Hi Celina
Here are some things worth considering:
The hover effect is currently enabled, where an alternative image is shown when you hover over a product. This will require twice as many images (and twice as much data) to be loaded.
Some of your product images are animated GIFs so are up to 3MB each, as opposed to the typical image size of around 75KB.
Although the PLP will load the first 200 products, it shouldn't load the images until they are needed - it should lazy load them in response to scrolling. This can be particularly helpful on mobile, where only one image is initially visible. This should counter the potential speed issues of showing many products on a single page.
Squarespace 7.1 will download around 1.3MB of scripts for an empty page and around 2MB of scripts for a Product List Page (PLP). That's before any products or images are downloaded.
"Real world" testing may show different results than speed tests. It's worth testing the site on different devices and on different networks to see what actual performance looks like. If a site has been viewed before, or another Squarespace 7.1 site has been viewed, the Squarespace scripts should be cached and won't need to load again. With cache disabled, it loads in 1.3s for me on mobile (transferring 6.9MB).
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You can use Filter Plugin to limit number of products on store page, plugin will allow you some options
add pagination (1, 2, 3...) to bottom of page
add load more button (click on it >> load more products under current product)
Link plugin here (affiliate link) - or this link (non-affiliate link)
If you need an example, you can duplicate the site & add me, I can create a quick example for you, so you can test loading time