How to Improve WooCommerce Speed and Boost Store Performance

It is very easy for organizations and multinational firms to start a WooCommerce venture these days. You can just purchase the required domain, receive the hosting service and install the WooCommerce plugin in it, and voila. Your store is ready to get into the business.

But it is one thing to set things up, and quite another to thrive and prosper on it. eCommerce stores need to provide a great user experience to the clients and their visitors at regular intervals. This is the reason that features like WooCommerce page speed optimization and performance need to be the top two things to focus on. 

This article will be focused on increasing the speed of your WooCommerce store this year. The following section will list some of the key points in this respect.

Why is Performance Important for Your WooCommerce Store?

In the world of ecommerce, speed is everything. As an ecommerce development company, we know that a slow website can cost you a lot of money. In fact, studies have shown that a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% loss in conversions. Customers are less likely to wait for a page to load, and a sluggish website can quickly lead them to abandon their carts and move on to your competitors.

Additionally, slow load times can also negatively impact your search engine rankings, as Google takes site speed into consideration when ranking websites. This means that a faster site not only enhances the user experience but also improves visibility in search engine results. A high-performing website is, therefore, not just a nicety but a necessity for staying competitive in the online market.

In short, a fast and high-performing WooCommerce store is crucial for the success of your ecommerce business. A seamless and swift shopping experience can significantly boost customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, your bottom line.

Important Ways to Speed Up The WooCommerce Store

Starting a WooCommerce store has never been easier for businesses, whether large organizations or small startups. With just a domain, hosting, and the WooCommerce plugin, you can have your store up and running in no time. 

However, a major challenge for many store owners is ensuring that their site loads quickly and performs smoothly. A slow WooCommerce store can lead to poor user experience, lower conversion rates, and a higher bounce rate.

If you want to enhance your WooCommerce store’s speed and performance, follow these proven strategies.

1. Elevating the Memory Limit of WordPress

You have made all of the necessary configurations for your store, did your bit of tinkering, and now your store has gone live for the customers. The very first thing that you must include in your to-do list after this event would be to find the exact location of the root WordPress folder. The folder that you need to find would be the wp-config.php, wherein you should go to the end of the file that contains information regarding the total memory limit of WordPress.
The define (‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’,’’256M’); shows the total memory limit.
Two things that can be done in this respect, they are,

• Edit out the PHP.ini file

If users would be able to gain access to the php.ini file, then you must make some changes to the maximum memory limit that would be allowed for your store. If your line of code says that the limit is 64M, you would be able to increase it to 256M, meaning that the memory consumption would be 256 megabytes.

• Edit out the .htaccess file

If you are somehow not able to access the php.ini file, then you can gain access to the .htaccess file. You need to then paste this code php_value memory_limit 256M for increasing the memory consumption value. 

2. Image Optimization for Speeding WooCommerce

Visual Marketing is one of the appealing ways of marketing for the clients of today. It essentially adds value and also gives companies and the marketing fraternity an edge over the others. It is also an important addition to the WooCommerce store. This provides WordPress Performance optimization by leaps and bounds. 

• It is therefore important to use optimized images in the online store which again affects the performance in drastic aspects. This is the reason that image optimization is considered to be one of the best techniques in existence to increase the speed of your store.
• It is usually seen that heavy images take time to load up on the websites. This decreases the user experience for the store. Apart from slow loading speeds, it would also put additional load on your sites. This can also decrease the SERP rankings of your store by a huge amount. 
• It is therefore important that uploading heavy images should be avoided, and plugins like WP-Smush. it EWWW Image Optimizer must be utilized for effective optimization of images. The quality of the images would remain the same and there would be no bursts in clarity when the image loads up on the store. 

3. Using Cache Plugins

While caches seem a bit irritable to some, they are very important in the case of the WooCommerce online store. This is an instrumental factor in increasing the WordPress Speed Optimization service for users. It is also important for the users since they wouldn’t need to wait for the caches to load completely and then for the store to load up. 

• Cache plugins would help to load the store pages faster thereby taking far less time for incessant buffering. 
• WooCommerce also would not take much time to load up resource files like the CSS and JavaScript files, which are an added advantage at best. 
• Instead of doing this, it would load up the cache versions almost instantly and are therefore given across to the visitors. 

