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If you are thinking about launching an online store, you will come across several major platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and so on. However, WooCommerce stands out as a leader in the eCommerce field, thanks to its amazing features and affordability. Despite this, there is a common opinion that WooCommerce can be slower than other eCommerce platforms. This isn't necessarily true, as it just requires a little extra work to optimize. If you have a WooCommerce store that seems slow, this tutorial is perfect for you. Online shoppers tend to be impatient, and if your store takes too long to load, you risk losing customers. Hence, it is crucial that you take the time to optimize the speed of your store.
WooCommerce is a free platform, which means you don't have to give up a percentage of your sales, unlike many other popular eCommerce platforms. As a result, the responsibility of maintaining your WooCommerce store is all yours. This might seem like a problem, but WooCommerce, despite limited support, can be easily managed with a little extra effort on your part. Keep reading this guide to find out how to speed up your WooCommerce store and make it more efficient.
Why is your WooCommerce so slow?
You've surely wondered why your WooCommerce store seems so slow. You've probably heard that platforms like BigCommerce or Shopify are faster than WordPress or WooCommerce. However, this is not exactly the case.
It is true that hosted eCommerce platforms are backed by large teams of experts who work tirelessly to optimize the performance and speed of their platforms. This means they can provide better quality services than other platforms. It's not entirely fair to compare Shopify to WooCommerce, as the latter offers different features and prices. Similarly, there are various differences between Prestashop and WooCommerce, Opencart and WooCommerce, or Magento and WooCommerce.
To improve the speed and performance of your WooCommerce store, a certain degree of effort is required. You might end up relying on your hosting provider or a web developer, but in the end, you're the one who has to make sure everything is working as it should. Usually, there are several reasons that can cause suboptimal performance in a WooCommerce store, including:
No implementation of any WooCommerce speed booster
If you're wondering why your WooCommerce is slow, it might be because you haven't implemented any steps to improve the speed of your store, such as implementing WooCommerce-specific speed boosters. These boosters can include cache management, code optimization, image optimization, and many more. If you haven't taken such steps, it would be premature to criticize the platform. Before making a judgment, you need to be sure you've done everything possible to optimize your store.
One of the most effective ways to speed up a WooCommerce store is to implement a caching system. Among the various caching systems available, Varnish Cache stands out as an extremely effective solution. Varnish Cache is a complete web application accelerator that can dramatically increase the speed of your online store.
Varnish Cache works by storing a copy of your website's pages in the server's memory, allowing you to serve cached pages to visitors much faster than dynamically generating pages from the server. This means your web page loads much faster, improving the user experience and potentially increasing your conversions and sales.
Incompetent web hosting provider
This is a problem I have encountered time and time again โ many people tend to choose the cheapest hosting provider without considering such fundamentals as features, add-ons, customer support, performance, availability, processor capacity and much more. This superficial choice can negatively affect the performance of your WooCommerce store.
Hosting is crucial to the speed and efficiency of your online store. A generic hosting provider, especially the cheaper ones, may lack the capability to provide specific optimization and optimal tuning for your WooCommerce site. These vendors may not have the resources or experience to handle specific WooCommerce requirements, which include database optimization, caching, data compression, and more.
Choosing the wrong hosting can limit the speed, efficiency and scalability of your WooCommerce store. Lack of proper support, limited resources, and lack of a real understanding of how to optimize for WooCommerce can create significant problems over time.
Instead, it is advisable to opt for a hosting provider that specializes in WooCommerce or WordPress. These hosting providers understand the unique needs of a WooCommerce store and have the resources and experience to optimize your hosting environment to ensure the best possible performance.
Therefore, you should always choose the best hosting provider that is within your budget, keeping in mind the specific needs of your WooCommerce store. I'll talk more about this in the next segment of this guide.
Overloaded plugins
You might think that plugins make managing your WooCommerce store easier, but the truth is that they can also add weight to your site, slowing it down considerably. Adding too many plugins to your store can increase the load on your server and slow down the speed of your site. But it's not just about quantity โ the quality of the plugins you choose plays a major role.
