Speed is a vital factor that can fuel the success of your online store. A fast-loading website can motivate shoppers to purchase online and your customers will love their shopping experience. Slow-loading websites can douse the enthusiasm of your shoppers and it is almost certain that they will leave your website and choose another e-store that loads both easily and quickly.
Thus, it is important that you focus on the speed and functioning of your WooCommerce stores. It sets a first impression about your e-store and it is ideal that the impression is a lasting one!
A look at the average speed index in the United States will surely drive the point home! Have a glance at the average speed of loading for websites in diverse sectors.
Statistics have stated that more than 53% mobile users discontinued their search from the websites, if the loading speed was more than 3 seconds. Google experts stated the same. According to them, 2 seconds would be the threshold for ecommerce website accessibility. Search engine Google targets under half second! If followed Google‘s speed policy will settle a multitude of customers happily.
The statistics on website loading is rather interesting. It is noted that 80 % of users found slow loading websites more frustrating than temporarily down sites. Another rating clarified that 73% of users would switch to the competitors site if the loading speed was low. According to kinsta, even a 100 millisecond delay would affect conversion rates by 7% and that 2 second delay shoots up bounce rate by a shocking 103%.
Online retail giants such as Amazon would result in a loss of revenue amounting to $1.6 billion annually as projected if page load slackened by mere one second.
Website speed and performance are top factors in Google site’s ranking algorithm. So, it is confirmed that you cannot neglect the loading speed of your websites. Go for a speed test and ensure that your sites load quickly, Use Google's speed test tool to check your performance score.
Here are some tips that speed up WooCommerce stores and resolve common issues concerning speed.
1. Include Optimal Numbers of Plugins
Adding too many plugins such as SEO plugins, backup plugins, CPU plugins or bloated plugins can slow down your WooCommerce store. Choose plugins that perform multiple functions and do not opt for too many plugins. Remove unwanted plugins. Outdated plugins can affect performance; disable these plugins. You can expect faster loading times especially if you use speed plugins.
2. Avoid Using Slow Themes
Often, themes are chosen for their appearance but other factors are important too. You may find a child theme or the parent theme taking longer than usual to load on desktop or mobile devices. Choose a Lightweight Theme that is optimized for best performance. You can even create a Bespoke theme with awesome features from the ground-up for your unique requirements.
3. Image Optimization and Managing Image File Size
An e-store cannot exist without product images. consider the image quality and image sizes. High-quality and uncompressed images can increase loading time. However, do not overload images that take up too much space. This can slow down your WooCommerce website. Establish the required image file size and image source.
Do not include too many oversized images. Also remember to compress images in all possible situations - use Image Compression Plugins to accomplish this. Plus, source the image from credible sources. Utilize lazy loading to delay the loading of heavy images on the page. Lazy Load Images to improve the performance of the page.
4. Limit Extensions
True that extensions can automate the majority of your tasks. However, too many extensions can affect the speed of your WooCommerce websites. Check on the number and relevance of extensions on a regular basis and ensure that there is no clutter of extensions.
5. Enable Caching
With caching enabled with the use of caching plugins, you are helping users load their website quickly. When users load your online store, their browsers download complete data from your site. While enabling caching, a copy of the entire data (Static Files) is saved and on their disk. As such, any successive visits from your potential customers, will result in the site loading faster. Utilize Server Caching, this allows all the caching to take place on your end.
6. Higher PHP Versions or Premium Version
Check the PHP Version of your WooCommerce store. To keep your WooCommerce stores running fast, a higher and updated version of PHP is required. This will speed up your site. If you are using older versions for your online stores, immediately upgrade to the latest version!
7. Clear WooCommerce Database
The database of your ecommerce store includes site content and transaction data. Remove excess junk from your database and clean it. Optimize your WooCommerce store's database for fast loading websites. Often your database stores data that is not important and clearing the database is ideal for improving website speed and performance.
Stop non-critical features on the database such as minimizing auto-generated counters to boost the performance of the database.
8. Best Hosting provider
Check your Host Server. Choosing the cheapest hosting provider is not a bright idea. The uptime, customer services, performance, processor and other factors of hosting are important. Choose your best hosting provider based on these factors. The best hosting provider can speed up your WooCommerce store and help manage load time.
You can opt from four different types of hosting.
- Shared hosting
- Cloud hosting
- Dedicated server
- Virtual Private Server
9. Limit External Resources and Sharing Tools
External resources, widgets and sharing tools can slow down your WooCommerce websites. These factors increase the size,dependency of DNS queries, downloading span of external resources, adding more HTTP requests all affect the speed of your WooCommerce websites. Removing widgets can boost the performance of your WooCommerce stores.
