Passing Core Web Vitals: A Shopify Page Speed & App Audit
Client: A high-growth D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) apparel brand.
Challenges We Faced
The client’s “beautiful” Shopify theme was slow and clunky, especially on mobile, which was killing their technical seo for ecommerce:
“App Bloat”
The client had installed 20+ third-party Shopify apps (for pop-ups, reviews, tracking, etc.), which were loading 30+ external scripts.
Failing Page Speed & Core Web Vitals
Google PageSpeed Insights showed a mobile score of 31. LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) was over 6 seconds due to large images.
High CLS (Layout Shift)
Pop-up apps and late-loading fonts were causing the layout to shift, frustrating users and failing Core Web Vitals.
“Liquid Code” Junk
Code from uninstalled apps was still in the theme.liquid file, adding to the bloat.
High Mobile Bounce Rate
The slow, clunky mobile site had an 85% bounce rate
Speed Up Your Shopify StoreScale Your E-commerce SEO
“Is a slow store and ‘app bloat’ killing your sales? Our ecommerce technical seo services will pass Core Web Vitals and boost conversions.”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Comprehensive Technical SEO Audit
We used PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to get a baseline and identify the slowest-loading scripts.
Page Speed & Core Web Vitals
We audited all 20+ apps, identified the 10 “slowest” ones, and worked with the client to remove 6 and find lightweight alternatives for 4.
Image & Code Optimization
We compressed all product/collection images and converted them to the fast-loading WebP format.
We manually edited the theme.liquid file to remove “junk” code from uninstalled apps.
We deferred non-critical scripts (like the review app) to load after the page was interactive.
Mobile-First & International SEO
We reserved “CSS space” for all images and pop-ups to fix the CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) issue, a key part of mobile-first design.
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google PageSpeed Score (Mobile) | 31 | 92 | +196% |
| Core Web Vitals (Mobile URLs) | “Failing” (90% URLs) | “Good” (95% URLs) | Passed |
| Mobile Conversion Rate | 0.7% | 2.1% | +200% |
Free Shopify Speed Test
“Not sure why your store is so slow? Book a Free PageSpeed Test and let our ecommerce technical seo agency find the bottlenecks!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- Audit your Shopify apps! Every app you add slows your site down. An App & Plugin Analysis is the key to a fast store.
- Don’t just uninstall apps; clean the code. A good ecommerce technical seo company must edit the theme.liquid file to remove “junk” code.
- Pass Core Web Vitals by compressing images (LCP) and reserving space for elements (CLS).
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- The App & Plugin Analysis was the biggest win. Removing 6 slow, script-heavy apps had an immediate impact.
- Manually editing the theme.liquid file to defer non-essential scripts.
- Using a Shopify Analyzer app to pinpoint the 3 slowest scripts.
