Slow Shopify Store With A Premium Theme? Dev Skills Are No Longer Enough To Fix It

With the latest versions of premium themes in the Shopify store, 90% of the technical optimization work that had to be performed is no longer needed. Speed is mostly a design issue now.

The Themes Are Technically Proficient, But It Is Still Up To You How You Would Use Their Options

The speed of your website largely depends on what you decide to put on it. Nobody can stop you from installing all the free apps or enabling all the theme widgets. But not all of them are a fit for the needs of your visitors.

That’s why you need a person who can (help you) decide what needs to be on your website and what should go away in order to improve the experience of your store. With knowledge of how people use your site, you can simplify it, make it straightforward to use. A nice “side-effect” of that is a lift in site speed AND conversions.

Sidenote: speed optimization projects are a subset of conversion optimization projects. Improving the speed and fixing the bugs are the first steps in the initial conversion optimization efforts.

The Dangers Of Focusing Only On The Code In A Shopify Speed Optimization Project

A general web developer would produce marginal results while following blindly all of the technical speed optimization practices. What you may gain now will be offset by the complicated customizations and the inability to easily update your theme in the future.

Too much tinkering with the code will make your theme hard to update. Should you go that route you’ll be missing the opportunity of having access to free theme updates.

I’ve been guilty of “over-optimizing” to the point where I was hurting the future of a site more than I was helping. That’s how I know better now :)

So, next time you want to speed up your website, look for an expert that can take care of your current needs but also knows what they will turn into, too. Working with people who try to speed your site by focusing only on the technical inefficiencies will cost you money in the future.

If you’ve read this far, I believe you’ll benefit from my “No Code Shopify Speed Optimization” guide! It is a quick read that’ll help you get the right mindset towards your Shopify store customizations.