Affiliated ads, display images, and animation that are hosted on the external servers too slow down your WooCommerce store. Too many affiliated ads can decrease the page loads of your WooCommerce website. You should ideally host ad images or animation on your own server and optimize the images.
10. Optimize Your Store for Mobile Device Users
There are billions of mobile internet users. Speed up your WooCommerce stores for the best mobile experience. 58 % of smartphone users purchase from the e-stores that load quickly. Use speed plugins if required.
11. Optimization of WooCommerce Admin Dashboard
Both front end and back end optimization are important to improve the speed of your WooCommerce stores. Firstly, perform front end optimizations, which includes optimizing the Frontend Scripts and modifying other frontend elements, followed by the backend optimization. However, optimizing the WooCommerce store in the front end extends to the backend too!
12. Optimize HTML Code
Optimization of HTML code can improve the performance of your WooCommerce store. HTML code facilitates servers to read, compile, and deliver pages required by users. Maintaining HTML code clean and ensuring it is clean on a regular basis is most important for improving the speed of your WooCommerce store.
13. Optimize Website Code
Optimize websites files and code to manage the load speed time of your sites. Keeping CSS files to minimum can also contribute to speeding up your WooCommerce store.
14. Speed Up Videos
You may have videos embedded in your online stores showing users the features of your products, their specific functions and more. Video files are heavier than images or other files. Plan hosting them with YouTube or Vimeo and this will make them lighter.
15. Faster Search Functionality is Ideal
Helping customers find their products quickly is the best way to keep them happy. A faster and more accurate Product Search wizard on your online store can make a considerable difference to the way they perceive and interact with your website.
Filters for categories, tags and dates boost search convenience and speed up the search functionality. This speed up option can bring in good customer satisfaction and settle plenty of customers happy in your WooCommerce store, improving their user experience.The search functionality can be improved using specific plugins.
WooCommerce default categories and tags can be helpful too! There are WooCommerce stores that list hundreds of products in shop and categories pages. But when traffic is high, such features can delay the loading of your WooCommerce store. If you limit your lists to 15 to 20 products on every page, there can be improvement in site loading. Pay special attention...
16. Google's PageSpeed Insights
You can get good instructions to improve the page load. Use web Vitals also for additional SEO and accessibility recommendations.
17. Remove Bloat and Update Regularly
You will have to update WordPress, WooCommerce, plugins, themes regularly. Ensure that any theme or plugin does not add boats to your dashboard.
18. Stop Get Refreshed Fragments AJAX Request
As users cause changes in shopping cart, WooCommerce uses Get Refreshed Fragments AJAX Request to update shopping cart contents. If you stop this request, the next option is enabled Redirect to the cart page after successful addition’ in your WooCommerce → Products settings panel.Then, user is redirected to the Cart page after adding a product to their cart.
19. Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Your website visitors access the site from around the world. Thus, visitors from another Geographic Location shouldn't have to access the resources from the central server. Besides putting extra weight on the central server, it takes more time to serve the assets to a user accessing the site from far away.
CDN saves a snapshot of your site’s resources and delivers it from the nearest server to the user. Default, CDNs disable caching and the ones that don’t perform the function can slow the store’s admin panel greatly.
20. Remove Unused Stylesheets and Scripts
WordPress themes and plugins load scripts and stylesheets on your site’s page. Removing these reduces bloat and fastens your page loading. Do not forget to proceed with this step and improve the speed of your website.
With these 20 useful tips, you know how to speed up your WooCommerce stores! WooCommerce optimization can boost the performance of your online stores. Why shouldn’t you improve and speed up WooCommerce stores while you have good solutions at hand?
Benefits of Speeding Up Your WooCommerce Stores
Needless to say, boosting the speed of your WooCommerce stores will draw whopping traffic to it. You can win customers to your site if it is fast loading. Time is precious and it is truly correct in the light of your WooCommerce stores. No one has any second to waste or wait.
So, getting your customer attention is most important and it should be managed within seconds.Their attention span is minimal. A slow loading website can be the most deterring factor. Customers are not ready to compromise with slow loading websites and you should adhere to this factor with due importance. You need to assess the actual performance of your website and focus on how to speed up WooCommerce stores.
