Slow product and collection pages: how to compare templates against the rest of your site
If product and collection pages are slower than your content pages, the cause is the template, not your host. Learn how to tell and where to look first.
3 min read
Area
Speed
Severity
Medium
Fix effort
Large
Stores failing
39%
Of 31 stores we scanned where this check applies, 39% fail it and 6% pass. See all benchmarks.
Template speed compares your product and collection pages against a plain content page such as About or Contact. When the content page is fast and the product page is slow, the problem sits in the product template or the apps that load on it, not in your hosting or theme base.
Why it matters
Most stores are tuned on the home page, because that is the page owners look at. Shoppers spend their time on product and collection pages, which carry galleries, reviews, recommendations and variant pickers. Each one adds scripts and images.
A slow template costs the most on the pages closest to a purchase, which is why the gap between a content page and a product page is worth measuring.
What the audit looks at
The audit compares the speed of your product and collection pages with a plain content page on the same store.
What usually causes it
- Review, upsell or recommendation apps that load their scripts on every product page
- An image gallery or zoom library loading all images at full size up front
- Collection pages that render dozens of unoptimised product images at once
- Variant pickers or filters built on heavy JavaScript
How to fix it
Find what the slow template loads that the rest of the site does not, and remove or defer it. The effort is large, development work that takes a project.
- Compare the slowest template with a plain content page on the same store: the difference is what that template adds.
- Remove, defer or replace the files and apps named for this page; re-test after each change.
On Shopify
- The items named for this page are either theme files you can edit, or apps you can only remove, replace or switch off per template.
- For an app: uninstall it, then delete its leftover code in Online Store > Themes > Edit code. For a theme file: defer or split it.
- Caching, the server and the vendor code of an app are managed by Shopify and the vendor: they are not something to fix here.
On WooCommerce
- Deactivate plugins you do not need on this template, or stop them loading here in your optimisation plugin.
- Use page caching, image optimisation and a recent PHP version at your host: all of these are in your control on WooCommerce.
How to check it yourself
- Run PageSpeed Insights on your About page, then on a product page, then on a collection page, all on the mobile tab.
- Compare the scores. A gap of 20 points or more points at the template.
- On the slow page, open the "Reduce unused JavaScript" diagnostic to see which scripts load there and which app each belongs to.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my content page fast and my product page slow?
A content page loads only the theme. A product page loads the theme plus galleries, apps and data for the product, so the difference is the cost of everything added to the template.
Should I fix the home page or the product page first?
Start with the product page. It is closer to the purchase, and shoppers arriving from search or ads often land there directly.
Related checks
- Time to First Byte (TTFB): how fast your server should answer
- Page weight: how big should an ecommerce home page be?
- WebP and AVIF images: why modern formats make product pages faster
Further reading
Check your own store
See whether your store passes this check
Paste your store URL. The audit loads your pages in a real browser and shows the result for this check with the evidence behind it.