For an eCommerce site, speed equals money. Site load speed is inevitable for a better user experience. Improved SEO, more ROI, and happier customers result from a better user experience. It results in increased sales and profitability.

Online customers have the shortest attention span, and as a result, they need faster and smoother purchase experiences. If not implemented correctly, the features that need customer attention will be the main reason that slows your eCommerce site down. Since WooCommerce is one of the world’s most popular ecommerce platforms and is entirely free and easy to customize to your specifications, most businesses tend to use the platform to power their business.

Easy Tips to Speed Up Your WooCommerce Store

Why Does Speed Matter for an Online Store?

Why Does Speed Matter for an Online Store

Speed creates a user’s first impression of a site, and it, therefore, has to be perfect. According to a Google survey, 53% of mobile users abandon a site if it takes more than 3s to load.

A global study found that 80% of users consider a slow-loading website more annoying than one that is momentarily unavailable. According to the same survey, 73% of users prefer to leave the said site for the competitors if it takes too long to load. Even a delay of 100-millisecond in page response will adversely affect user experience harming online revenue. 

According to Akamai, a 100-millisecond delay reduces conversion rates by 7%, while a 2-second delay boosts bounce rates by 103 percent. If your site generates $1,000 in daily income, a 100-millisecond page load time might cost you $25,550 in missed revenues each year.

According to the above data, if your website takes more than 6 seconds to load, you lose twice as many customers as it took in less than 3 seconds.

Your site’s performance has an impact on SEO in addition to user experience. Google’s site ranking algorithm takes website speed and performance into account.

Over half of Google’s search results pages get indexed with a mobile-first approach. Despite this, HTTPArchive.org statistics reveal that the average load time for mobile WordPress sites has gotten worse in the past year.

How to Measure the Loading Speed of Your Site

How to Measure the Loading Speed of Your Site

A website speed test is one of the best tools to measure how responsive your WooCommerce store is. However, if you don’t do this correctly, your site may appear slower after making a change, even if it is quick.

As a WooCommerce development company, we recommend that you begin by using one of the following website speed testing tools

  • WebPagetest.org
  • Pingdom

You can also use the free WordPress plugin, Query Monitor, to identify underperforming themes, plugins, and functions. It aids in the debugging of inefficient database searches, bloated functions, PHP problems, HTTP API requests, and so on. 

There is no perfect speed testing tool, but choose one and stay with it. You can go on with more selections later on.

How to Speed Up a WooCommerce Store

How to Speed Up WooCommerce Store

Let us take a look at ways to speed up your WooCommerce store. 

#1. Optimizing WooCommerce Plugin Settings

The first step is to change the URL of your login page. The default login URL for any WordPress site is domain.com/wp-admin/. Though this is the most simple to remember, it has a significant flaw: everyone knows it, including bots and hackers.

You can defend yourself from brute force assaults by changing your login URL to something unique. It will also assist you in avoiding rate-limiting HTTP issues like 429 Too Many Requests. Both free plugins, WPS Hide Login and Rename wp-login.php, make this task a breeze.

You can limit the number of blog feed entries on your eCommerce site. Restrict the number to 10 posts by default in WordPress, and change it if required. It might appear insignificant, but performance savings will add up quickly when you have a high-traffic blog, and this option is available in the WordPress Dashboard’s Reading Settings. When you have too many user comments on your posts or pages, you can divide them into smaller parts using WordPress. Breaking down reviews on your product pages uses the same setting.

Keeping this number between 10 and 20 can improve your product page load time. If you don’t require product reviews, you can turn them off in WooCommerce settings. Removing a few scripts and widgets can make your site load faster.

 #2. Get a Fast WooCommerce Theme

Choosing the perfect WooCommerce theme is crucial. Picking an appropriate theme from hundreds of thousands of themes available can be daunting.

A beautiful theme with incredible built-in features may sound terrific on paper but might fail in execution. It will help if your ecommerce site is fully compatible with WooCommerce. 

There are numerous Woocommerce themes available, both free and premium. Some of the free themes are Storefront, Hestia Pro, and Zuka. Shoptimizer, Divi, and WoonderShop are a few of the premium themes. 

There’s no need to install third-party plugins because these themes are designed specifically for eCommerce sites. If you have budget issues, you should start with a free theme and upgrade as you grow. To reduce bloat, we recommend removing page builders. Select a theme that goes well with WordPress’ block editor- Gutenberg. 