The code that powers plugins can vary widely in efficiency and optimization. Some plugins are notorious for being inefficiently coded or running processes that can put a significant strain on your server. Likewise, some plugins can conflict with others, leading to performance and functionality issues.
Remember that it's not always necessary to have a different plugin for every single feature. If there is one plugin that can perform multiple functions, it's much more efficient to use that than installing several plugins to do separate tasks. This will reduce the total number of plugins on your site, which in turn can lead to improved performance.
When you decide to add a plugin to your store, carefully evaluate its quality. Look at the reviews, check for the latest update, and see if the plugin is known to cause performance issues. Remember that every plugin you add to your site has the potential to affect its performance; thus, you should be selective and thoughtful in your choices.
WooCommerce theme not optimized and of poor quality
In WooCommerce, you will find tons of themes available, both free and paid. You may wonder why some attractive themes are offered for free, while some less attractive ones are sold. In fact, the beauty of a theme shouldn't be the only selection criterion. Often, themes are judged primarily on the basis of how they look, but this approach can be misleading.
While aesthetics are important, they shouldn't be the sole determining factor in choosing a theme for your WooCommerce store. It is imperative that the theme you choose is not only aesthetically pleasing but also efficient in terms of performance. Some themes, while visually appealing, can be poorly coded and lead to performance or compatibility issues.
The ideal theme for your store should be both attractive and optimized for performance. It should load fast, be compatible with the plugins you plan to use, and have a responsive design that adjusts to various devices and screen sizes. Also, it helps if the theme is regularly updated and has good support from the developer.
Also, I would advise against choosing a free or low-cost theme. Remember, however, that you often get what you pay for, so weigh the pros and cons carefully before making your choice.
How can you speed up your WooCommerce store?
According to Google, online shoppers have a 3 second attention interval and if your store loads within 3 seconds, they will leave your site and never come back. If your WooCommerce store also takes more than 3 seconds, you need to speed up your store. Here are some tips to make your store faster. We optimize your WooCommerce store for faster speed.
20 ways to speed up your WooCommerce store (2022)
1. Restrict extensions
The main reason your WooCommerce store is slow can be clutter that builds up on the backend at a frequent rate. Extensions can help you with many things and also automate most of your tasks. However, having a lot of extensions can make your site heavy and its response will be slower in the end. As I said before, it's not about the extension number but also about the quality of the extension you added to your site. Therefore, look for good quality extensions that can deliver quality results rather than increasing the load on your site.
Also, the more extensions enabled on your site, the harder it becomes to check their quality. Therefore, practice inventorying your extension on a regular basis and check if active extensions are most relevant to you. There is no point in having extensions enabled on your site when you're not even using them anymore. If possible, try replacing some extensions with equivalent code blocks. Do it the classic way whenever possible.
2. Restrict or disable revisions
WooCommerce offers a feature that allows for a default revision control on product pages. It allows you to go back and view changes to product pages. Without a doubt, this seems like a good feature, but even default revisions can cause performance issues. To understand how this works and how it can affect overall performance, let's consider this instance. Let's say you create a product page and work on it 7 times. Make some changes like change the price or add a word or two.
These are some minor changes, but you now have 8 copies of the original product page. Not only will it consume storage space unnecessarily, it will also degenerate and slow down the overall performance of your WooCommerce store. To prevent this from happening, you can limit or disable reviews.
- limit revisions, insert the following line of code in the file wp-config.php located in the root of your website. It will limit the reviews to 3, you can enter the number of limits according to your needs-
| define ('WP_POST_REVISIONI', 3); // Limit to 3 revisions |
- disable revisions, insert the following line of code in the file wp-config.php located in the root of your website-
| define ('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false); |
3. Clean up your database
You may have disabled or turned on the number of revisions on your WooCommerce store. However, you still need to remove existing copies that you no longer need in your store. To remove unnecessary revisions available in your database, you can use plugins. I recommend the WP-Optimize plugin as it can remove problematic revisions and can also clean up the entire WooCommerce store database. Also, you can automate the cleanup process with this plugin so you don't have to worry about mounting clutter in the database.
