Why page speed matters
Slow pages bleed twice: visitors abandon before content appears, and search engines fold speed signals into rankings. Every second of delay is paid in both bounces and reach.
What usually slows stores down
- Oversized, unoptimized images
- Third-party scripts stacking up: pixels, chats, apps
- Render-blocking code before content paints
- Slow hosting and missing caching or CDN
Questions
Where should speed work start?
Images and scripts, on the highest-traffic templates: compress and lazy-load the first, audit and cut the second. Most stores find seconds there before touching infrastructure.
Do third-party widgets have to hurt speed?
No: well-built ones load asynchronously after content paints. Test the page before and after adding any script, and cut the ones that don’t earn their milliseconds.