The Shopify speed checklist I run before every launch

Store owners ask about speed a lot, usually right after installing nine apps that each promise it. In my experience speed comes from restraint more than from tooling. This is the checklist I run before a store goes live.

Images first

• Export images at the size they're actually shown, not the size the photographer sent.
• WebP or AVIF, with srcset handled by Shopify's image_url width parameters.
• Lazy-load everything below the fold. Never lazy-load the first viewport.

Apps, the enemy you invited

• Every app injects JavaScript. Once a month I audit the list and retire anything that a native feature or a few lines of Liquid could replace.
• Compare theme.liquid against the installed apps. Ghost scripts left behind by uninstalled apps are common.

The theme diet

• Delete leftover sections and snippets from development.
• One carousel is a feature. Three is a sign something went wrong earlier in the process.
• Two font families, preloaded, font-display: swap, subset if possible.

Measuring like a skeptic

• Run Lighthouse twice: once clean, once with the "temporary" apps enabled. The difference is what the apps cost you.
• Test on throttled 4G, not your laptop on fiber. Customers don't shop on fiber.
• Watch CLS separately, because a fast page that jumps around still feels broken.

None of this is clever, which is the point. A fast store is mostly the absence of slow decisions.