Your Shopify Store Is Slower Than You Think (And Apps Are Why)

EasySell
2026-03-31T15:33:51+01:00

Run your Shopify store through Google PageSpeed Insights right now. Go ahead — I'll wait. If you score above 50, you're in the minority. The average Shopify store speed score lands between 25 and 30. That's not mediocre. That's failing.

Every second your store takes to load costs you real money. Portent's research found that a site loading in 1 second converts at 3x the rate of one loading in 5 seconds. For a store doing $10,000/month, shaving 2 seconds off load time could mean $700–$1,000 in additional monthly revenue. And the single biggest reason your store is slow? It's not your theme. It's not your images. It's your apps — and Shopify store speed optimization starts with auditing them.

Every App You Install Leaves Behind Code You Never See

When you install a Shopify app, it typically injects JavaScript files, CSS stylesheets, and sometimes entire HTML blocks into your storefront. These load on every single page — not just the pages where the app is active.

A reviews app loads its script on your About page. A currency converter runs on your blog. A pop-up builder injects code into your checkout flow. You installed 15 apps over the past year. Three of them you forgot about. Two you deactivated but never uninstalled. All of them are still loading code.

This is what developers call "render-blocking resources." Your browser has to download, parse, and execute each script before it can show your customer the page. Stack enough of them, and your 2-second load time becomes 6.

Deactivating an App Doesn't Remove Its Code

This one catches merchants every time. You turn off an app from your Shopify admin, assume it's gone, and move on. But many apps leave behind theme modifications — liquid snippets, script tags, and stylesheet references baked into your theme files.

To check, go to Online Store > Themes > Actions > Edit Code. Open your theme.liquid file and scroll through it. You'll probably find script tags and link tags referencing apps you uninstalled months ago. Each one is dead weight slowing your store down.

After uninstalling an app, always check these files for leftover code:

theme.liquid — global scripts and stylesheets

snippets/ folder — app-injected template fragments

assets/ folder — JavaScript and CSS files the app uploaded

If you're not comfortable editing code, Shopify's Theme Check tool or a freelancer on Fiverr ($20–$50) can clean this up in under an hour.

How to Audit Your Shopify Store Speed and Find the Guilty Apps

Guessing doesn't work. You need data. Here's a 10-minute audit you can run right now — no developer required.

1. Get your baseline. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights and record your Performance score, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Total Blocking Time (TBT).

2. Use Chrome DevTools' Network tab. Open your store in Chrome, press F12, go to the Network tab, and reload the page. Sort by size. Every third-party domain you see is an app loading resources. Note which ones transfer the most data.

3. Test with apps disabled. Duplicate your live theme. In the duplicate, go to Edit Code and temporarily comment out app script tags in theme.liquid. Preview the duplicate and run PageSpeed again. The difference is your app tax.

4. Test one by one. Re-enable apps individually in the duplicate theme. After each one, run PageSpeed. You'll see exactly how many points each app costs you.

When we ran this test on a store with 12 installed apps, the theme alone scored 72. With all apps loaded: 28. Four apps accounted for 80% of the slowdown.

The Apps That Typically Hurt Performance Most

Not all apps are equal. Some categories consistently cause the worst speed problems:

Live chat widgets are the worst offenders. Tools like Tidio, Zendesk Chat, and similar widgets load heavy JavaScript bundles (200–400KB) on every page, even when no customer is chatting. If you get fewer than 5 chats per day, replace the widget with a simple "Contact Us" page and a WhatsApp link.

Review apps that load carousels, star ratings, and photo galleries add significant weight. Some inject 3–4 separate script files. If your review app scores poorly in your audit, check if it offers a "lazy load" setting that defers loading until a customer scrolls to the reviews section.

Pop-up and announcement bar apps load their entire logic up front to show a banner the instant the page opens. Ask yourself: does that exit-intent pop-up actually convert? Check your app's analytics. If it converts below 2%, it's costing you more in speed than it earns in email signups.

Analytics and tracking apps can stack fast. If you have Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, TikTok Pixel, and a third-party analytics app, that's four separate tracking scripts. Consolidate where you can — Shopify's native Customer Events handle most tracking pixels without extra apps.

A Decision Framework: Keep, Replace, or Kill

For every app on your store, ask three questions:

Does it directly make or save me money? An upsell app that adds $500/month in revenue is worth keeping even if it costs 5 speed points. A social media feed widget that drives zero clicks is not.

Can I get the same result with a lighter alternative? Many apps do what a simple theme setting, a Shopify native feature, or 10 lines of custom code can do. You don't need an app for a countdown timer — a free Online Store 2.0 section handles that.

Is there a quantifiable impact? If you can't point to a specific metric the app improves — revenue, conversion rate, customer satisfaction score — you probably don't need it.

Be ruthless. The median Shopify store has 6 apps installed. Top-performing stores tend to run 3–4, chosen carefully. Every app you remove is a tax you stop paying on every single page load, for every single visitor.

Quick Wins That Don't Require Uninstalling Anything

Before you start ripping apps out, try these fixes first:

Enable lazy loading for app content. Many apps have a setting to defer their loading until the customer scrolls to that section. Reviews, Instagram feeds, and recommendation widgets should all lazy load. Check each app's settings page.

Move non-critical scripts to the footer. If an app lets you choose where its script loads, move it from the to right before . This stops it from blocking your initial page render.

Compress your images separately. Apps get the blame, but uncompressed product images are still the second-biggest speed killer. Use Shopify's built-in image compression (it's automatic for new uploads) and make sure no product image exceeds 500KB. Most should be under 200KB.

Use Shopify's built-in features first. Shopify has quietly added native alternatives to many popular apps. Product reviews? Shopify has a free app. Basic analytics? Built in. Discount codes? Native. Email marketing? Shopify Email. Check if a native feature covers 80% of what your paid app does. And if you're still running Shopify Scripts, those are being shut down June 30 — another reason to audit your stack now.

The Math That Makes This Urgent

Google's Core Web Vitals directly influence your search rankings. A store that scores "Poor" on LCP (above 4 seconds) gets penalized in mobile search results. For most Shopify stores, mobile traffic accounts for 65–75% of all visits. And with AI-powered search tools now driving Shopify orders, speed and structured data matter more than ever.

Combine the SEO penalty with the conversion hit: a store loading in 5 seconds converts at roughly 1/3 the rate of one loading in 1 second. If your store gets 10,000 visitors/month and converts at 1.5% with a $60 AOV, dropping your load time from 5 seconds to 2 could push conversions to 2.5%. That's an extra $6,000/month — from doing nothing but removing code that shouldn't have been there.

Run the audit. Find the 2–3 apps dragging your store down. Either optimize them, replace them, or cut them. Your store is already making money in spite of its speed. Imagine what it does when it's actually fast.