Baby Braithwaite: a newborn & kids store, built fast on Shopify
We built Baby Braithwaite on Shopify with a custom theme, engineered for speed from the start, then kept its Core Web Vitals in the green for real users.
SummaryA newborn and kids Shopify store built on a custom theme; Core Web Vitals passing for real users (LCP 1.3s, INP 79ms, CLS 0.01).
Baby Braithwaite is a Shopify store for newborn and children's apparel (ages 0-8): clothing, books, keepsakes and gifts. The brief: build the store and make it genuinely fast. We built it on a custom theme with performance as a goal, then measured real-user speed after launch and improved it until Core Web Vitals were solidly in the green.
- Built the store on Shopify with a performance-first custom theme
- Image optimisation: WebP/AVIF, correct sizing, responsive srcset, lazy loading
- Full technical audit: Lighthouse/PageSpeed, Core Web Vitals, apps, scripts, theme code
- Font optimisation: preconnect/preload, font-display, subsetting
- App audit & cleanup: kept only what's needed, removed leftover/ghost code
- Preloaded the LCP hero to bring Largest Contentful Paint down
- Liquid refactoring: leaner templates, reduced DOM & render overhead
- Reduced third-party/analytics script impact
- Removed render-blocking CSS/JS; deferred non-critical scripts
- Reserved space for media to keep layout shift (CLS) near zero
- Inlined critical CSS for the first screen
- Post-launch monitoring: tracked field Core Web Vitals and tuned further
All three Core Web Vitals are in the green for real users. Mobile lab "Performance" scores fluctuate run to run and depend on third-party scripts.
"We built Baby Braithwaite for speed from the first line of the theme, and keep it in the green with real-user monitoring."