Loma Lux Laboratories

Problem

Mobile speed was poor, with a home page LCP of 13.1 s. A whole blog was cut off from the storefront. Most product texts were thin and templated, and titles and structured data had errors. Later the client also needed order tracking, Merchant Center and reviews put in order.

Solution

Instead of generic theme tuning, I found four concrete defects that stopped the main element from painting: a hero video hidden until script ran, an image with no real srcset, a banner hidden until first scroll and a gallery that rebuilt after paint. I fixed each in Liquid and CSS. Third-party scripts wait for the first interaction, behind a theme setting.

Key decisions

1. 01

   Chose to fix root causes in the theme, not install a speed app

   Why Lighthouse showed most of the LCP time was render delay, which only theme code can fix.

2. 02

   Chose to defer third-party scripts with a toggle in theme settings

   Why Some scripts are injected by apps at runtime, so intercepting them covers cases a fixed list cannot, and the client can turn it off.

3. 03

   Chose the median of three local Lighthouse runs

   Why Single runs on one page ranged from 5.9 s to 17.4 s, so single numbers were not trustworthy.

4. 04

   Chose to change content through the Admin API with a JSON backup first

   Why Every text change can be compared and rolled back.

Results

• Home page on mobile: Performance 65 to 84 and LCP 13.1 s to 3.1 s in lab tests.
• Collection page: LCP 15.9 s to 4.3 s. Product page: LCP 16.7 s to 6.4 s.
• Hero video weight cut by about two thirds on mobile.
• Blog restored: 64 articles reachable again from the storefront.
• Thin product descriptions rewritten, and 355 reviews imported with one rating per product in the markup.