To choose an ideal theme, you must first list all the features you require for your online business. Then select a theme that meets most of your feature needs, reducing your reliance on prominent multi-purpose themes and third-party plugins. 

#3. Plugins and WooCommerce Extensions

You can enhance WooCommerce functionality with various free and paid WooCommerce plugins. Contrary to popular belief, the number of plugins you install does not always result in poor performance. However, this is only applicable if we use appropriate coding techniques to write the plugins. 

WordPress’s repository has around 54,000 free plugins. The number of paid plugins available is even more. As a result, it’s easy to get carried away and install dozens of them. When there are too many plugins, you will have to be an expert in keeping all of them up-to-date and flawless.

Many popular plugins, particularly performance and security, do not work well in specific hosting setups. Some plugins even interfere with other plugins. When you have numerous plugins on your site, the likelihood of a plugin conflict increases exponentially. As a result, you need to exercise caution while installing plugins and WooCommerce extensions.

#4. Increase WordPress Memory Limit

WordPress offers 32 MB of memory to PHP by default. If it faces any crunches, it will attempt to extend this restriction to 40 MB (for a single site) or 64 MB (for a multisite). Usually, this RAM limit is unimportant for a WooCommerce site. You might have seen an error message on your dashboard: “We suggest you increase the limit to 256 MB”. Always create a backup of any file before editing it. If something goes wrong, replace the altered file with the original.

#5. Compress Images and Optimize Delivery

Consider the following tips while doing this. 

  • Choose the correct format: JPEG, PNG, SVG, WebP
  • Compress the images with the right tools.
  • Use responsive images for delivery optimization
  • Lazy-load offscreen and hidden photos.
  • Offload image delivery to fast CDNs.

Picture size enhancements in WooCommerce 3.3 include on-the-fly thumbnail scaling, blurry image repair, and background thumbnail resizing. These characteristics render using a plugin like Regenerate Thumbnails for WooCommerce-related pictures obsolete.

#6. Deliver Static Resources via CDN

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of servers strategically distributed worldwide. These server locations are also called Points of Presence (PoPs). 

The primary function of a CDN is to cache and provide static resources such as pictures, JavaScript, CSS, etc. CDNs with greater power can also host and distribute dynamic material such as audio and video.

Even if your site is hosted on the world’s fastest server, geographical location can create some constraints. A WordPress CDN will shorten the path between the individual user and the site’s resources, lowering network latency and time to first byte (TTFB).

#7. Strip Unused Scripts and Stylesheets

Most WordPress themes and plugins include scripts and stylesheets on all pages of your site. These items load even when not in use on the page.

E.g., Contact Form 7 loads its scripts and stylesheets on every page. Its forms are only available on the contact page, while the assets are available on other pages. It’s highly unnecessary! 

By removing these excessive components from websites, you can reduce bloat and improve page load time. This vulnerability affects WooCommerce and its extensions (for example, Smart Coupons and Follow-Ups).

For example, loading payment gateway scripts on your store’s homepage or shop page are unnecessary. You can choose such scripts to only appear on the checkout and order confirmation pages. 

#8. Cache WooCommerce to Speed it Up

Caching is the temporary storage of resources (cache) that make it easy to process requests based on the pre-stored information. 

It’s one of the simplest and most effective ways to boost the speed of your WooCommerce store.

#9.Clean Up Your WooCommerce Database

A database is a systematic compilation of all the data on your website. It contains the following information for a WooCommerce store: Product pages, tags, categories, user data, reviews, site-wide settings, themes, plugins, etc. Order details, payments, inventory, and so forth are examples of transaction data. 

Every time a customer visits your online store, they request your site’s content, which is generally static and rarely changes. However, when they place an order, they make a dynamic request.

If your store’s database is not optimized, handling these queries may take too long. Finally, a slow server response would result in a slow website. As a result, you must clean up and optimize the database by deleting extraneous trash.

Conclusion

WooCommerce optimization is a diverse and complex task. However, breaking it down into specific activities and habits can significantly improve your site’s overall performance. There are numerous particular areas for WooCommerce optimization that will undoubtedly improve your bottom line. The choices are limitless, from tailoring your product pages to include only the necessary information to staying up to date with Core Web Vitals to building the perfect upsell/checkout workflow for your consumers. 

If you need any WooCommerce Integration Services, connect with us.