How to speed up your Shopify store
Ten fixes you can make yourself, most of them in the Shopify admin without touching code. They come from four weeks of testing a real Singapore store on Google's own PageSpeed test, and they're in order: the first ones usually help most.
By the FirstFrame team at Inlinex, 2 Nov 2026.
1. Measure first, and measure more than once
Open PageSpeed Insights and test your store's final address, exactly as it appears in the browser after it loads (with or without www). Run it 4 times and write the scores down. The same unchanged page can score 65 one minute and 85 the next, so a single run tells you very little. Read the real-visitor block at the top too: if Core Web Vitals already pass, Google sees your store as fast. Our free Shopify speed test does this and names the apps involved.
2. Switch off app embeds you don't use
Go to Online Store > Themes > Customize and open App embeds in the left sidebar. Every switched-on embed can load files on every page, even for an app you stopped using months ago. Switch off anything you don't need. This is free, instant and easy to undo.
3. Remove apps you don't use, and their leftovers
Each app you keep is a few more files for every shopper's phone. Uninstall the ones you've stopped using. Some older apps leave code in your theme after you uninstall them: in Edit code, open theme.liquid and search for the app's name. If you're not sure a leftover is safe to delete, leave it and ask whoever built your theme.
4. Make videos in product descriptions load later
A YouTube video in a product description loads about 630 KB of player code before anyone presses play. In the product editor, click Show HTML (the <> button), find the <iframe, and add loading="lazy" inside it. The video then loads only when a shopper scrolls near it. On Inlinex this took one product page from 57 to 86.
5. Point links straight at the final address
If a menu link goes to an old page that redirects somewhere else, every tap waits for the extra hop, and Google's test counts about a second for each. Go to Content > Menus and check each link opens the final page directly. We found 16 such links on Inlinex.
6. Keep the first screen light
The first thing shoppers see decides most of the score. One still image loads faster than a slideshow or a background video. Shopify resizes your photos for each screen, so the upload's size matters less than how many images and videos sit at the top of the page. To shrink and square up a batch of product photos before uploading, PixelPrep (also made by Inlinex) does it in one go.
7. Trim the sections far down the home page
An Instagram feed, a third product rail or a reviews carousel at the bottom of the home page still downloads when the page opens. Keep the sections that sell and drop the ones nobody scrolls to.
8. Use fewer fonts
Each font and each weight (regular, bold, italic) is another file. In Theme settings > Typography, one font family for everything is often enough, and a system font is fastest of all if your theme offers one.
9. Check your chat and pop-up settings
Chat bubbles, pop-ups and spin-the-wheel apps often load on every page as soon as it opens. Look in each app's settings: many let you show them only on some pages, on desktop only, or after a delay.
10. Remove duplicate tracking
An old Facebook or Google tag pasted into theme.liquid years ago often still runs next to the newer one set up through Shopify's sales channels, so the same tracking loads twice. Check with whoever manages your ads before removing anything: tracking changes affect ad reporting.
What usually needs code
The biggest wins on Inlinex came from changes the admin can't make: loading app stylesheets in the background so they stop holding up the first screen, making chat and session-recording scripts wait for the shopper's first tap, and keeping the cart drawer's styles out of the first frame. Together they took the home page from the 60s to 100 when Google's test starts on time. They're safe when done carefully on a copy of the theme and tested before going live, which is what our Shopify speed optimisation does. The case study has every number.
After each change
Test again, 4 runs, and compare the middle score, not the best one. If nothing moved, undo the change. And re-test after every new app or theme update: that's how most fast stores slowly get slow again.
Not sure where to start?
The free check reads your store in about a minute and lists what to fix first, with how. Website speed optimisation for Singapore Shopify stores, from S$350.