How to fix performance issues on Square Online - namely page speed

[RobbieB]

Hi all, I have been working with a Marketing person for my business.  She conducted an audit of my website using both the Website Grader and Chrome Lighthouse and there seems to be some performance issues on my site, mainly page speed.  It appears that my speed is up at somewhere in the 17sec range for the page to load with a 98 page requests which is high.  The page speed according to two different people should be under 5sec.  I have gone through my whole website and optimised all my photos (even though the report said that they were fine) and still nothing has changed.  I have no videos etc on my site.  The report says to minimise my css and javascript but I assume that is something that I cant do? How do I get this done so that I can increase the speed of my website?  I want to be able to add content, but I am afraid to at this point in case the situation gets worse.

Kind Regard Robyn

[RobbieB]

By the way, I have read Square help on this about reducing page size, but the page size is fine.  The source code seems to have a lot of white space etc which leads me think if this is minimised, it will help

[Seamus]

Hey @RobbieB!

As a template based web-store builder you're unfortunately not going to be able to make any drastic changes to the underlying code for Square Online websites.

This is perhaps something you could look at if you had a custom-built website from the ground up, made by a web developer who could then optimise the code based on the feedback you've received.  This isn't the sort of functionality that Square Online will be able to provide, or that I'm aware other template based web store providers are able to provide.

You could hire a web developer and get the best optimised website around built from scratch, but depending on the size of the business and how much you have to invest in a website, it may or may not be worth going down that path.

Are you finding that pages are loading very slowly for you when you try and access the website? I'd be happy to take a further look if you'd like to share the link - I'm not sure if I will have any solutions, but having looked at a lot of Square Online stores that don't have loading speed issues it's possible I may be able to identify something.

[RobbieB]

Hi Seamus, I dont particularly want to have a website built as I dont think I need to go to that effort and expense.  Warning: this is a long email with a few pictures, but maybe you can see something I cant.

I have looked at various articles in the Squarespace help and did most everything.  My Marketing person got me to do an audit through websitegrader.com which showed that my page size is fine but the page requests are very high which seems to be affecting the performance of the site.  I spent a day and a half compressing my pictures to see if that made any difference to the scores and it didnt.  (see below)

I then went to Google Developer tools and did an audit through there. As you will see the time to interactive is 29.3 seconds.  Are you able to shed any light on the issue?  As you have said, I may not have any control over the website as it is a template controlled shop, but maybe you have some thoughts.  My website is www.littlecrookedhouse.com.au

[Seamus]

Hey @RobbieB,

I'm afraid I am not able to offer any advice on how to improve the numbers you're seeing on that website, and there are no settings via Square Online that you can adjust to change how performance is measured on 3rd party testing and optimisation tools. It's possible that these figures could be impacted by how many pages / items your site has to display, but that may or may not be a correct assumption on my part. 

All I can say here for certain is that I visited your website and am not having any issues loading your website - it's not loading any faster or slower than other websites I visit on a regular basis, big or small. In order to begin understanding how all of these figures work and what practical impact they have on day to day web use I'd likely need a different degree to the one I have!

Are you seeing any practical issues here with how quickly your website loads compared to others, or have any customers been reporting any issues with slow load times?

I would also consider how seriously to take these results based in the context of real life web performance and how your customers are using your website. Keep in mind that websitegrader.com are trying to sell you a service, and giving you these sorts of reports and figures in an alarming shade of red doesn't necessarily mean a lot without knowing how they behave in context, or if you're not a web developer and your website is otherwise loading fine.

These may be things you'd want to optimise if you were a large corporation getting hundreds of unique hits to your website per minute. They're probably not going to have any practical impact on your standard Square Online website though 🙂

You might think of it this way - you could spend a lot of money developing an infinitely optimised, industry leading website experience that may technically get you amazing benchmark results - the same could be said of purchasing a Ferrari if you're looking for a car with superior technical performance. Compare the Ferrari test results to that of your standard Toyota Corolla, and the Corolla is probably going to look inadequate. With that in mind, there's a reason you'd want to go for a Corolla over a Ferrari - convenience, price, practicality and fitness for purpose.

Sorry I can't be of more specific help here, but I do hope this at least helps put things in a bit of context!

[RobbieB]

Thank you so much Seamus...I am happy with knowing that you arent finding any slowness in loading the site. I would assume some of the numbers come from having a template seeings as there were A LOT of the audits couldnt access Weebly files. Thank you for taking a look for me and giving me confidence that everything is looking ok. Kind regards Robyn

[Seamus]

No worries Robyn, hope you have a good weekend 🙂

[thegroovee]

Hi,

I am trying to improve my site speed time on mobile see here: 

https://thegroovee.square.site

And the site load speed time is very slow. According to Page Speed Insights by Google, I should delete specific JavaScript delaying the speed. Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks in advance.

[Seamus]

Hey @thegroovee,

You're not actually able to remove Javascript from Square Online websites - as a template-based website builder, the javascript used to build the website is what makes everything work and function!

For what it's worth I went to your website and did not see any practical issues loading your site, it loaded almost instantly. These sorts of tools are usually used by web developers who are custom building websites, but they aren't particularly useful when using web builder apps such as Square Online.

I've moved your post to an existing one we had that has a bit more info on Square Online and web optimisation tools, so you can get a bit more context into things.

[mark_pip]

Hi, Trying to improve the mobile and desktop speed at https://www.passwithpip.com.au/

I'm unable to reduce image sizes any further (unless there is a hidden setting)? Whilst i can't actually see an issue with the loading, the google insights page tells a different story - 5% mobile performance and 21% desktop

[Girlvic]

HI @RobbieB  I'm having the same issues.
I've checked out your site and it's loading nice and fast now, so I'm wondering what you have done?
Thanks.