Remove anything that hurts conversions

One principle with conversion optimization is to remove anything that hurts conversions.

Even if something is generally regarded as important, it gets removed if you can prove it's not converting well.

While that level of testing can make sense for important landing pages that get a ton of traffic, it can be difficult to accurately measure that when you have hundreds or even dozens of products.

We can take that core idea and apply it to other places though. Especially once it's outside of conversion optimization, this idea of "removing the bad things" can work really well.

A lot of Shopify stores have problems with slow pages. This causes all heaps of issues from bouncing traffic, to weak conversions, to even weakening SEO.

Often a Shopify page is slow because it has too much JavaScript and too many images on it. Removing JavaScript is tough and beyond this article (though removing any unnecessary apps and theme "features" that use it can be a great first step).

Removing images though, that can be quite easy.

Looking at all of the images on a page to "remove the bad things" means forcing each image to prove itself. In other words, every image on a page needs to justify its existence.

On a product page, images of the products will pass the assessment.

Multiple product images that show the exact same angle, probably aren't worth keeping.

Images of awards and certifications might pass, if those are recognizable by customers and not just fluff.

Generic stock images of happy people or tangential scenes, definitely don't pass.

Sometimes you'll be on the fence with an image. It might add something to the page, but not that much. You could keep it but my opinion is that it should be removed. Too often we add things to pages over time and rarely remove something, so if this image could be removed then it should be removed.

We've only talked about this in context of your product pages but it applies to every page. Your homepage is especially problematic as it often becomes a dumping ground where all manner of bits and bobs get added to. Removing the useless images from there can be a major improvement in performance.

This also applies to blog posts and your content pages. You don't need a featured image on every post, especially if they are just feel-good stock photos. Don't waste your time and resources finding or creating those images, or waste your reader's time by forcing them to scroll past them.

Holding images to a higher standard will also get you accumulated to finding and using better quality ones. If you only have a two image budget for example, you'll be more picky about which ones you use.