Why Shopify Store Optimization is Crucial for Success

There are many different Content Management Systems (CMS) out there available for you to build a robust and functional website for your business. The difference with Shopify, however, is its strength and reputation within ecommerce specifically.

Shopify allows site owners to run different business processes all from within one platform, giving business owners flexibility in which channels they use, streamlined views of customer and inventory data, plus time efficiencies relating to purchasing and payment processes - sounds good, right?

Setting up a Shopify site is straightforward, plus themes and features within Shopify are customizable, meaning your site can be adapted to meet your needs and scale with you as your business grows. However, much like with any website, creating a Shopify site is not a ‘set and forget’ exercise and will need regular optimization updates to make sure it’s performing exactly as you want it to.

In this article, we will dive into what you can do to optimize your Shopify site for success and maintain its performance to keep your sales coming in, your business growing, and your customers happy!

Why optimize your Shopify site

As with any website, optimization is a key part of the site’s overall success and user experience. There are many different things you can do to optimize your Shopify site, beyond the usual search engine optimization (SEO) activities (but we’ll touch on those later).

Why perform regular Shopify performance optimizations

Regular optimizations of your Shopify store ensures that it is working as it should be for your prospects and customers, leading to conversions and sales. Shopify performance optimizations include activities that ensure your store is running smoothly, efficiently, and even securely. This can be tasks like updating your apps and themes and fixing any bugs or issues to keep your store operational and enhance the overall user experience. Doing these updates is an ongoing process which helps you optimize for best practices as your business grows.

Maintaining your Shopify store can also help you increase the amount of time a user spends on your site, as well as the likelihood that they will return to you in the future, by improving user experiences not only on the visual side but also from a data perspective. If a user has a bad experience on your site, it’s probable that they won’t return to you in the future and head to a competitor. This can have a negative effect on your brand reputation, as well as affecting your reputation in the eyes of prospects. As we know, word of mouth can be a very powerful promotional tool so it’s best that you try and limit this from happening at all.

What is Shopify website performance

Doing performance updates on your Shopify site might not be the most glamorous part of running a Shopify site as it takes a lot of time digging into data and coming up with creative ways to tackle flaws within your store, but it’s definitely up there as one of the most important things you need to do. If your prospects and customers can’t use your site then you won’t be making those highly coveted conversions and sales. Yes, maintaining your online store plays a key role in your conversion rate optimization (CRO) efforts, too. Think of your Shopify website's performance and CRO like salt and pepper; they go hand in hand and you should never do one without the other. Unless you don’t like salt or pepper, naturally.

Shopify analytics

Before looking at what you can do to optimize your Shopify store, take a look at your site’s analytics. What story do they tell you? Are there clear patterns in your customer behavior? Do you understand where your site visitors are coming from - and where they’re exiting your site? Shopify offers pre-built reports where you can combine different metrics and timeframes to allow you to effectively compare performance, so consider analyzing data from a larger period of time or even different points in time to get a clear understanding of what’s going on. If you prefer to have a specific report for your metrics, you have the option of building a report that is tailored to your needs within Shopify (known as an ‘exploration’ within the CMS). Make sure that you are reading the data accurately so you can make the best decisions on what needs changing to make the most of your optimization efforts.

Occasionally there will be times when your Shopify analytics indicate that there is an issue with your site, therefore needing unexpected maintenance. This could be something like you have a high amount of shoppers who are abandoning their cart because they are unable to complete their purchase, or the payment options aren’t working as they should be.

Now that you've looked at your site’s analytics and have a clearer understanding of what you need to do to successfully perform optimizations on your site, let’s take a look at things you definitely shouldn’t forget!

Shopify store speed optimization

To maintain and optimize your Shopify store speed, you first need to understand how it is loading for your customers on both desktop and mobile. You can do this within Shopify’s web performance dashboard.

As ecommerce sites are generally media heavy, the first thing you should consider looking at is your website load time and speed optimization. User expectations around load times are quite high, meaning you want your site to load up on a user’s device as quickly as possible to keep their interest and hopefully convert them into a sale. Sites that take longer to load usually have a higher bounce rate - so you should be able to pick this up when going through your analytics. Slow loading will also have a negative effect on your SEO efforts meaning you’ll rank lower than competitors, another way of missing out on visitors, engagement, and conversions.

Your chosen Shopify theme can negatively affect your site load time if you've made too many modifications - make sure that any scripts and apps you're not using are switched off in the background to improve your site's load time. Regularly update your theme too as the latest version will usually have some optimizations included.

Don’t forget to check your media file sizes and types (removing any that don’t add any value to your site) so they’re not killing the user’s bandwidth, ultimately keeping them on your site for longer. Images and videos can have a negative impact on a site’s loading speed, as larger files will slow the site down. Check that your images and videos are in appropriate formats and compress them if needed to improve your loading time. As for adding GIFs to your Shopify store, make sure they have a low amount of frames. It’s usually better to use MP4 format for longer visuals since GIFs can get quite heavy, however quite often a Shopify developer might need to get involved in making this happen since each theme is unique and they don’t always allow you to upload MP4 or GIFs.

