With the holiday season right around the corner, many people are gearing up for the busiest shopping season of the year. If you’re one of these shoppers, you know that time is precious and you want to make the most of your time when shopping online. Unfortunately, some online stores can be quite slow in loading, which can make it frustrating to shop. To help you find the best online store for your needs, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide on how to do a Shopify speed test.
How to Speed Test your Shopify Store
If you’re like most small business owners, you probably don’t have the time or resources to extensively test your Shopify store’s performance. But with a few simple tricks, you can quickly determine whether your site is running too slowly or not at all.
To perform a shopify speed test, first login to your store and go to Settings > Performance. From here, you can see how long it took your site to load various pages, as well as the average page load time.
If you’re seeing the sluggish performance, there are a few things you can do to improve it. First, make sure you’ve installed the latest updates for Shopify. This will add additional security protections and speed up the overall browsing experience on your site.
Also, make sure you’re using the right hosting for your store. Some hosts offer faster speeds than others, so be sure to compare apples-to-apples when choosing a provider. And finally, be sure to optimize your images and CSS files – these can take minutes to load and can dramatically affect page speed.
With these tips in mind, you should be able to address any slowdowns in no time!
What to expect from a Shopify speed test
When you’re looking to improve your website’s speed, a Shopify speed test is a great way to get an idea of where your site is lagging behind. Depending on the type of speed test you choose, you can expect different results.
Here are some tips for getting the most accurate results from your Shopify speed test:
Choose the right test: There are a few different types of Shopify speed tests available, so it’s important to choose the one that will give you the results you’re looking for. Ping Test and WebPageTest are two popular options. Ping Test sends a request to your site and measures how long it takes for the response to come back.
WebPageTest simulates how webpages would load on a user’s computer and measures the time it takes for each page to load. Both tests can be used to measure your site’s bandwidth as well as its performance.
How to Make Your Shopify Site Faster
Shopify users can speed up their site by optimizing their code and setting up caching. Here are some tips for optimizing your Shopify site:
Optimize Your Code
One way to make your site faster is to optimize your code. You can do this by removing unnecessary loops and using shorter, more concise code. This will make your site load faster.
You can also use performance modules such as CloudFlare or W3 Total Cache to cache portions of your site on Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Platform. This will improve the performance of your site by reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred to the server.
Set Up Caching
Another way to make your site faster is to set up caching. You can do this by using a caching plugin such as CloudFlare or W3 Total Cache. This will cache pages and responses from the server, reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred.
Additionally, you can use the cache control features in Shopify to specify which pages should be cached and for how long. This will help to improve the performance of your website.
How to Optimize Shopify Pages for Speed
Shopify is a great platform for businesses of all sizes, but if you’re looking to improve your site’s speed, you’ll want to take some steps to optimize it. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
1. Minify your code
One of the best ways to improve your site’s speed is by minifying your code. This means reducing the amount of text and code that your page sends to the server. You can do this by using common coding shortcuts like using less variables and eliminating white-space.
2. Use compression tools
Another way to reduce the size of your code is to use compression tools like gzip or deflate. These tools take the compression algorithm from 7-zip or WinZip and compress the files automatically. They can increase the download speed of your pages by as much as 50%.
3. Use caching plugins
If you’re hosting your own website, you can also use caching plugins like W3 Total Cache or CloudFlare to store static files on the server and have them delivered from memory rather than from the hard drive each time someone requests them. This can significantly reduce the number of requests your site has to make, which in turn can speed up your site.
4. Use Google PageSpeed Insights
Finally, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights to see how your site is performing and make changes based on the recommendations. This tool lets you see how well your page is loading on different devices, how much data is being transferred, and how many errors are being made.
What does a Shopify speed test measure?
Shopify speed tests are a great way to measure the speed of your Shopify site. The tests run in parallel and report back the time it took to complete the test. This will give you an idea of how fast your Shopify site is performing.
There are a few things to keep in mind when running a Shopify speed test:
-Make sure that you have the latest version of Shopify installed and configured correctly.
-Make sure that your site is optimized for performance. This includes setting up caching, reducing images and videos, and using gzip compression.
-Run your speed test on a device that is as close to your Shopify server as possible. This will help to reduce any lag caused by the distance between the two devices.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to improve your shopify speed, then this guide is for you. In it, we’ll teach you how to do a speed test and identify areas where you can make improvements. By following these steps, you’ll be able to boost the performance of your store by up to 50%, which is definitely something worth considering.