Furthermore, you also need to have a functional database for your WooCommerce store to function well. I will advise you to use well-functioning and advanced table types for data storage, such as InnoDB. This database is fully compatible with WooCommerce and makes precise use of indexes. Also, it can be moved to ours WooCommerce Hosting, which can offer 150-300% faster speed than an average WooCommerce store.
4. Limited external resources, widgets and sharing tools
Anything not on your WooCommerce server is an external resource. It could simply be a script, a character style, a style sheet, etc. If you use Google Analytics, it is also an external resource. It is important to add a limited number of external resources. The more external resources you add, the harder it becomes to optimize them. Dependence on external servers slows down your website. You need to limit the number of external resources you use and make sure they come from a credible source.
Likewise, widgets and sharing tools can also slow down your WooCommerce site. For example, if you have social sharing widgets like Facebook and Twitter, it can also slow down your WooCommerce stores significantly. The following are the reasons why these widgets may slow down your site:
- Increase the page size
- Dependence on DNS queries
- Time to download external resources
- Adding more HTTP requests
You can try removing these widgets with equivalent code blocks for social sharing features. It will remove the dependency and also optimize the performance of your WooCommerce store.
5. Remove unnecessary plugins
The number of plugins installed and enabled on your WordPress also slows down your site. As mentioned above, it's not just about the number of installed plug-ins, but the quality of the installed plug-ins. For example, if a plug-in can perform more than 4 actions, you don't need to add 4 different plug-ins for each action. Therefore, always consider the quality of a plugin before adding it to your site. Also, always make sure plugins are installed by a credible resource with active developer support. Sometimes, plugins are abandoned by developers, which means they are no longer working on them and there will be no updates for that plugin. Having an outdated plugin is always a security risk and also causes performance issues. Furthermore,
6. Don't go wild with affiliate ads
Taking advantage of ads and affiliate programs can be a great way to generate income online. However, it's important to consider the impact they can have on the speed and performance of your WooCommerce store. If you see ads on your site, they may be contributing to slow loading pages.
I'm not suggesting that you stop making money through ads, but I do want to warn you against excessive affiliate ad placement. If you are using advertising services such as Google AdSense or others, you may have to make a choice between affiliate ads and advertisements. Affiliate ads often include images or animations hosted on external servers. As we have discussed above, increased reliance on external servers can negatively affect the overall performance of your site.
One alternative you can consider is to host the ad images or animations on your own server. This way, you can optimize images and reduce external DNS queries, improving the performance of your site. However, it's important to note that this option may require you to manage your server resources more carefully and may incur additional storage and bandwidth costs.
It's crucial to strike a balance between generating revenue through ads and optimizing the performance of your WooCommerce store. Carefully assess the impact of ads on your site's performance and consider available alternatives to improve speed without excessively impacting your store's monetization.
7. A competent web hosting provider
Competent and reliable hosting is something people often overlook. If you run your WooCommerce store on cheap web hosting with insufficient specs, speeds, and features, then it needs your immediate attention. Web hosting is arguably the most important factor affecting the overall performance of a WooCommerce store. Not only does it offer rental space on the server, it also offers the entire underlying architecture needed to support a functioning store and manage traffic while serving the relevant content that users demand.
Factors to consider
- Popular web hosting provider with demonstrable WooCommerce case studies
- Uptime and performance
- Underlying hardware architecture that supports the WooCommerce platform
- Managed and systems assistance
- Server location
- Add-ons like free domain registration, CDN integration, SSL certificates, nVME SSD-based storage, etc.
- Customer support and site migrations
If you don't have the time to conduct full-blown research, my quick recommendation is our WooCommerce-specific Managed Hosting. It is a trusted provider recommended by many successful sites that offers great performance, has a strategic server location, and offers cost-effective optimized plans. Make sure the provider you choose offers the closest server location to your audience for reduced server response time and ultimately a better user experience. If you have a reputable web hosting provider but performance is still not great, you may need to upgrade.
Managed WooCommerce hosting
If you want to get optimal performance for your WooCommerce store without having to spend too much time and effort setting up servers, you might want to consider using a managed WooCommerce hosting service. This type of hosting is specially designed to support the specific needs of WooCommerce platforms.