Reducing the amount of redirects you have on your site will positively affect your load times, as well as regularly checking that you have no broken links on your site (another SEO bonus!). Having a faster loading store means it’s easier for prospects and customers to convert on your site and won’t leave them with a bad impression of your business.

Shopify conversion rate optimization

Shopify conversion rate optimization (CRO) focuses on improving the processes involved in getting your site visitors to complete a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or email list, converting to a sale, or anything else in line with your business’ goals. The main aim of CRO is to increase the amount of conversions on your site, rather than just improving the number of site visitors and other metrics. Speed optimization is part of this process, as it increases the likelihood that a visitor will stay on and engage with your online store.

Your Shopify site should be easy to navigate, with clear menus and calls to action on how you would like the site visitor to behave. Thinking back to your site’s media, use high-quality and clear images that entice the user into converting - not forgetting easy to understand product descriptions that cover all the important details of your product. Keep your descriptions as succinct as possible - you need to capture interest quickly and get to the point. Try to stick to a few sentences highlighting the key points.

At the point of purchase, CRO activities include a simplified checkout process with minimal steps and fields for the user to complete. Within Shopify there is an option for a one-page checkout (rather than the usual three) which offers various customization options for you to simplify the process or add various plugins such as up-sells or cross-sells that increase revenue growth and customer engagement. You could also offer multiple payment options to users to ensure that they’re able to complete their purchase on your site, with their preferred methods, and reduce abandoned transactions.

Another way of improving your Shopify CRO? The classic A/B test. By A/B testing your landing page layouts, content, or adverts, you’ll get a better idea of how your site visitors respond to the changes you want to make. The different versions you offer don’t need to be wildly different, it could be something as simple as a different headline or image (unless you’d prefer to experiment with two contrasting ideas, of course!). A/B testing can also be used on landing pages and be specific to different user groups - the only way you’re going to find out what works is if you test!

Shopify Search engine optimization (SEO)

You’ll need to optimize your Shopify site to ensure that you rank highly in search engine results for your chosen keywords so prospective customers can find you and convert. As well as the usual slugs, heading tags, and meta descriptions being optimized, remember to take a look at your product and image descriptions, as well as other supporting content on your website, like blogs.

While image descriptions may not seem obvious, they’re really important in helping search engines to understand what your page is about, as well as supporting those who are using screen reading software. Adding appropriate and thorough descriptions of your images, using keywords where necessary, means your product images can rank in image search results and give prospects another way to find your site.

Linking between different pages on your site also contributes to your SEO efforts by reducing a page’s exit rate. Adding internal links to pages extends the user journey, allowing users to discover new information about you and your business, or maybe even other products that they like and are suitable for their needs - improving your overall Shopify conversion rate.

Regularly reviewing product and image descriptions on your Shopify site will not only ensure that the information is correct and appropriate for your audience, especially as your business grows and evolves, but will also benefit search engines crawling your site. Making updates and changes to copy shows search engines that your site is active and in operation and can benefit your SERP (search engine results page) ranking. Think about your product pages as you would a landing page. This gives you more opportunity to work with different heading tags and copy, to fully explain the benefits and solutions your product provides to the customer. Not only do you give yourself more chances to convert a sale, but this is good for search engines trying to understand what your business offers.

Making too many changes too often to your heading tags and copy can have a negative impact on your rankings as the search engine won’t understand what it is they’re crawling. If you are making SEO adjustments based on your keyword research, wait a short period of time before checking the results and making further adjustments as they need to settle in before they start accurately demonstrating their performance.

Shopify security optimizations

Online security is often something that is overlooked but certainly shouldn’t be. When you are dealing with customers and their personal and payment data, it’s imperative that you take proper security precautions with your site. You should always consider working with an internal or external security partner who can perform regular penetration (pen) tests on your site to ensure that a malicious actor cannot infiltrate it and access customer data. Bot traffic also poses a threat to your store, causing performance issues and skewing your site’s analytics. Implement a bot management solution that can help you block any malicious traffic.

Additionally, from within your organization, check that your SSL certificates are up to date as these keep internet connections secure and customer transactions private, denying hackers and bot traffic the opportunity to intercept information as it is transferred. Having an up to date SSL certificate demonstrates to your customers that you’re taking their data security seriously, and can improve the likelihood they will convert on your site. Another visible way you can demonstrate to your customers that you’re taking their data security seriously is by having clear cookie and GDPR policies on your site, coupled with banners that explain to site visitors how you plan on using their data. Remember, if a user doesn’t accept cookies on your site then this will affect your advertising and capturing of data analytics.

