The five app scripts we remove from every store we touch
Not because the apps are bad, but because nobody on the team can point to the feature in the storefront.
- scripts, on almost every takeover
- 5
- features anyone could name
- 0
The test we run before removing anything
Open the storefront and ask the person who owns it to point at what this app does. Not describe it — point at it. About a third of the time nobody can, because the app was installed for a campaign that ended, or by an agency that left, or to trial something that was never turned off.
An uninstalled app still leaves its script tag. The bill stops; the page does not get faster.
The five
- 01A second analytics tagAlmost every store we take over has two. One of them belongs to somebody who no longer works there.
- 02An abandoned A/B testing scriptThe worst kind of blocking script: it runs first by design, so nothing paints until it decides what to show.
- 03A wishlist nobody usesCheck the admin. If it has fewer saves than you have orders in a day, it is a store-wide script for a feature nobody found.
- 04A currency switcher on a one-currency storeMarkets does this natively now. The app usually predates it.
- 05A pop-up that only fires on desktopStill downloaded, parsed and executed on every phone that visits.
Removing is a build task, not a click
Apps leave code behind. Theme snippets, script tags and orphaned metafields survive an uninstall, so the bill drops while the page stays exactly as heavy. Budget an afternoon and a checklist, not a click.