With managed WooCommerce hosting, you'll have access to a number of solutions and features that can significantly improve the performance and security of your store. These services include advanced firewalls to protect your site from online threats, SSL certificates to ensure a secure connection between your shop and visitors, one-click backups to protect your data and facilitate recovery, and server updates and patches to maintain your shop always up-to-date and secure.
Additionally, managed WooCommerce hosting is backed by WordPress experts, who have a deep understanding of the unique performance and management needs of a WooCommerce store. You will have a dedicated support team at your disposal who can provide you with personalized assistance, solve any technical problems and guide you in improving the performance of your store.
Using a managed WooCommerce hosting service can greatly simplify the process of running your store, allowing you to focus on your core business. You won't have to worry about server configuration or complex technical optimizations as they will be handled by the hosting team.
Choosing managed WooCommerce hosting gives you a complete and reliable solution to ensure optimal performance of your online store. You will benefit from a powerful infrastructure and advanced tools, without the need to become a hosting and system administration expert.
8. Increase the memory limit in WordPress
Editing the wp-config.php file
Limited memory can also be a reason behind your WooCommerce store's poor performance. After making your site live, you need to access your wp-config.php file, which is usually located in the main WordPress folder. then, at the end of the file, you will see a line that says "Happy Blogging", you need to add the following there-
define ('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');
After adding this line, save your changes.
Editing the PHP.ini file
You can also try this method if you have access to the php.ini file. You need to change the maximum memory limit allowed. Usually, the line shows 64M as the maximum memory. You can change it to 256M, by writing it in the following way-
memory_limit = 256 million;
Editing the .htaccess file
If you don't have access to the php.ini file, you can also increase the memory limit by making changes to the .htaccess file. Just add the following code to the .htaccess file-
value_php memory_limit 256M
WordPress default memory is limited to 32MB, which needs to be increased at some point. If you often get a fatal error message, memory can be an issue. However, the methods mentioned above can fix this problem and make drastic changes to the overall performance of your WooCommerce platform.
9. Compression of files and images
A key aspect of improving the speed of your WooCommerce store is to pay attention to the images you upload. Only upload relevant and necessary images and try to compress them to make them easier to read. Non-optimized images can significantly slow down page loading.
You can compress images manually using software like Photoshop or similar tools. However, this process can be tedious and time consuming. An easier alternative is to use specially made plugins for image compression, such as โCompress JPEG and PNG imagesโ. These plugins are easy to install and offer great image compression performance without compromising image quality.
In addition to image management, it is also important to compress static files and elements of your WooCommerce store. Gzip compression is one of the most effective compression techniques for reducing the size of static resources. It allows you to compress your website files, including scripts and CSS. For example, with Gzip compression, you can optimize your CSS resources by minimizing the number of styles in your stylesheets.
Gzip compression significantly reduces the size of static files, allowing them to be transferred faster from servers to the user's browser. This results in faster page load times and improves the experience for users visiting your store.
Make sure you enable Gzip compression in your server or through a specific WooCommerce plugin that supports this feature.
Paying attention to the images you upload and compressing static files are key steps to improve the speed and performance of your WooCommerce store.
10. Optimize the website code
When it comes to a WooCommerce store, the number of web files can get huge and keep growing over time. This accumulation of files can negatively affect the performance of your site, slowing down page load time. Therefore, it becomes crucial to optimize your website files and code to keep loading times as low as possible.
We have already discussed the importance of Gzip compression, which allows you to compress your website files, including scripts and CSS. This compression technique reduces the size of static files, allowing them to be transferred faster from the server to the user's browser, helping to make pages load faster.
Also, another option to optimize your CSS files is to minimize their number and size. You can combine multiple CSS files into one and minimize the number of CSS styles and rules in your stylesheet. This will reduce the number of requests to the server and make the pages load faster.
An alternative to Gzip compression is to use Brotli compression, which offers a more advanced compression algorithm than Gzip. Brotli can further reduce file sizes compared to Gzip, therefore offering a potential performance improvement. However, it is important to note that Brotli compression requires specific support on the user's server and browser.
To make the most of Brotli compression, be sure to check if your server and visitors' browsers support this technology. If supported, you can configure your server to use Brotli as the compression method for your WooCommerce store files.
