Slow page speeds can hurt both customer experience and search engine optimization (SEO). Shopify's built-in Web performance dashboard, along with a few free third-party tools, can help you measure how quickly your storefront loads for real visitors.
It is important to first recognize testing tool limitations before you use Shopify's Web performance dashboard or additional tools to evaluate page speed.
Recognize testing tool limitations
Shopify's Web performance dashboard, PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom—each testing tool evaluates a storefront according to its own criteria and standards. While these tools can be helpful, they aren't entirely accurate and should only be used to estimate the overall health of a store's page speed.
Thorough audits for page speed may be necessary, but best left to 3rd-party development services like Storetasker. There are many factors for loading delays, so each case can vary in cause and solution.
Want some help increasing your site speed?
Use Shopify's Web performance dashboard
Shopify measures your storefront's performance using Google's Core Web Vitals, based on data from real visitor sessions:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): loading speed. Good is 2.5 seconds or less.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds to clicks and taps. Good is 200 ms or less.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): visual stability, or how much content moves while loading. Good is 0.1 or less.
View the performance summary
- From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
- Review the performance summary showing LCP, INP, and CLS. Use the date picker to choose Today, Last 7 days, or Last 30 days.
- Click any metric to open its detailed report.
Open the full Web performance reports
- From your Shopify admin, go to Analytics > Reports.
- In the Search reports field, type a colon (
:) to list all web performance reports. You can also searchcontentful(LCP),next(INP), orcumulative(CLS). - Click a report name. Each metric has reports by Over time, Page URL, and Page type.
Note: You need the Reports staff permission, and your store can't be in private mode. New or low-traffic stores may show little or no data. Data can be delayed by up to 36 hours, and only the last 90 days are available.
These results reflect your whole store, including apps, images, and third-party scripts, so they don't measure your theme's performance alone. For more details, see Shopify's Help Center: Web performance reports
Use additional tools to evaluate page speed
Using browsers
One reliable test our agents recommend is to simply open your store's URL on multiple browsers, devices, and networks. Firsthand experience of a loading sequence is just as important as any platform-based or 3rd-party tool.
Another option is to make use of the Network and Performance features found in browsers like Chrome and Firefox.
Browser tools
Pingdom
Pingdom offers a free website speed test at tools.pingdom.com
PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights is a free testing tool from Google, available at pagespeed.web.dev. It shows real-user Core Web Vitals data when your store has enough traffic, plus a Lighthouse lab test with suggestions for improvement.