Making your webshop faster, and keeping it fast after every update
A fast webshop rarely becomes slow overnight. It happens with an oversized banner, a new script, a plugin update. We measure what your real visitors experience and what happens on the server, find the cause, and keep your shop fast from then on.
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Why a fast shop slows down again
Anyone who wants a faster webshop usually starts with a test in Google PageSpeed Insights. It gives a score and a list of advice, and after a few changes the score goes up. Three months later it is back where it was, and nobody knows exactly why.
That is because speed is not a one-off achievement but something that shifts a little every day. Marketing adds a new banner, a chat widget arrives, a plugin gets an update, Shopware itself ships a new version. Each of those changes can make your shop slightly faster or slightly slower. If you only test now and then, you see the end result, but not the moment it went wrong.
The difference is in how you measure. This page explains why a lab score is not enough, which speed thieves we find most often in a Shopware webshop, and how we use RUMvision and Tideways to see what every release does to your speed.
Why speed is revenue
Speed is not a technical hobby. In a study Deloitte carried out for Google across 37 brands and more than 30 million sessions, a mobile site that loaded 0.1 seconds faster lifted retail conversions by 8.4%, according to the Milliseconds Make Millions case study on web.dev. Google also takes the loading experience of your pages into account through the Core Web Vitals, whose thresholds it publishes at web.dev/articles/vitals.
The reverse holds too: every release that makes your shop a few hundred milliseconds slower costs conversion. As long as nobody measures it, nobody notices.
Lab score or real visitors: two ways of measuring
A tool like PageSpeed Insights runs a lab test: one page load on a simulated device and connection. Useful for seeing what can be improved technically, but it is not what your customer experiences. The field data Google shows alongside comes from the Chrome dataset and covers the past 28 days. Fine for trends, too slow to show what last Tuesday's release did.
Real user monitoring measures in the browsers of your real visitors, on their phones and their connections. RUMvision, a Dutch tool Memo is a partner of, shows the Core Web Vitals in real time, broken down by device, page type and third-party script, and stores the data in the EU.
That tells you what got slower, but not always why. For that you look inside the application. Tideways, which Memo is also a partner of, shows per transaction which database query, template or plugin is eating the time, and for Shopware 6 it also measures how often pages are served from cache. Together they give you both sides: what your visitor notices, and where it comes from on the server.
Seven speed thieves in a Shopware webshop
Oversized images
Banners and product photos uploaded straight from the camera or design tool.
Third-party scripts
Chat widgets, tracking tags and review tools that each cost a little load time and responsiveness.
Heavy plugin processes
A plugin running an extra query on every page, or a background job keeping the database busy.
Too little from cache
Pages that could come from cache but are rebuilt every time.
Shifting layout
Images and blocks without fixed dimensions, so the page jumps around while loading.
Outdated versions
Shopware and plugins that fall behind, and miss speed improvements as a result.
A release nobody measured
An update that made one page type slower, without anyone noticing.
Where it goes wrong in practice
Optimising without a baseline. A week goes into speed work, but nobody recorded how fast the shop was. Afterwards it is impossible to say what it achieved, and therefore what was worth the effort.
Investigating the wrong side. RUMvision shows the product page loading slower on mobile. Is that a heavier image in the browser, or is the server responding more slowly? Without application monitoring that remains guesswork. With Tideways alongside, you see straight away whether the time is spent on the server or in the browser.
Speed as a project instead of a habit. A speed project delivers a faster shop, but without follow-up that gain is gone within a few months. Speed only lasts if someone checks after every change what it did.
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How we keep your shop fast
In the maintenance package we monitor your shop with RUMvision and Tideways, both of which Memo is a partner of. Every update we ship is recorded in both tools. Tideways compares performance after the release with the period before it, and RUMvision shows the same moment as a marker on real-visitor data. Within about an hour we know whether a release was neutral, an improvement or a regression, for the visitor and for the server. How that works in detail is covered in our blog on release monitoring with RUMvision and Tideways.
That is the core of our Shopware maintenance package. Every month we update Shopware and your plugins, after every update we check RUMvision and Tideways, and at least once a month you get a report with a concrete improvement proposal. An oversized banner or a plugin asking too much surfaces automatically, for €750 per month excluding VAT.
Is your question mainly about busy days, such as Black Friday, and whether your shop can take the load? That is covered on the page about hosting and performance.
Proof: faster without a new platform
For Kempers.de we tackled the webshop's performance together with hosting partner Hypernode, without migrating the shop. Measure where the time goes first, then intervene where it counts. After those changes the load time was three times faster, with no replatforming and no redesign. Read the Memo and Hypernode case study.
It is also the point we make most often: a slow webshop rarely calls for a new platform. Usually the gains are in the images, scripts, plugins and cache settings of the shop you already have. For more on what we do around Shopware, see the Shopware hub.
What did your last update do to your speed?
Book an introduction and tell us which pages worry you. We will show you how we measure your shop, where speed is probably leaking away and how to keep it fast afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make my webshop faster?
Start by measuring real visitors, so you know which pages are slow and on which device. The quickest wins are often oversized images, third-party scripts and a layout that shifts. If the delay is on the server, application monitoring shows which query or plugin is the cause.
What is the difference between PageSpeed Insights and RUMvision?
PageSpeed Insights runs a lab test and also shows field data over the past 28 days. RUMvision measures in real time in the browsers of your real visitors, broken down by device, page type and third-party script. That way you see straight away what a change did, rather than weeks later.
Why do I also need Tideways?
RUMvision shows what your visitor experiences, Tideways shows what happens inside the application. When a page gets slower, Tideways tells you whether a database query, a template or a plugin is responsible. With only one of the two, where to intervene remains guesswork.
Does measuring real visitors make my webshop slower?
RUMvision runs as a single lightweight script that you load directly or through Google Tag Manager. Its impact is small compared with the usual marketing and chat scripts on a webshop, and RUMvision measures that impact for you as well.
Do I need to migrate to make my webshop faster?
Usually not. At Kempers.de the load time became three times faster together with Hypernode, without a migration. Start by measuring: if the delay sits in images, scripts, plugins or cache settings, a new platform is an expensive detour.