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Speed

Outside tools are slowing your site down

What this means for your business

A significant portion of your page's load time comes from outside tools you've connected — like chat widgets, review badges, ad scripts, or social media buttons. Each one makes a separate request to an external server, and those servers can slow your page down when they're busy or unavailable.

How to fix it
Medium
1–3 hours

  1. 1Third-party scripts are tools added to your site from outside providers — things like Google Analytics, chat widgets, review badges, social sharing buttons, ad trackers, and heatmap tools.
  2. 2Each third-party script makes a separate network request to an outside server. If that server is slow or busy, your page waits.
  3. 3Make a list of every third-party tool running on your site. Ask yourself: am I actually using and checking the data from this tool? Remove anything you're not actively benefiting from.
  4. 4For tools you keep, ask your developer to load them with async or defer attributes so they don't block your page from appearing.
  5. 5Consolidate where possible — use Google Tag Manager to load multiple scripts through a single container instead of adding each script separately.

On WordPress

Use Perfmatters or WP Rocket to delay JavaScript until a user interacts with the page. This means chat widgets, analytics, and review scripts only load when a real visitor is present — not on every bot or crawler visit.

On Shopify

Go to Online Store → Apps and uninstall any apps you're not regularly using. Each Shopify app adds at least one script to every storefront page — the impact adds up quickly with a large app list.

Pro tip: The impact of third-party scripts is cumulative. Five scripts that each add 200ms add up to a full second of slowdown. Audit your list and cut anything you wouldn't notice missing.

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