Among the 200+ ranking factors Google is using into their searchTheme Review : The Best Sh engines, site speed is one of the most important factors to rank your eCommerce site or more precisely your Shopify store on top of search engines.
A Shopify themes plays a major role and may affect positively or negatively your store speed, in this article, I will shorten the road for you and give you the top 8 Fastest Shopify themes in 2024.
Why Does Website Speed Matter a Lot?
Increasing the site speed helps lower your website’s bounce rates and optimize the user experience. It helps also getting Free organic traffic through search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, …
Search engines have recently included the site speed as one of the most prominent factors to rank the sites on the first searched page. That is to say — If your site is slow, you will be losing Free organic traffic and easy sales by consequence.
Should I Consider something else than the speed when choosing a Shopify theme?
A theme speed is very important, but it is not everything you should consider when selecting a shopify theme, before you select any of the following shopify themes, I invite you to verify these things :
- Theme developers support
- Customers reviews on Trustpilot
- Whether the theme developers have their own website or not
What Makes a Shopify Theme Faster Than Another?
Fast Shopify themes are coded in a way to reduce the backend structure codes, they are then less heavier than standard themes. Faster Shopify themes have also less Javascript codes to let the browser load the pages quicker than usual.
Most of the themes we have carefully selected in this article, don’t use heavy sliders, less animated plugins, simple but robust features to increase the conversion rate while maintaining a good loading speed.
Can I use an speed app instead of buying a premium Shopify theme ?
To be honest, No ! In fact, third party are one of the main reasons that your site is slow, because the app code is generally hosted externally, which let the browser makes additional HTTPS requests to upload the app codes and features.
Big and successful companies hire professionals to code the features they need into their theme to avoid using apps which reduce the store speed
So what if I hire a professional to optimize my site speed ?
This is a good option, but could you afford paying 800$+ to optimize your existing theme ? Speeding up a site ain’t an easy task, it requires high coding skills and if you hired a “cheap” developer you may break your site functionalities.
For these reasons, some successful Shopify themes developers have made it easy for merchants, and we have made it easy for you as well. We have carefully selected the best of the best and packed them up into this article so you can go with one of them without the hassle of using a speed app or hiring a pro.
1- Scrowp
Scrowp is a premium theme released by the notorious and the successful entrepreneur Marouane Number 1, the theme was built in speed, SEO and conversion optimization in mind.
The speed score of Scrowp theme is almost perfect for all pages, making Shopify merchants sites a real speed machine.
Scrowp is also designed to increase the organic traffic through some coding hacks built-in the theme, the theme cost 295$/licence, but it worth every penny, since the merchants can use it straight away after the installation and without the need to hire any speed or SEO experts.
2- Beloria
Beloria is a premium theme being sold on Themeforest, with its great design (targeted mainly for European merchants) and its almost perfect speed, Beloria is the right choice for you if you are tight in budget and can’t afford a luxurious theme like Plak.
3- Turbo
The Turbo theme is a highly-customizable Shopify theme that is most suited for large eCommerce stores or high-volume stores. It is perfect for brands that are selling both online and offline and would like to provide their customers with the options of both. It supports visual storytelling like all the best Shopify themes and comes with speed, style, and flexibility.
Created by Out of the Sandbox, the Turbo theme comes with two options – Sport and Ludicrous, which you can find in the theme editor. The Sport mode comes with seamless integrations with apps, minified CSS, HTML, and much more. Basically, everything you need to run the store the way you want. The Ludicrous option comes with smart features, such as smart page preloading by predicting user behavior. However, it doesn’t work with third-party apps that easily, and hence some users opt for the Sport.
4- Fastor
Fastor is a cutting edge theme with a super fast loading time, this theme was built too for speed in mind, and it is a great choice for starters (non Shopify Plus merchants) who can’t afford a theme from Plak Theme
Fastor is a multipurpose Shopify theme, suitable for every industry, with many different layouts and features to give a store owner a nice and professional look to its eCommerce website.
5- Woodstock
Woodstock is a modern and fully Responsive Shopify theme built for speed and SEO. This theme is suitable for any kind of shops, and can support huge catalogs Shopify stores like clothing, fashion, furniture, electronics accessories, watches,… Start your Store right away with Woodstock theme.
Due to its technical design, Woodstock is considered as one of the fastest Shopify themes.
6- Grass (no longer available)
Grass theme was released on December 2020, this Shopify template is a great choice for you if you are in a creative business that focuses on the product image, like artworks, paintings, home and garden, …
You don’t even have to worry about the images weight or resolution, since Grass is one of the fastest Shopify themes and it was built to support heavy content while keeping a great speed score
7- Loft
With its grid style, Loft theme is perfect for promotion-focused brands, just like Grass theme, Loft is also a speed-friendly Shopify theme, regardless of the weight of the images and content you can use.
8- Banita
Another fast loading Shopify theme, Banita theme comes with a wide range of pre-designed home page layouts that meet different sets of e-commerce store requirements. Banita Shopify theme is integrated with Visual Slider Builder, Visual Megamenu Builder and Visual Banner Builder with easy to use drag and drop features that help you build the store you always wanted while keeping a fast loading site.
Conclusion
Just like other ranking factors, The speed of your Shopify is very important when building an eCommerce. In fact, you can easily overcome your competitors when you select one of the 8 fastest themes listed above.
Further read : Discover the ways to pick the right Shopfy theme for Christmas
is Scrowp faster than booster, turbo and debutify ?
Scrowp is faster than Turbo, I switched from turbo recently and my site speed jumped up by 15% automatically
Debutify ain’t fast at all, plus their customer service is the worst