This is why the static pages do not take much time for rendering. The dynamic pages, in turn, also would take less time to display the required content for the site visitors. There are many plugins that are offered by WordPress. Some of the highly-rated plugins include Breeze, W3, Total Cache, WP Rocket, and WP Super Cache are a few of them. Each one has its unique set of advantages and you can choose it as per your requirements and needs. 

4. Using CDN for Increasing the Speed

Content Delivery Network or Content Distribution Network is a set of proxy servers and its connected data centers that are distributed with respect to locations. The main goal for this would be to provide increased performance by elevating the range of services to all of the end users. With respect to the internet content, CDN has provided major contributions which include web objects like graphic images, text and scripts and other downloadable objects, and social media sites as well.

• CDN is very important with respect to WooCommerce stores, and it has been in use for quite some time now. 
• CDN services would help your online store to increase load speeds by accessing cache content from all of the servers that are placed at strategic locations with respect to the Company. 
• Some of the popular CDN options like Sucuri, MaxCDN, Cloudflare and other notable ones are available for use by the companies.

This is essential as it would increase the overall speed of the WooCommerce store by a high amount. It would also improve the loading time taken for the online store which will improve the user experience and optimize the WooCommerce sites as well. 

5. Getting a better WordPress Hosting Provider Service

It is common knowledge that having a comparatively better WordPress Hosting Provider service is a preferable option to have. This would help in improving the WooCommerce store performance dramatically. Having a better hosting provider would also help out with increasing the store’s uptime and will also result in an uninterrupted connection. 

• The reason companies are hiring WordPress Developers is because of the growing popularity of the services that eCommerce provides. 
• It also makes these e-commerce stores important with respect to a fast hosting service, which would increase traffic, number of clicks, and the deals that are provided on the stores. 

It is important that your provider be able to handle such kind of traffic at any and all intervals. There are multiple WordPress Hosting Provider services available for use, and it would help the users immensely in choosing what is best for them.

6. Minimize HTTP Requests

Every time a user visits your WooCommerce store, their browser sends a request for every element on your site, including images, stylesheets, and scripts. The more requests your site has to process, the longer it will take to load. Reducing these requests is essential for decreasing load times and improving user experience.

You can reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining your CSS and JavaScript files, optimizing your code, and using sprites for images. Prioritizing above-the-fold content and deferring the loading of non-essential scripts can also help minimize the initial load time and allow users to start interacting with your store faster.

7. Keep Your WordPress and Plugins Updated

WordPress and its plugins are continuously updated to improve performance and fix bugs. Make sure to regularly update your WordPress version and plugins to ensure that your store is running at its best. Updates often contain optimizations that can have a significant impact on your store’s performance.

Staying up to date with the latest versions also ensures that your store is protected against known vulnerabilities. This is crucial for maintaining the security and trustworthiness of your online store.

8. Optimize Your Database

Your database stores all the information for your WooCommerce store, including product data, customer data, and order information. Regularly optimizing your database can help improve the performance of your store. A well-maintained database ensures quicker data retrieval and faster response times for your customers’ queries.

You can use plugins like WP-Optimize or WP-Sweep to clean up your database and remove any unnecessary data. These plugins can help you get rid of obsolete data such as old revisions, spam comments, and transient options that are no longer needed and are taking up valuable space.

9. Enable Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is the process of loading images and videos only when they are needed. By enabling lazy loading on your WooCommerce store, you can significantly reduce the initial load time and improve the overall performance of your site. This technique ensures that only the content that is currently in the user’s viewport is loaded, saving bandwidth and speeding up the page load time.

You can use plugins like Lazy Load by WP Rocket or a3 Lazy Load to enable lazy loading on your site. These plugins offer various options for customization and are designed to work seamlessly with your WooCommerce store.

10. Use a Lightweight Theme

The theme you choose for your WooCommerce store can have a significant impact on its performance. Make sure to choose a lightweight theme that is optimized for speed. Avoid using themes with too many features and functionalities that you do not need. These can add unnecessary weight to your site and slow down its performance.

Look for themes that are specifically designed for ecommerce and have been tested for compatibility with WooCommerce. These themes should be customizable and adaptable to your branding needs without compromising on speed.

Conclusion

Multi-national Companies and other organizations are now hiring Custome WordPress developers to gain the advantages provided by the seemingly endless ocean of WooCommerce. The points mentioned above provide you with a piece of detailed information on what are the best ways available to increase the speed of your WooCommerce online stores by a sufficient amount. 

Frequently Asked Questions