Take advantage of Shopify’s built-in security tools, such as fraud detection, as this is another way of protecting customer information. Shopify offers a range of different apps to help you with your site’s security - but only download apps from the official Shopify app marketplace as poorly coded apps will create vulnerabilities in your site. You can also implement country blockers on your site to restrict certain store features depending on the user’s geographical location. Country blockers help you to prevent fraud, as this is more prevalent in some regions than others, meet legal compliance, and limits shipping if you only work with certain countries.

How to manage and improve the performance of your Shopify store

So now we’ve looked at a few things you can do to optimize your Shopify site. But how are you going to be able to stay on top of this to know your site is working as hard as it should for you? Firstly, create a plan of when you’re going to implement your performance optimization efforts and also when you’re going to check your data for improvements. It’s best if you do this a few times after you’ve made your changes so you can understand the adjustments in performance and their overall impact as some types of changes you make to your site may take a short while to feed through to search engines. Create a maintenance log, or monthly store audit checklists, that include what the change was, what you expect to see, actual results, and the milestones for when you check the performance. If after a period of time you’re not seeing the results you expected, optimize again! Making changes can be a delicate balance and won’t always be right the first time.

Don’t be afraid to use extra tools to enhance your Shopify store performance. Whilst some optimizations you can implement yourself, it can become time consuming and take you away from doing more important things (like running your business!). Appropriate tooling can speed up this process of making changes and monitoring performance - just make sure you do your research to find the right tool(s) for your needs.

Apps for optimizing your Shopify performance

• Google Analytics (GA4)
• Google Search Console
• Moz Keyword Checker
• Ahrefs
• SEMRush
• Hotjar Heatmaps

There are many different ways you can optimize your Shopify store, such as the third party Shopify performance apps mentioned above that can help you get the data you need, but keep your prospects and customers as the focal point of your efforts. It can be easy to get carried away with making changes that are only surface level and do not address the key issues. User experience and data should guide you in your decisions for which optimizations will serve your store best.

Create a plan to improve your Shopify store performance

You need to start planning and you can begin by looking into monthly Shopify audits and conversion rate optimizations. This should cover all the different parts of your site that are affecting your store performance, like your apps, theme, visuals, copy that affects SEO or third-party plugin that you’re running and custom code that you’ve integrated into your site.

Creating proper optimization plans and checklists for repeating tasks is time consuming but well worth doing as it gives you a clear structure of what needs to be done and when. Once you have a clear picture of all the parts that require regular optimizations on your Shopify site, do them in monthly sprints with your in-house team or external partners in a systematic way that will have short and long term benefits. Some maintenance will be mandated by the themes, apps, and plugins that you’re working with (such as updates or patches released by the developer), but others will need to be checked on occasionally to ensure they’re still running smoothly and not negatively affecting your sites conversions rates. Ideally, Shopify performance optimizations should take place once a month - if not more regularly - to keep your store functional.

Finding a partner for your Shopify website maintenance

If you do need help with your Shopify maintenance and performance optimization, you have three options:

1. Keep it in-house

Maintaining and improving performance is time consuming, especially when you’ve got a million other things you could be doing to keep your business successful. There might already be someone in your team who can own the checklist and tasks, or you can hire someone especially. Bear in mind that if you’re just starting out with your business, recruitment is a lengthy and costly process - especially when you factor in future salary, insurance, bonuses, and other employee perks.

2. Enlist the help of an agency

Another option which also comes at a cost, but is usually the best return on investment. Hiring an external agency who specialize in Shopify stores or Shopify support and maintenance services means they are the experts in the field and know which changes to implement. Agencies come in all different sizes, with smaller ones often offering a more personal approach, and will have the required experience to benefit your business in the long-term.

3. Find a freelancer

A freelancer is the lowest cost option, but comes with a risk. Just because someone is cheap (or expensive for that matter), doesn’t mean they really understand your requirements, which could end up costing you more in time due to bad fits or miscommunications, so for the long-run you need to vet your freelancers carefully.

Other maintenance activities will be things such as your website’s design and layout - is it still working well for your prospects and customers, leading to conversions - and checking the copy on the page still accurately reflects your business’ product offering. These types of activities will need to take place periodically.

There will be times when things don’t work as intended. This sadly can’t be avoided as it’s unknown when integrations will stop working or functioning with other parts or your technical set up. Try and factor ad hoc Shopify maintenance audits into your schedule based on you regularly reviewing your analytics data.

Conclusion

There we have it. Some simple things you can do to successfully optimize and maintain your Shopify store. Investing time in these activities may seem like a chore, but they’re a critical part of your store’s long term success. Implementing regular Shopify performance optimizations and maintenance activities as part of your operational activities will benefit you in the short term (the present day) as well as in the future as your business grows and scales. Fixing issues as they arise, following proper processes, and undertaking regular Shopify website audits means that you will have one less thing to worry about in the future, with minimal remedial activity if the problem gets worse. So go ahead, audit your Shopify store and start adding tasks to your backlog and checklists for your team to handle!