Problem
The mobile home page loaded slowly. Product images loaded eagerly and phones downloaded oversized hero images. The theme was a major version behind, with no clean base to merge from. In analytics, a tag container held dozens of tags that did nothing useful, page views were counted twice, and there was no cookie banner.
Solution
For speed I fixed the specific causes Lighthouse pointed to: the right hero image on mobile, high priority only for the main element, layout reserved by ratio instead of script, and lazy-load conditions that were inverted. For the upgrade I took the clean new theme as a base and re-applied every customisation, then checked all templates and ran the theme checker. For tracking I made backups first, then fixed counting, added consent and a checkout-error pixel.
Key decisions
Chose to leave the deferred-script engine off
Why Measurements showed no gain, and turning it on broke two apps.
Chose not to defer the A/B testing and pixel scripts
Why Deferring them breaks the pixel frames and makes a running experiment flicker.
Chose to upgrade from the clean new theme and re-apply the custom work
Why No clean old version existed to merge against, and where the new version fixed the same issue I dropped my own fix.
Chose a Shopify custom pixel for checkout errors
Why It reports failures to analytics from the checkout, where theme code does not run.
Results
- Mobile home page LCP down from 8.5 s to 3.4 s in lab tests, median of three runs.
- A later round cut the mobile page weight and the number of eagerly loaded images on the home page to one.
- The upgraded theme is the live main theme, with no new theme-check errors.
- The tag container is cleaned and republished, and double page-view counting is fixed.
- Checkout errors now reach analytics within minutes of release.
Client review
Anton works with us on an ongoing basis as our Shopify site manager, and he's become a real part of our team. He handles our theme and section updates, moved our exchanges from Loop's legacy flow to Shopify native exchanges, and tested every scenario thoroughly before going live. He also audited our GTM tags and pixels, which gave us real confidence in our tracking data.
He's proactive, detail-oriented and always clear in his communication. He flags issues before we notice them and explains technical decisions in plain language. He doesn't feel like an outside contractor. He feels like one of us. Highly recommended for any brand looking for a reliable, long-term Shopify partner.
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