I’ve been thinking a lot about speed lately.
Because everywhere you turn in the e-com, there’s a frantic obsession with speed: faster site loads, quicker checkout flows, same-day delivery, and “optimize everything now.”
But I’ve started to realize that most of the “speed” advice is just surface-level performance theater. And the real speed – what actually moves the needle for your store – is hiding in places most people ignore.
Let’s talk about that.
The deception of visible speed
Speed, in the e-commerce playbook, usually means improving metrics: shaving milliseconds off your homepage load time, upgrading to a faster server, or minimizing image file sizes. Don’t get me wrong – those things matter.
But here’s the thing: the marginal gains you get from optimizing load speed often distract you from the bigger performance leaks.
What if I told you the real friction – the stuff actually killing your conversions – isn’t your server response time, but your decision paralysis? Your bloated product pages? Your 14-step checkout process? Your endless pop-ups?
We fixate on metrics because they’re quantifiable. But we ignore the qualitative speed blocks that destroy momentum on a much deeper level.
Where your store is actually slow
Let’s be blunt – most e-commerce stores are “slow” in ways no Lighthouse score will ever catch.
Some real culprits:
- Too many product choices: When customers feel overwhelmed, they bounce.
- Confusing navigation: If I need to think hard just to find the right product, I’m gone.
- Unclear messaging: If your offer isn’t instantly obvious, you’ve already lost.
- Over-engineered flows: Fancy tech stacks often create more lag than they eliminate.
These aren’t technical issues. They’re clarity and UX issues. And no CDN or caching plugin will fix them.
The speed that converts
Real speed isn’t about milliseconds. It’s about momentum.
Momentum is what happens when someone lands on your store and instantly gets it. They find what they need fast. They feel confident. They know what to do next. That’s the speed that matters.
And momentum comes from:
- Simplifying your product catalog
- Leading with benefits, not just specs
- Making your CTA impossible to miss
- Streamlining your checkout to under 60 seconds
It comes from removing friction, not obsessing over micro-optimizations.
The high cost of speed theater
Here’s what I see too often: store owners spending thousands on performance optimization, chasing 90+ PageSpeed scores… while running stores that are fundamentally confusing and hard to buy from.
They’ve been told fast = conversions. But that advice assumes everything else is already dialed in – which, let’s be honest, it usually isn’t.
Worse, they pour time and energy into backend tweaks while ignoring the frontend chaos that’s really slowing everything down.
Speed isn’t just about how fast your site loads. It’s about how fast someone can understand, trust, and take action.
So, what do you actually do?
Here’s where I’d start if I were optimizing for real speed:
- Run a clarity audit – ask five non-customers to navigate your store and describe what you sell and why it’s worth buying.
- Cut the clutter – limit product variants, eliminate unnecessary steps, and kill off gimmicky pop-ups.
- Streamline the path to purchase – can someone buy in three clicks or less? That’s your benchmark.
- Prioritize decision speed over load speed – because if your store is confusing, no amount of technical speed will matter.
The bottom line
We’ve been sold a lie that fast websites equal successful brands.
But the fastest-loading store in the world will still flop if it’s hard to navigate, slow to understand, or painful to buy from.
Speed isn’t about milliseconds. It’s about momentum. Remove the friction that actually stops your customers – not just the bytes.
Because the fastest win isn’t shaving 0.4 seconds off your load time. It’s making sure a customer never even thinks about leaving.
And that’s all for today.
See you next week.