Do you ever wonder why your online store does not receive the volume of customers you had anticipated? The time it takes for a page to load can be a good factor. This tutorial demonstrates how to manually or with low-tech tools, speed up your WooCommerce store.
We all want fast service in this age of instant gratification. It implies that the quicker a website loads, the more likely a visitor will buy something. In actuality, 47% of users anticipate a website to load in two seconds or less. Additionally, if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, 40% of users will leave.
We go over some practical advice in the section below that you can use to speed up your WooCommerce website immediately.
No technical experience or advanced programming knowledge is required. We keep things straightforward but effective for WordPress users at all skill levels.
Ways to Speed Up WooCommerce Store for increasing ROI
Now that you know page speed’s importance, it is time to optimize your WooCommerce website. The methods listed below are some of the best for accelerating your online store and boosting ROI.
-
Find a Top-Notch WooCommerce Hosting Company
A website’s performance is significantly influenced by quick and dependable WordPress hosting. It speeds up your website and facilitates a simple customer experience.
Alternatively, poor hosting can make your website load more slowly. Choose a hosting provider for your WooCommerce store that provides uninterrupted uptime at a minimum.
Your website will eventually become weighty due to the growing user base and product pages. On the other hand, an online store experiences several traffic peaks each year, such as holidays, sales, discounts, and other occasions. Your hosting company must manage this growth without delaying the website’s loading.
You can choose from a variety of eCommerce hosting services. You can cooperate with your hosting company depending on your budget, site niche, and goal.
-
The WordPress Memory Limit should be increased.
PHP’s default memory setting for WordPress is 32MB. This limit will automatically increase to 40 MB (for a single site) or 64 MB if it encounters crunches (for a multisite).
However, this memory restriction won’t be sufficient to run a WooCommerce website. At some point, your store may go over the limit, in which case a fatal error message will appear on your dashboard. “Allowed memory size of xxxxxx bytes exhausted,” for instance.
It is advised that you raise it to 256MB. There are two ways to change this memory restriction. You have two options for changing it: either do it yourself or ask your host.
-
Purchase A Quicker WooCommerce Theme
When choosing a theme for your WooCommerce site, consider speed optimization. The WooCommerce theme, among other things, has a big impact on how well your site performs. Poorly coded themes can significantly slow down your website.
Use a straightforward theme whenever possible. Of course, it’s equally crucial to pick a theme that complements the features of your store and appeals to your target market.
There are countless pre-made templates available with cutting-edge graphic design and awesome effects. However, flashy looks and jazzy effects frequently sacrifice performance. Avoid overloaded themes with intricate layouts, eye-catching animations, and other extraneous features.
With top-notch WordPress plugins, you can add those features quickly.
-
Keep Your PHP Version Updated
PHP is the language used to create WordPress. Similar to other languages, it offers ongoing improvements with each update. Along with other improvements, the most recent version of PHP offers greater security and quicker code execution. The smooth operation of your WooCommerce shop depends on each of these elements.
The following are the top 2 advantages of using the most recent PHP version:
- Your WooCommerce site will experience a significant improvement with each new PHP version. Your website should load 3–4 times faster as a result.
- The most recent PHP version enrolls all the new security features and vulnerability patches. Thus, continuing to use outdated PHP versions could put your website at risk.
-
Optimize the WooCommerce Website Images
The main components of a WooCommerce site are images and videos. To describe the product details, The corporate video production and photography department takes thousands of images and videos. Without optimization, using these images could slow down your website. Unfortunately, a lot of website owners commit this error. As a result, they begin to lose clients, which also affects their earnings.
-
Improve the Code on Your Website
Any theme or plugin you install on your WordPress website loads scripts and stylesheets onto every page. These files may cause your site to load slowly. Even if you aren’t using these resources on your site, you still need to manage them.
For instance, loading payment gateway-related scripts on your store’s home page are unnecessary.
Limit the loading of this kind of script to just the checkout and order confirmation pages. Fortunately, the website speed test report will help you identify the assets you should remove. The waterfall chart shows the unnecessary assets that need to be restricted.
Your page load times will be sped up by removing these unnecessary assets from the website. Plugins and scripts can be selectively disabled on pages where they are not required by taking a few steps. These processes include concatenation, minification, and GZip compression. A technique for optimization called GZip compression reduces web files to quicken network transfers.
-
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of dispersed servers that allows a web user to access static content that has been cached on servers. The origin of the webpage, the content delivery server, and the user’s geographic location all play a role in this distribution process.
Let’s say a customer comes to your WooCommerce store from a location close to a server that has already loaded your website. The browser can quickly retrieve the contents from the server. But issues start to occur when the customer’s location and the server are apart. The content then has a long root to travel through, resulting in a slow page load. In this case, a CDN service can solve the geographical distance issue. It is particularly relevant for WooCommerce stores with a global presence.
-
Prevent brute force attacks
When hackers use bots to try to access your website, this is known as a brute force attack. Per-minute, they can test tens of thousands of username and password combinations.
But hold on, this sounds more like a security problem than a speed problem.
Yes, it has an impact on security, but when that many login attempts per minute occur, it can significantly slow down your server and put a lot of strain on it. Fortunately, guarding against brute force attacks is simple. Enabling Jetpack’s free brute force attack protection is all that is required.
-
Identify & Resolve Database Issues
The system that organizes and stores all the data for your WooCommerce store is called a database. The time it takes for a page to load can be reduced if your database is maintained and optimized. Remember that the difference between a bounce and a conversion can be as little as one or two seconds.
Data for a WooCommerce site can be divided into two categories:
Site Content:
The information used to create dynamic HTML pages such as blog, product, and category pages.
Transactional Data:
It is the Data that is generated by a user’s actions. It typically contains updates to your inventory as well as customer order information.
Conclusion:
The last thing you want is to turn away customers who were planning to buy your goods. But that’s a very real possibility if your website loads too slowly.
Your online store’s speed can be significantly increased with just a few easy steps. Start right away instead of waiting until it’s too late!
