In our 2025 Built for Growth report, we surveyed 604 marketing professionals and found that 77% say their company website needs improvement, citing business performance (traffic and conversion), scalability, and technical performance like page speed as top concerns.
Ecommerce leaders are especially familiar with these pains. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the platforms your business used to grow (like Shopify and BigCommerce) were built to run store operations, not manage rich, dynamic content.
Today’s customers expect rich, personalized, and engaging digital experiences. To meet the demand, your teams have likely added apps, plug-ins, and third-party scripts. But those fixes have added weight, slowing pages, complicating workflows, and costing you performance and revenue over time. So if you're dealing with slow page speed, too many apps running in the background, and conversion challenges, chances are, your need for dynamic storytelling, personalization, and localized content has outgrown what your ecommerce platform can handle.
The good news? You don’t need to replatform or rebuild to fix the problem. A common approach is to add a lightweight content layer to the stack, improving speed and scalability without replacing the ecommerce platform you've already invested in.
In this article, we’ll look at what’s really behind slowing performance, how it impacts revenue, and how modern ecommerce teams are fixing it without rebuilding from the ground up.
Page load speed is how quickly your site becomes visible, usable, and responsive when a shopper lands on it. It involves a series of events, and if any of those steps are slow, the user feels it. Even a few hundred milliseconds can make a difference in how “snappy” or “sluggish” a site feels.
Page load speed is critical in ecommerce because:
A slow site costs sales. A study from Google and Deloitte Digital found that a 1-second delay in load time can reduce conversions by 7–10%. On a $1M store, that’s up to $100K in lost revenue. Additionally, the Baymard Institute found that nearly 1 in 5 shoppers abandon their purchase if the checkout feels slow or complicated, and 15% leave entirely due to crashes or errors. These statistics point to the very real danger of lost revenue if site speed begins to slow.
It affects SEO and organic traffic. Google’s Core Web Vitals (like LCP, CLS, and INP) directly affect your search rankings. They measure how quickly your site loads, how stable it feels as it loads, and how responsive it is when customers interact. These are the same signals shoppers notice, even if they don’t have the words for them.
It shapes perception. A fast-loading site feels trustworthy. A sluggish one feels broken. If pages don’t load or respond quickly, even loyal customers may hesitate to return.
Bottom line: Page speed directly affects every moment that matters in ecommerce: product discovery, checkout, and even search. Google recommends pages load in under 2.5 seconds. Prioritizing it is a growth lever.
When a shopper visits your site, dozens of behind-the-scenes processes kick into motion. Even small inefficiencies can cause noticeable lag. Here are the biggest culprits:
Server response time. This is how long your platform takes to answer a page request. A slow or overloaded server delays everything.
Network and distance. The farther your shopper is from the server, the longer content takes to travel to them. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) help by delivering files from nearby locations.
Page weight. Big images, videos, and bloated code make a page “heavy.” The more there is to load, the longer it takes for the page to become usable.
JavaScript and CSS complexity. Interactive elements like carts, filters, or pop-ups rely on JavaScript, which browsers must download, parse, and execute. If scripts stack up, page response times slow down.
Third-party apps and scripts. Each plugin or app (e.g. for reviews, chat, or analytics) adds external scripts. Many ecommerce sites run 30–50 of these, creating competition for browser resources.
Images, fonts, and media. Oversized images and custom fonts are common performance killers. Even a single unoptimized hero image can add seconds of load time on mobile.
Browser rendering. Once everything’s downloaded, the browser still has to draw the page and make it interactive. Google’s Core Web Vitals (like LCP and INP) measure exactly how fast that happens.
So what is the fix? Instead of trying to fill in the gaps with numerous apps and plug-ins, it’s best to add an API-first tool called a headless CMS on top of your ecommerce platform.
A headless CMS decouples content from presentation. So instead of being locked into native templates or storefront themes, content is created and managed in a standalone system, and then delivered to your storefront (or any channel) via API. This makes your content layer faster, lighter, and easier to scale, without touching your ecommerce foundation, and lets you modernize without replacing the platforms that already power your business.
First, because ecommerce platforms are being forced to do double duty. In our 2025 survey, 87% of teams using an ecommerce system said they use it as their CMS, even though those systems weren't built for content-heavy marketing.
Second, headless content architecture is becoming the standard for modern digital teams. It’s a foundational element of composable commerce, which prioritizes modular systems that scale and evolve with you.
In fact, professionals working in ecommerce are 40% more likely than average to use a headless CMS, signaling where modern storefronts are headed. When asked, 92% of headless CMS users say it integrates well with their existing martech solutions, and more than 90% say they're able to easily manage multiple sites, brands, or channels with it.
Modern solutions include a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) that ensures every image, asset, and API call loads from the fastest possible location. The result: faster sites, stronger SEO, and smoother customer experiences that keep shoppers moving toward checkout.
ButterCMS is a developer-friendly, marketer-empowering headless CMS that adds speed and flexibility to the ecommerce stacks you already trust. It connects directly to Shopify, BigCommerce, or your custom setup.
Butter makes it easy to create campaign pages, product guides, and customer stories beyond basic product listings, all while keeping your site fast and consistent. Developers set it up in weeks, not months, and marketers can publish independently. The result: smoother workflows, faster launches, and a stronger customer experience that doesn’t add complexity or risk.
With Butter, ecommerce teams can:
Build fast, campaign-ready pages without plugins. Launch product drops, seasonal promos, or editorial pages that load instantly and convert better.
Manage multi-brand or multi-language content from one place. Keep regional or brand-specific content organized in a single dashboard instead of juggling multiple stores or apps.
Create reusable content blocks that scale. From testimonials to promo banners, define once, reuse anywhere, and update instantly across pages.
Handle large, content-heavy sites with ease. Butter’s API-first architecture keeps pages fast and responsive, even with rich media galleries or extensive product storytelling.
Reduce app bloat and code complexity. Replace 5–10 separate plugins with one lightweight content layer that improves site speed, SEO, and conversions.
Adding ButterCMS to your tech stack helps you keep what’s working and fix what’s not. Instead of ripping and replacing, you protect your stack, speed up your site, and give your team more control over content, without sacrificing performance.
If your ecommerce growth is being slowed by bloat, delays, and complexity, it’s time to evolve your architecture without rebuilding everything from scratch.
ButterCMS helps fast-growing ecommerce brands remove friction by delivering a single, scalable content layer that reduces reliance on apps and plugins, improves page speed, and empowers teams to move faster, without compromising performance or control.
Want to dive deeper? Learn what headless commerce is, how it's different from traditional commerce, and if it's right for you.
Build the case internally
If you’re ready to remove content friction from your ecommerce platform, we created three ready-to-drop slides for your board deck or strategy review, highlighting the opportunity in performance, speed, and content agility. Download the slides now.
