Speed Optimizer

About the Extension

Speed Optimizer — The All-in-One Performance Plugin for Shopware 6

Speed is not just a feature — it is a conversion driver. Every second of delay costs you customers. ICTECH Speed Optimizer is a comprehensive, developer-friendly performance plugin for Shopware 6 that improves your storefront's Core Web Vitals, reduces page load times, and delivers a faster shopping experience — without touching a single line of theme code.

All features are disabled by default, so a fresh installation never changes your storefront behaviour until you explicitly enable what you need.

File Optimization

Minify CSS Files Strips whitespace and comments from all CSS files delivered to the browser, reducing their file size and speeding up download times. Individual files or URL patterns can be excluded via wildcard rules.

Optimize CSS Delivery Loads stylesheets asynchronously to eliminate render-blocking CSS, allowing the browser to render the page without waiting for stylesheets to fully load. Best combined with the Critical CSS feature for above-the-fold content.

Minify JavaScript Files Removes whitespace and comments from JavaScript files to reduce their transfer size. Specific files or URL patterns can be excluded from minification.

Combine JavaScript Files Merges multiple same-origin JavaScript files into a single HTTP request, reducing round-trips. Note: not recommended for stores using HTTP/2, where parallel requests are efficient.

Load JavaScript Deferred Adds the defer attribute to script tags, preventing JavaScript from blocking page rendering. Checkout and login pages are automatically protected from this optimization to ensure payment flows remain stable.

Delay JavaScript Execution Holds back all JavaScript execution until the user first interacts with the page (scroll, click, or keypress). This dramatically improves initial load metrics such as Time to Interactive (TTI). If no interaction occurs within 5 seconds, scripts boot automatically. Individual scripts can be excluded by pattern.

Minify HTML Removes redundant whitespace from HTML responses to reduce transfer size. When enabled, all pages are pre-minified in the background with an admin notification upon completion.

Media Optimization

Lazy Load Images Defers the loading of off-screen images until they approach the visible viewport. This reduces the amount of data loaded on initial page render and improves Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) scores.

Lazy Load Iframes & Videos Applies native lazy loading to iframes and embedded video players (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo), so they only load when the user scrolls near them.

Excluded Media Class names, filenames, or URL fragments can be excluded from lazy loading on a per-entry basis.

Add Missing Image Dimensions Automatically injects width and height attributes into local images that are missing them. This prevents layout shift during page load and directly improves the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric — a key Google ranking signal.

Font Optimization

Preload Critical Fonts Injects hints for font files detected in the page, instructing the browser to fetch them early in the loading process before they are actually needed. Reduces flash of invisible text (FOIT).

Self-Host Google Fonts On first use, the plugin downloads the Google Fonts CSS and font files directly to your server and serves them locally on all subsequent requests. This eliminates the external DNS lookup and third-party connection to Google's servers, improving both privacy and loading speed.

Preloading

Activate Preloading Enables background cache warmup by crawling your sitemap and detecting internal links. Pages are fetched and cached proactively so they are ready before a visitor requests them.

Preload Links on Hover Uses to silently load the next page in the background when a visitor hovers over any link for 100 milliseconds. When they click, the page loads near-instantly from the prefetch cache.

Exclude URLs from Preload Specific URL paths or fragments can be excluded from preloading on a per-entry basis.

Advanced Cache Rules

Exclude URLs from Cache Define URL paths or wildcard patterns that should always bypass the cache. Checkout, cart, login, and account pages are always excluded automatically.

Cache Pages with Query Strings By default, pages with URL query parameters (e.g. ?search=boots) bypass the cache. Enable this option to allow query-string pages to be cached.

Cookie-Based Cache Exclusion Specify cookie names that, if present in a visitor's request, will cause that request to bypass the cache entirely — useful for personalisation cookies or A/B testing tools.

Critical CSS (Above-the-Fold) Paste CSS rules directly into the admin. This CSS is inlined into the

CDN URL Rewrite all theme and bundle asset URLs to point to a CDN of your choice. Leave empty to disable. Not required for proxy-based services like Cloudflare or Sucuri.

Enable CDN Caching Headers Sets Cache-Control and Vary HTTP headers on guest pages, allowing any CDN (CloudFront, Cloudflare, Fastly, etc.) to cache your storefront pages. Applies only to pages without cookies, authentication, or query strings.

CDN Cache TTL Configure how long your CDN should cache guest pages. Default is 86,400 seconds (24 hours).

☁️ Cloudflare Integration

Connect your Cloudflare account directly from the Shopware admin panel. Once configured with your Cloudflare email address, Global API Key, and domain, the plugin automatically resolves your Cloudflare Zone ID and allows you to purge your entire CDN cache or specific URLs with a single click — no need to log in to the Cloudflare dashboard.

Why ICTECH Speed Optimizer?

• Zero-risk defaults — every feature is off by default; enable only what you need
• No theme modifications required — works at the HTTP response level
• Granular exclusion rules — fine-tune every feature with wildcard patterns
• Core Web Vitals focused — directly targets LCP, CLS, and TTI metrics
• Cloudflare-ready — native cache purge integration
• Built for Shopware 6 — deeply integrated with Shopware's configuration and event system