If you check each of these points, it will allow you to see the website’s problem areas and boost its performance. This is necessary for business because if the page is slow, customers will close it and go to competitors. Weak pages don’t get much traffic, it reduces sales and company profit. Our WordPress development agency can fix speed issues and boost website performance.
How We Check Your WooCommerce Site Speed
Before starting to speed up WooCommerce store, we need to test and analyze existing performance metrics. Our WordPress website developers use the following technologies and tools to conduct a quality audit:
- GTmetrix. The web service allows us to analyze the site’s loading speed and get recommendations for optimization. With the help of GTmetrix, our webmasters get different speed indicators and analyze them. On this basis, they identify the main slowing factors.
- PageSpeed Insights. The service allows us to evaluate the site loading speed in points and get a report on the site loading on mobile devices and computers. Further, experts offer optimization options if the site has not passed the speed test.
- Lighthouse. We use this tool to evaluate how a site is optimized for search engines, compatible with web applications, and accessible to users. If there are problems in these aspects, we will offer an effective solution.
These tools allow you to measure site speed and evaluate core web vitals. Consider what these parameters are and why it is important to take them into account:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). Shows how fast the main content (image, text, video) loads compared to everything else. The best option is less than 2 seconds. A bad result is 4 seconds or more.
- FID (First Input Delay). This is the amount of time a user waits before they start clicking on links and watching videos. With the growth of this indicator, the number of failures also increases – a person does not want to wait a long time, so he goes to competitors. They load much faster. A value greater than 300 ms is considered critical.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). Determines the stability of all elements. What does it mean? On some sites, there are «flying» buttons and banners. This annoys users and makes it difficult to perceive content. There is a higher chance that the person will simply close the page. The unit of measurement is the speed at which the floating element falls into place when loaded. 0.1 seconds or more is a good value, from 0.25 is bad.
If the site receives positive results, it is shown on the first pages of search results. What is important, especially for WooCommerce stores. After all, the higher your store is in the ranking, the more attendance, higher sales, and income.
How We Can Boost WooCommerce Website Speed-Up
The specialists of our WordPress development agency have a comprehensive approach to optimizing the store’s speed. Let’s take a closer look at what we can speed up, and how we do it.
Hosting Upgrade
Cheap hosting is not suitable for an e-commerce store, especially if the catalog consists of different goods categories and a large number of articles. If your store is permanent with cheap hosting, it will be slow. Our experts can offer the following options to speed up WooCommerce store:
- Virtual hosting exchange to a more productive one. It is important to choose a provider that offers hosting. providing good speed and sufficient resources. If you don’t know how to choose which provider is best, our developers will recommend some good options to make your choice easy.
- Managed hosting. Managed hosting is the ideal solution if the site is with a lot of traffic. The cost of such hosting is higher, but this is a reliable solution for the maximum WooCommerce store acceleration.
The server host must be geographically located where your customers live. This will ensure that your site loads quickly when you open it.
Set Up and Enable Caching to fix Slow WooCommerce Store Issue
Caching is necessary for fast page reloading. If the user has already visited your site, the content will load several times faster when they open it again. There are several options for caching:
- WP Page caching. All page data is saved as a static HTML file. Thanks to this, when re-opening the site, the user does not have to wait long for the page to load. This increases the site loading speed, and hence the user experience.
- Object caching. In this case, the page is not saved completely, but only resource-intensive frequently used objects. For example, pictures, videos, catalogs, and other website parts.
- Database caching. It is needed to save the database query results to reduce the queries required to create a page.
To speed up the WooCommerce store, our developers follow these steps:
- Selecting the caching type. Experts take into account the site specifics, traffic, content type, and other aspects. For example, if you’re experiencing performance issues with certain database queries or API responses, WP object caching might be a better choice.
- Hosting analysis. Developers check if the hosting is optimized for caching. If the environment is not suitable, most likely it will not be possible to implement any kind of caching.
- Check for updates. WordPress version, PHP, plugins, and theme should be updated and configured according to the caching type you choose. If the versions are old, you can hire WP developers and update them to the latest ones.
Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)
The closer your customer is to your server, the faster your website will load on their browser. With CDNs spread across almost every country, your visitors are always close to the server. Our specialists will add a Content Delivery Network to your WooCommerce site to increase its speed.
Use Updated WordPress and PHP Versions
Outdated PHP versions can negatively affect not only the site’s speed but also its security features. To protect your web page from hackers and malware, you need to update it. Entrust PHP version updates to professionals in the field of WordPress website building.
Disabling Heartbeat to Speed Up The Site
This is a script that shows you plugin modifications in real-time. In addition, the feature shows updates when other users edit a post on your WordPress website. We recommend disabling this feature, as it generates requests every 15–60 seconds, which slows down the WooCommerce store work.
Images Optimization
Images should not be very large for fast page loading. Our experts can reduce them without quality loss. Also, use WebP images instead of JPEG. Unoptimized images can steal up to 5% of a site’s performance. We recommend hiring a WordPress developer to speed up WooCommerce store.
Codebase Check-Up
Clean code is the key to any site’s fast work. If there are comments, extra lines, symbols, and other garbage in the syntax, the site will slow down. Our developers can minify and clean the PHP, CSS, JS code, etc. After cleaning, it is easy to achieve an increase in site performance up to 15%!
Disable AJAX Cart Fragments On WooCommerce
AJAX Cart Fragments is a powerful feature for creating feedback systems in WooCommerce. The feature helps shoppers know what and how many items they have added to their shopping cart. However, the feature affects the site download speed and performance negatively. We recommend disabling AJAX Cart Fragments to speed up your online store.
Use A Fast, Lightweight WooCommerce Theme And Page Builder
The WooCommerce store performance depends largely on the theme. Lightweight, fast builders contribute to fast loading. We analyze your theme for performance. If the WooCommerce store is slow due to the theme, the experts will recommend another builder.
Database Optimization
A database is a set of data that your site stores. There are two main ways to clear the WooCommerce store database:
- Reducing unnecessary site content from product pages, categories, tags, user data, reviews, general site settings, themes, plugins, etc.
- Clearing transactional data such as order details, payments, inventory, etc.
Site content — images, text, videos — usually refers to static requests whereas placing an order makes a dynamic request. If the store’s database is not optimized promptly, it may take too long to process such queries. Hence, make the database cleanup process your concern and optimize the database from time to time to remove unnecessary junk.
Why Speed Up WooCommerce Is Vital For Your Business?
The WooCommerce store’s popularity depends on its place in the search engine rankings. Google generally ignores slow sites and pages with low core web vitals. Therefore, if your site is slow, it will not rank at the top of the search results, and interested customers will go to competitors.
Speeding up a WooCommerce store enhances the user experience and therefore attracts customers. Users don’t like to wait a long time for a page to load. A fast online store is a solution for a profitable e-commerce business.
Kick Up Your Slow Website Now!
Our team is professionally engaged in WordPress site development and optimization, and WooCommerce stores. We know the web page intricacies and peculiarities, and we can quickly determine the reasons for slow work. Why you should entrust the online store speed up to us:
- experienced developers;
- result guarantee;
- a complex approach;
- extensive experience in website optimization from 0 to 90+ scores.
In addition, we offer a free audit and a transparent price assessment. If you want to visually see our work results, check out the cases in the portfolio. Contact us today and get a fast, productive WooCommerce store!