Survive Competition
There are plenty of e-stores operating online and vying for customer attention. You should be able to survive competition by boosting the speed of your WooCommerce website. Online shoppers will be eager to explore your e-store if it is fast loading. No one wants to be vexed with slow loading websites. Remember!
Reduce Bounce Rates
You customers will bounce off your site if it is slow loading. You can dynamically reduce bounce rates if you optimize the speed of your WooCommerce stores.
Increase Conversion Rates
Visitors browsing your WooCommerce stores will be eager to purchase if the site is loading fast. Your customers will love to search online for their required products, if the load time is less and they will be keen to purchase. Moreover, they will purchase more if the sites load easily helping them shop plenty within the shortest span.
Improve User Experience
There is no second choice to high user experience than a fast loading WooCommerce website. Customers will love their shopping experience if the site loads quickly showcasing all their products, enhancing convenience for search. They will be eager to revisit the site and engage in shopping in your e-store frequently.
Mobile Shoppers and Loyal Customers
You can expect high customer loyalty while improving the speed of your WooCommerce stores. Loyal customers will continue on loyalty for the longest span and other customers visiting WooCommerce stores will prefer to be loyal, plan recurrent purchases as the fast website will be most appealing to them. Mobile shoppers will also be able to access WooCommerce stores easily and plan purchases.
Expect New Customers
If your WooCommerce store is fast loading, then new online shoppers will flow into the website. It can create a lasting impression the first time shoppers including mobile shoppers plan purchases online in your WooCommerce stores.
Guaranteed Experience
In the contemporary era, time is a vital element. Every person is busy! So, a fast loading website adheres to their needs. You can help them save time and love their shopping experience if your site is fast and easy to navigate. In fact, your estore will be their new reason to love online shopping.
Survive Competition
Customers love online shopping as products are only a click away. Continue to provide them an enjoyable experience and do not disappoint them with slow loading websites that eat up their time and leave them frustrated. If vexed with such predicament, they may switch over to other shopping options and you will lose customers.
Catering to Customer Preference
Plenty of customers prefer quick loading websites and this has become a main factor for store owners. They are all resolved to improve the speed of their WooCommerce stores and plan speed tests regularly before opting for speed optimization.You should plan the same too!
Speed is Important for Online WooCommerce Store
Remember, a fast website is a user-puller. Optimize the speed of your websites now! A quick loading website is most preferred by users. A slow website can be most disappointing for customers and douse their enthusiasm to browse online. Work on your page speed, you must!
Opt page speed optimization services and boost the speed of your slow websites! Watch customers flow into your site loving their page navigation process.Page speed experts will detect, diagnose, and fix the issues affecting Core Web Vitals and slowing your site. Low page speed will increase the bounce rate and will bounce customers off your sites.
Core Web Vitals and Google’ New Ranking Algorithm 2021
Core Web Vitals is part of the page experience update. It is the new set of metrics for Google Page Experience which is Google’s new ranking Algorithm. Failing to optimize Core Web Vitals drops CTR or Click-through rate.
You must optimize the core web vitals of your websites for a higher SEO ranking on Google Search. Google will factor the Core Web Vitals of your WooCommerce website to confirm its position in SERP. Plan action and do not lose visitors, orders, revenue and profits.
Results of Improving Core Web Vitals
Page Speed Increase
Boost your website speed with a lower LCP score.
User Experience
Fast loading sites are a popular choice of users; work on your user preference with quick loading sites.
SEO Ranking
Optimization to Google Core Web Vitals will shoot up your website’s ranking
Conversions
Good user experience prevents bouncing of customers and promotes customer conversions.
Revenue
If the user experience of your sites are high, more customers will plan purchases and sales will shoot up. This will generate high revenue.
Components of Core Web Vitals
LCP - Largest Contentful Paint
Largest Cintentful Paint (LCP) is the time taken for the largest element to load on the page such as images or headings. Ideal LCP score is 2.5 seconds.
FID - First Input Delay
FID measures the time it takes for the site to respond to any User Interaction. Delay in responding to the user input in a web page is called First Input Delay (FID). The Ideal FID score is less than 100 ms.
CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is the measure of the largest layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifespan of a page. The ideal CLS score is less than 0.1.
Final Thoughts
There is no reason why you shouldn’t be concerned about the speed of your website. It is imperative that you identify any new factor affecting the speed of your WooCommerce store such as broken links and work on improving poor performance. In fact, go ahead and conduct a speed audit on your WooCommerce store to identify performance issues and areas that diminish your website performance. All should go fair with your WooCommerce website, if speed optimization is completed well!
