With only 5% to 10% ecommerce success rates for 4.8 million Shopify stores, site owners face challenging odds.
So, it’s natural to ask yourself:
“What are the few successful Shopify store owners doing right?”
As web performance experts, we dig deep into the technical aspects of Shopify websites and uncover bottlenecks that site owners often overlook.
From this guide, you’ll learn practical techniques for optimizing your website for conversions without disrupting your business.
But first…
Where do Shopify stores stand in terms of web performance?
Shopify has grown into a CMS that greatly cares about web performance and how users experience websites in the real world.
As a platform, Shopify invests heavily into providing a robust infrastructure that alleviates some of the heavy lifting from site owners with:
- Google Cloud servers with locations across the globe
- Cloudflare CDN with over 300 locations
- Default browser caching for all of Shopify’s internal resources
Strategic partnerships like the collaboration with Google Chrome to bring Speculation Rules to Shopify websites
As a result, Shopify websites boast impressive performance, loading speed, and server speed compared to other major commerce platforms. Some of the latest statistics include:
Shopify’s site speed is 1.2 seconds on average vs an average of 2.17 seconds in competitors;
Shopify offers the fastest server speed in commerce, averaging 2.8 times faster and reaching up to 3.9 times faster than competitors;
Shopify had the highest percentage of users passing Core Web Vitals, with 69.47% in May 2024, compared to WooCommerce, BigCommerce, OpenCart, and others.
However, web performance is a collection of site-specific challenges, and a cookie-cutter approach is not a cure for all. From render-blocking resources to unused JavaScript and CSS, let’s inspect why Shopify websites struggle with slow user experiences.