By compressing and optimizing your CSS files and taking advantage of the potential of Brotli compression, you can significantly improve the speed and performance of your WooCommerce store.
11. Optimize images for the web
Images are an irreplaceable element of an online store. Most of your online store is made up of images only. Optimizing your web images can make a significant improvement in the overall performance of your WooCommerce store. Compressing image files is just one way to improve the performance of your WooCommerce store. There are many other ways to optimize images for the web to improve overall performance. Start with deleting and replacing images. Don't go wild when it comes to adding images to your site. Upload only what you need. An ideal design is simple without image overload and keeps the focus on important information. As they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words". Therefore, you need to find a balance and add only the relevant images.
Another thing you can do is keep the images in the right format. The right format can speed up your WooCommerce store and make a significant difference in the overall performance of your WooCommerce store-
- GIF: This is an animation extension suitable for small images. An animation of 2-3 seconds can be viewed.
- PNG - This extension is mainly used for logos, icons, transparent images, illustrations, etc.
- JPG / JPEG: This extension is used for normal display of high resolution images to show a lot of details.
Also, resize the images before uploading them to your site. Don't upload unnecessarily large images as they will take up more space than necessary and slow down your online store. Instead, resize images to their ideal size manually or using the plug-in to optimize capture and space performance. I will suggest you convert all your images to WebP and serve your images to WebP format .
12. Optimize the HTML code
You can also optimize your HTML code for better performance and to speed up your WooCommerce store. Your HTML code works as a roadmap for reading servers. The server can read, compile and deliver the pages requested by visitors using these roadmaps. However, it is your responsibility to keep your HTML as clean as possible. It is wise to examine your code with a fine comb at regular intervals, to greatly speed up your WooCommerce store. Better to use the WordPress Autoptimeze plugin.
13. Optimized JavaScript files
Just like style sheets, having unnecessary JavaScript files can also negatively impact the loading speed of your WooCommerce store. The same minification and compression is used for both CSS and JavaScript files. Keep the JS file to a bare minimum because the more files you have, the harder it is to optimize them. But if you manage them well, this will help speed up your WooCommerce store. The WordPress Autoptimeze plugin will also help here.
14. Use the server cache
It is important to try to keep WooCommerce dynamic elements as much as possible. While WooCommerce is a dynamic platform in itself, turning some elements into static elements can make it easier to create a cached copy of your site on the server. This allows visitors to load your shop faster.
Imagine that every time a visitor requests your store, your server has to fetch all the resources from the database. This can take some time and slow down the loading time of the pages. Using a cache, you can pre-generate a copy of your store's pages and content, allowing the server to quickly serve these static copies to subsequent visitors, rather than having to dynamically generate them each time.
A popular solution to implement caching in WooCommerce is to use a plugin like โW3 Total Cacheโ. This plugin offers advanced caching features, including creating cached copies of pages, compressing static files, and more. You can configure it to make the most of your site's caching and significantly improve loading speed.
Also, more advanced setup may involve using Varnish Cache. Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator that stores a copy of your site's pages in server memory. When visitors request your store, Varnish Cache can quickly serve cached pages without having to re-run the dynamic page generation process.
A specific Managed setup with Varnish Cache can provide even better performance for your WooCommerce store, optimizing cache usage and further reducing page load times.
Maintaining the essential dynamic elements and leveraging caching capabilities, such as with W3 Total Cache or a Managed setup with Varnish Cache, can dramatically improve the speed and experience of your WooCommerce store.
15. Use browser cache
An effective solution to improve the user experience and speed up the navigation of repetitive visitors is to use the browser cache. The browser cache allows web elements such as stylesheets, JavaScript files, images and other static site elements to be stored locally on a user's device. This allows the same pages to be redisplayed significantly faster, improving the overall browsing speed for users who visit your store repeatedly.
When a visitor accesses your site, static files are downloaded and cached in the device's local browser. When the same visitor returns to your site or navigates between different pages, the browser can immediately retrieve these files from the local cache, avoiding the need to download them again from the server. This reduces the overall loading time of pages and makes the browsing experience smoother and faster.
