression than traditional JPG or PNG
Picture this: you use Trustpilot to collect reviews, Hotjar to gather data and a chat widget. Those are three external parties, each adding multiple files to the website — usually one script file and one for styling. How big and heavy these files are, and how much they lower the score, varies per provider. These external scripts can be added through apps, theme settings or Google Tag Manager.
We regularly see stores using a lot of external scripts. We always advise: be critical of what you add to your site. Every addition (both apps and scripts) impacts how much the site has to load. The less, the better. Using a tool to measure speed, you can get insight into which external files are loaded and which have the biggest negative impact.
Also check whether scripts are being added through Google Tag Manager that aren't being used. Many people don't know that old or unused scripts in GTM can be a big problem. Periodically (for example every six months) review the scripts, be critical and remove anything that doesn't have (enough) value.
Want to know what's slowing your site down? Sometimes the impact of external scripts or theme changes is hard to pinpoint. A developer can help analyse and optimise your site. Curious how you can improve your PageSpeed score? Get in touch and we'll be happy to take a look with you!
