PushOwl is approximately 30KB in size and loads in just milliseconds. It's one of the smallest and fastest apps on Shopify. We've ensure that we follow all best practices for minimizing and optimizing JavaScript and CSS files.
Moreover, to ensure that it doesn't affect your site speed, PushOwl loads only after your website is done loading.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the PushOwl script load its own jQuery?
PushOwl doesn't use jQuery at all and all our code is written in plain JavaScript. Therefore, we don't rely on any third-party library and don't load our own jQuery.
I ran a speed test via GTMetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights, etc. and recommendations for improving compressions. Can these compressions be done?
The incremental gain shown in these recommendations is typically very low, and furthermore, the size of PushOwl is pretty small and it has a fast load time. We also follow all best practices for minimizing and optimizing JavaScript and CSS files.
What does "async loading" or "asynchronous loading" mean?
PushOwl files on your Shopify store only load after your website is done loading, to ensure that it doesn't affect your site speed. You can test this out by yourself by inspecting your webpage. By searching for "pushowl.com" you'll see that our script tag has an "async" attribute. Whenever this tag is present, it specifies that the script will only be executed when all other important scripts have finished loading. This was developed that way to prevent our app from blocking or interfering with any aspect of your website.
GTmetrix shows that PushOwl files are not cached. What can be done? How can these files be cached to improve performance?
There seems to be an issue with speed test websites like GTmetrix. Sometimes these websites are not passing the required 'accept-encoding' header or they are receiving some previously cached response where the object was not cached. We know this is a problem with the speed test website because the "issue" is usually gone if you simply do a re-test or if we run the same reporting on some other tool like Google's PageSpeed.
Are PushOwl files set up as defer?
Not as defer, but we run our PushOwl script in async mode. This way we don’t affect the normal website loading.
I've run a performance checker on my site; why does PushOwl have some unused JavaScript?
PushOwl loads all the JavaScript required to function on your site in one go in a single file. Some of it is meant to run on all pages such as the opt-in browser/ custom prompt. There is, however, some code that is meant to run on specific pages such as the Back In Stock and Price Drop flyout widgets for product pages. This might show up as unused initially, but will be utilised when users navigate to such pages. It doesn't cause any performance problems. We will solve that too in near future but you can safely ignore it for now.