However, it's important to manage your browser's cache properly to ensure that users always see the most up-to-date version of your files. The cache should be scheduled to "time out" or "expire" periodically so that the browser checks for new versions of the files from the server. This ensures that users always see the latest and most up-to-date content.
To configure browser caching on your WooCommerce site, you can use specific plugins that offer advanced caching features. These plug-ins allow you to specify browser cache settings, including expiration times for items and cache management rules. Additionally, some caching plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket can manage both browser cache and server cache, offering a great combination of optimizations to improve the speed of your store.
By properly implementing browser caching, you can greatly improve the experience of repetitive users on your WooCommerce store, speeding up page loading and making browsing faster and more enjoyable.
16. Minimize redirects
Each click on your WooCommerce store redirects your visitor to a linked page. It may be a matter of a couple of microseconds, but remember that your visitors have short attention spans. Avoid having unnecessary redirects all over your website. Not only does it irritate your visitors, it also consumes server resources and ultimately results in a high bounce rate. Reducing the number of redirects can help you achieve a significant jump in page load speed.
17. Disable cart fragments
Enabled cart snippets can stagger the number of web files and can ultimately result in a slower site. To disable WooCommerce cart snippets, you can use numerous plugins.
18. Lightweight WooCommerce theme
Most people choose themes with aesthetic backgrounds or lots of white space. However, the problem is that most designers don't even take page loading speed into account when designing those themes. Therefore, we recommend that you choose a good quality, lightweight and performance optimized WooCommerce theme. As you collect themes, make sure it has a clean code base that prioritizes speed over aesthetics. Be smart enough to prioritize performance over front-end aesthetics.
19. Overall improved web design
Start by respecting your users' time and they will most likely keep coming back to you. To respect their time, embrace a good design for your WooCommerce site because ultimately good performance starts with a design. Does your WooCommerce store landing page upload a video or HD background image? Does your store have a lot of unnecessary social sharing widgets? If so, then you are missing good design. Your visitors will have nothing to share when your site doesn't even load in the first place. I am not defending these elements, all I am saying is that performance should be a priority.
20. Use a CDN service
If your WooCommerce store has a diverse audience from different regions of the world, implementing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service can be an effective solution to improve page loading speed.
A CDN is essentially a network of servers strategically placed in different geographic regions. These servers maintain a cached version of your website, so they can deliver the requested content from the server location closest to the user making the request, rather than having to fetch it from the origin server which may be halfway around the world. This significantly reduces latency and content transfer time, thereby improving the overall page loading speed for users.
Implementing a functional CDN service can offer several advantages. First, page load times are significantly reduced, as content is served from servers that are geographically close to the user, reducing the physical distance data has to travel. This improves the user experience, as users can navigate between pages quickly without waiting for long loading times.
Secondly, a CDN service can reduce the load on your origin server. Since a significant portion of the traffic is handled by CDN servers, the load on your main server is distributed more evenly, reducing the risk of overload and improving the scalability of your WooCommerce store.
There are a number of reputable and popular CDN service providers, such as Cloudflare, Akamai, and Amazon CloudFront, among others. These providers offer reliable global infrastructures that can be easily integrated with your WooCommerce store to provide streamlined distribution of content across the globe.
If you have a diverse audience base in different regions of the world, implementing a functional CDN service can greatly improve page loading speed and provide a better overall user experience. Consider using a reliable CDN service to distribute your WooCommerce store content more efficiently and faster.
Conclusion
In this post, we have explored several fundamental application and system techniques to obtain a fast and performing WooCommerce site. However, if you don't have development or system administration skills and want to get quick and hassle-free optimization of your site's performance and speed, the fastest solution is to rely on a specialized company like ours on WooCommerce.
We are experts in WooCommerce performance optimization and can help you make your online store faster, improve user experience and increase conversions. Contact us today to discuss your specific needs and find out how we can help you get a high-performing WooCommerce site.
We'll manage to save you time and deliver quality results, ensuring your WooCommerce store is optimized to its full potential. Don't miss out on any more opportunities, contact us now for a personalized consultation and professional solution for your WooCommerce site optimization needs.
