For a very long time, Shopify has been showing site owners a single Speed Score, but that changed yesterday for merchants with a Liquid storefront.
Shopify RUM data in their dashboard
This isn't surprising as the Shopify platform has been collecting RUM data all along. However, site owners just didn't have access to that data themselves.
Liquid storefronts only
This changed yesterday as Shopify started rolling out the new web performance dashboard. However, this change is limited to Liquid storefronts only.
Core Web Vitals insights
Shopify states that good user experience is key to turning traffic into sales. And we agree for obvious reasons. Customers expect websites to load quickly, intuitively and be responsive. And Google's set of Core Web Vitals is perfectly covering that.
For their web performance dashboard, Shopify is using the 75th percentile, just like Core Web Vitals data. Clicking on a metric title will open a modal with more details. Such as the metric's distribution. This is illustrated in the screenshot below.
Each metric comes with a trend over time as well as the numbers of visits over time, bucketed into good, moderate and poor experiences. While doing so, users can use the following filters:
- Device Type:
Mobile, Desktop, or Both (default) - Date Range:
Last 30 days (default), Last 60 days, Last 90 days - Time Frame Grouping:
Daily, Weekly (default), Monthly
When you don't have a score
If you don't have such real UX dashboard yet, your site might either be password protected or it didn't see any traffic yet according to their FAQ.
You might see data in your Shopify web performance dashboard, but no Core Web Vitals data in Google Search Console or CrUX tools. That could be the result of Shopify tracking all traffic while Core Web Vitals data is more limited.
Shopify Speed Score out
Shopify's Speed Score was based on a Lighthouse score, but with a different look & feel. Below is what Shopify's manual is saying about this score:
Your speed score measures how fast your online store performs in the Shopify test environment, based on Google Lighthouse performance metrics.
Shopify manual
And Shopify merchants will then see the following:
Lighthouse score
Shopify saw reason to move away from a Lighthouse score, as such score fails to represent real-world user experiences. Lighthouse’s scoring criteria have their limitations, is what Shopify is stating.
Google prioritizing Core Web Vitals for SEO rankings is another reason for this move.
And we recognize this, as there can be multiple reasons for not using the Lighthouse score.
Joint venture
By giving merchants insights into real user experience data, Shopify hopes that frontend performance optimization becomes a joint venture between them and Shopify merchants.
What this means for RUMvision
Not much will change for RUMvision as RUMvision is a tool that started with insights into real-world user experiences from the start. We're even serving Shopify merchants and will continue to do so.
This change of course by Shopify is only proving that RUM solutions like RUMvision are on the right track. Moreover, Shopify's new web performance dashboard will educate merchants about the differences between Lighthouse data and RUM data. That is a win for web performance in general.
Bring your Shopify shop to a higher level
RUMvision is welcoming Shopify merchants that want to bring the performance and conversion of their shops to a higher level. We do this by continuing to offer features on top of the Core Web Vitals numbers. For example:
- Using LoAF data to provide a third party dashboard;
- Offering a breakdown of metrics to get to the bottom of issues;
- Allowing site owners to segment data beyond just the device type.
By offering more filters, we're allowing technical SEO and seasoned web performance specialists to remove the noise from their RUM data, and compare experiences per template or caching conditions in a more constructive way. Both analyzing and drawing conclusions become less time consuming and merchants will see the needle moving in a shorter timespan.
