School's Out — Shopify performance
Overview
School's Out Designer Kidswear needed a performance fix on their Shopify (Be Yours) theme. Mobile Lighthouse was unusable — Total Blocking Time in the minutes. I root-caused a rogue announcement-bar.js script, restored sane Core Web Vitals lab scores, then continued with product import pipelines and taxonomy work under a retainer.
My role
Theme diagnosis and fix (Milestone 1), then ongoing merchandising ops: CSV imports, Cloudflare R2 image hosting, taxonomy cleanup. Engaged via Lucy Lu for store owner Kris.
Stack
- Shopify + Be Yours theme (Liquid / theme JS)
- Python transform scripts + Shopify Admin CSV
- Cloudflare R2 for drop imagery
Outcomes
Mobile Lighthouse (lab, median on 9.1.0 preview after fix):
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | 33 | 64 |
| TBT | ~161,000 ms | ~94 ms |
| LCP | ~10–11 s | ~4.5 s |
Post-incident live recovery (script removal): Perf 38 → 62, TBT 163,600 → 350 ms.
Ops follow-on: multi-drop CSV pipelines (50+ colourways per drop), hundreds of images to R2, taxonomy Phase 2 underway.
Screenshots