Every Gladly fix we catalog

Improve your Lighthouse/PageSpeed performance score by reducing page weight, eliminating render-blocking resources, optimising images, and addressing Core Web Vitals so Google ranks your store higher in search results.

On Gladly

1. Audit where the Gladly Sidekick (chat widget) script is loaded: in your theme's layout file (e.g. theme.liquid) or via a tag manager, locate the Gladly snippet — typically a <script> tag loading cdn.gladly.com/gladly/chat/widget.js or similar.
2. Change the Gladly script tag to load with the 'defer' attribute (e.g. <script defer src='...'>) so it no longer blocks the browser's critical rendering path and does not contribute to render-blocking resource warnings in Lighthouse.
3. If Gladly is injected via a Tag Manager (Google Tag Manager, Shopify Scripts, etc.), set the tag's firing trigger to 'Window Loaded' or 'DOM Ready' instead of 'Page View' so the widget initialises only after the main content has painted, protecting LCP and FID/INP scores.
4. Enable Gladly's lazy-initialisation option if available in your Gladly Admin under Settings > Sidekick > Widget Behaviour: toggle 'Delay widget load' or set a timeout (e.g. 3–5 seconds after page load) so the widget assets are fetched after Core Web Vitals are measured.
5. In Gladly Admin (Settings > Sidekick > Availability), restrict the widget to pages where customer support is most needed (e.g. cart, order-status, contact) rather than loading it site-wide. Remove it from high-traffic landing and collection pages to avoid unnecessary third-party payload on SEO-critical URLs.
6. Re-run PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse after applying changes and confirm that the Gladly widget script no longer appears under 'Eliminate render-blocking resources' or 'Reduce the impact of third-party code', then verify Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) have improved before deploying to production.

<!-- In <head>: preconnect to critical third-party origins to reduce connection latency -->
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>

<!-- Preload your Largest Contentful Paint image (hero/banner) so it loads earlier -->
<link rel="preload" as="image" href="/images/hero.webp" fetchpriority="high">

<!-- Hero image: eager load, explicit dimensions to prevent CLS -->
<img
  src="/images/hero.webp"
  alt="Descriptive alt text for your hero image"
  width="1200"
  height="600"
  fetchpriority="high"
  decoding="async"
>

<!-- All other images: lazy load, explicit dimensions to prevent CLS -->
<img
  src="/images/product-shot.webp"
  alt="Descriptive product alt text"
  width="800"
  height="800"
  loading="lazy"
  decoding="async"
>

<!-- Defer non-critical third-party scripts (analytics, chat, pixels) -->
<script src="https://example-analytics.com/tracker.js" defer></script>

<!-- Load non-critical CSS asynchronously to unblock render -->
<link rel="preload" href="/css/non-critical.css" as="style" onload="this.onload=null;this.rel='stylesheet'">
<noscript><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/non-critical.css"></noscript>