As online shoppers, we’ve all experienced the frustration of a slow-loading website. No one wants to wait around for a page to load, especially when there are other options just a click away. This is why it’s so important for ecommerce businesses to have a fast website. One way to speed up your website is by enabling compression. Compression reduces the size of your files, which means they will load faster for your customers. In this blog post, we will show you how to enable compression in Shopify. By following these steps, you can help improve your website’s speed and performance.
What is Compression?
In order to enable compression in Shopify, you need to first understand what compression is and how it works. Compression is a technique that can be used to reduce the size of a data file or stream by encoding it using a specific algorithm. This algorithm can be designed to compress the data by removing redundant information, such as identical characters that appear multiple times within the data stream.
Compression can be used to improve the performance of a website by reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the server and the client. This is because less data means that there is less work for the server to do in terms of processing and sending the data, and less data for the client to download and decompress.
How to Enable Compression in Shopify
Shopify is a platform for businesses of all sizes to create an online store. One of the key features of Shopify is its ability to compress files to improve website performance. Compression can be turned on in the “Settings” tab of your Shopify admin.
Once compression is enabled, all files on your website will be automatically compressed when they’re loaded by a visitor’s browser. This can reduce file size by up to 70%, making your website load faster and saving bandwidth.
Compression is especially important for images, as they are often the largest files on a web page. By compressing images, you can greatly reduce the time it takes for them to load. This can improve the user experience on your website and lead to higher conversion rates.
To enable compression in Shopify, follow these steps:
1. Log in to your Shopify admin and go to the “Settings” tab.
2. In the “General” settings section, scroll down to the “Performance” subsection and check the box next to “Enable automatic gzip compression.”
3. Save your changes and that’s it! Your Shopify store will now compress all files automatically when they’re loaded by visitors’ browsers.
Why Use Compression?
Compression can be used to improve the speed of your Shopify store in two ways: by compressing your HTML files so that they load faster, and by compressing your image files so that they take up less bandwidth.
Compressing your HTML files is a good way to improve the speed of your Shopify store because it reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded when someone visits your site. The smaller the file size, the faster it will load.
Compressing your image files is also a good way to improve the speed of your Shopify store because it reduces the amount of bandwidth that is required to download them. When you have many image files on a page, this can really add up and slow down the loading time. By reducing the file size, you can help improve the speed of your site.
How to Optimize Your Images for Compression
Images can take up a lot of space, especially if they are not optimised for compression. By following a few simple steps, you can make sure your images are ready for Shopify’s compression algorithm.
First, make sure your images are in the right format. JPEG is best for photos, while PNG is better for graphics with fewer colours. GIF is also an option, but it is not as widely supported.
Second, reduce the file size of your images as much as possible without losing quality. This can be done using an image editing program like Photoshop or GIMP.
Third, save your images at a lower quality setting. This will further reduce the file size without a noticeable loss of quality.
By following these steps, you can ensure that your images are optimised for Shopify’s compression algorithm and take up less space on your store’s servers.
Conclusion
Compressing your Shopify files is a great way to improve your store’s load times and speed up your overall site. By following the steps in this article, you can easily enable compression for your Shopify files and start seeing some serious performance gains. So what are you waiting for? Get started today and see how much faster your shop can be!
