Lukas Tanasiuk as soon as paid a agency to revamp his Shopify website, which offered electrical scooters. The end result was gradual web page masses and his efforts to enhance them. What he discovered, he says, was a number of false claims.
“I found corruption amongst people who say they’re page-speed optimizers,” he informed me.
Web page-speed optimization turned Tanasiuk’s subsequent alternative. In 2023 he launched The Good Company, specializing in Shopify web page masses.
He and I lately mentioned his journey from service provider to company proprietor, gradual Shopify websites, and extra. All the audio of our dialog is embedded beneath. The transcript is edited for readability and size.
Eric Bandholz: Inform us what you do.
Lukas Tanasiuk: I’ve been a Shopify retailer proprietor since 2015. In 2020, I began a click-and-mortar retailer in Vancouver, Canada, promoting private electrical autos, similar to e-scooters, e-skates, one-wheels, and electrical unicycles.
We grew that in a short time. We paid to get our website redesigned, however the obtain pace was tremendous gradual. In my journey to enhance the pace, I found corruption amongst people who say they’re page-speed optimizers. I turned captivated with it.
I noticed few practitioners within the area have been doing good work for a good value. I made a decision this was my subsequent alternative. I began The Good Company in 2023 and have been scaling ever since, focusing solely on Shopify website pace optimization.
Purchasers come to us with non-native Shopify websites which can be very gradual. They’ve nice performance, however they load poorly. Shopify acts so much like Apple. Should you work inside their tight ecosystems, efficiency is nice. However the second you insert exterior elements, efficiency suffers.
Each app within the Shopify area is third-party code. You possibly can’t edit it. The developer doesn’t need you messing with it. Sure apps render pages on their very own servers after which re-render them in your web page.
The simple reply is constructing one thing natively into Shopify. If the price isn’t too insane and the venture scope isn’t wild, do it. We construct immediately into the theme. We don’t construct apps.
Bandholz: How a lot would that price?
Tanasiuk: It is dependent upon the venture. We’ve performed jobs for $2,000 that add performance to an present rebuild.
The killers are those that substitute complete elements. I counsel retailers to take away little-used elements quite than substitute them. Examples are A/B assessments and assessment widgets. Should you’re doing beneath $5 million in on-line income, you most likely don’t want A/B testing.
Use widespread sense. Purchase merchandise from your individual website. Browse your website. Regulate conversion charges. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments with out being data-driven. You possibly can measure and analyze over time. You don’t want costly software program.
We’re doing optimization now for a consumer’s predominant product web page. The first visible asset is a high-end 45-second video describing the product. In Core Web Vitals, it’s the Largest Contentful Paint metric.
The video is the very first thing that masses. The consumer has six conversion optimization apps hooked up to the product web page, plus an A/B testing app. It takes 25 seconds for the web page to load utterly, which is horrible. The gold customary Shopify web page pace is beneath three seconds.
In my expertise, a static picture with good copy and a transparent call-to-action usually converts more than a video or a carousel. Obtain a warmth map or a monitoring software. Only a few guests watch the video for quite a lot of seconds or click on on a number of photographs in a carousel. Most look solely on the static picture. Plus, an optimized picture gained’t harm web page pace. So that you’re dropping on each fronts with movies and carousels.
My background, once more, is as an ecommerce operator. An operator’s purpose must be to enhance the client expertise. A fast-loading web site is important. Many apps do the other. Sadly, many builders are searching for a fast buck and promising a sooner website.
Bandholz: Care to call examples?
Tanasiuk: Right here’s one from final fall. I posted a video on my web page, which I’ve since eliminated, of an organization making false page-speed guarantees. I partnered with an excellent developer, Jake Casto, from Proton Company in New York Metropolis. He offered the technical experience whereas I supplied the non-technical founder’s perspective.
A consumer had simply put in the corporate’s app and requested my opinion. I went to the corporate’s website, and the very first thing they’re advertising is an immediate Shopify efficiency rating of 90 to 95. That’s not possible. It was an enormous purple flag.
For weeks I requested colleagues and dug deeper. That’s how I met Jake Casto. He was making feedback about them being sheisty.
He requested me to collaborate on an expose of those guys. We had a number of calls with the heads at Shopify. Different individuals at Shopify consulted immediately with the Google efficiency staff, who confirmed that every little thing we had uncovered was true.
So Jake and I created a report, reached out to the corporate’s CEO, and mentioned, “We’re doing a report on you guys as a result of we discovered some fairly bizarre stuff happening. We’ll ship the report back to you earlier than we go reside with it so you’ll be able to write a response. We’ll add it to ours.”
Inside hours, each point out of efficiency rating enchancment was wiped off their web site. Their founder deleted each single tweet going again years that associated something to a efficiency rating.
The lesson for retailers is that this. Look ahead to purple flags while you’re looking for Shopify website pace optimization. Be cautious of massive guarantees or in a single day fixes for affordable.
Bandholz: The place can individuals discover you?
Tanasiuk: I’m @Igobylukas on X. I’m additionally on LinkedIn. Our web site is TheNiceAgency.co.
