Shopping over the internet has become a way of life for many people. It has become the new standard for customers to anticipate a flawless experience. This is why the WooCommerce store welcomes capabilities like real-time inventory and live chat with open arms. However, if the execution is not perfect, it might result in disaster in the form of a slow website.
Unfortunately, any website that takes longer than three seconds to load will be abandoned by 40% of visitors. This isn’t the end of the awful news. The higher the dumping rating, the slower your website is. A slow website can harm your WooCommerce business in more ways than one. A slow page will not only result in less money, but it will also damage your search engine ranking.
There is, however, something you can do about it. In most cases, the cause of a slow-loading website can be traced back to infrastructure. Things like your theme, hosting, CDN, and plugins have a significant impact and can slow down your site if they’re not correctly organized. There are numerous things you can do to improve the speed of your WooCommerce store and provide your clients with an enjoyable shopping experience.
Here are some tips to make your eCommerce store run faster
Choose a lightweight theme.
Have you ever wondered why some of the most beautiful themes are free while others are not so appealing? The adage “don’t judge a book by its cover” certainly applies here! Yes, your site’s aesthetic is vital, but try for balance. Choose a reasonably priced theme that is both functional and attractive.
A visually appealing theme with many built-in capabilities may sound appealing, but features take time to load. Eventually, they will slow down your website and provide your clients with a bad purchasing experience. Consider the characteristics carefully before deciding on a theme. Make a distinction between features that your WooCommerce store website requires and those you merely want. After that, prioritize your requirements and include only those that will improve the user experience.
Make use of a high-quality hosting service.
Your website’s data and media are stored by hosting providers. It’s the foundation for managing your sensitive data and traffic. Consider driving a car that has a flat tire. Your site’s speed will not improve if your hosting provider is terrible, no matter how many improvements you make.
There are two types of hosting services: managed and unmanaged. Managed hosting services are more expensive, but they are more efficient. You can select from a variety of managed services. Choose the option that best fits your needs and budget. When shopping for a hosting company, seek one that provides the following services:
Has data centers all across the world
Storage is based on CDN and SSD.
Makes use of technology that improves performance.
Another crucial consideration is selecting a server closest to your target audience. The server’s response time is reduced as a result of this.
Improve your memory
Another factor that could slow down your site’s speed is a lack of memory. Unfortunately, the RAM limit for the WooCommerce site will be insufficient in the vast majority of cases. It is recommended that this limit be extended to 256MB. Before you alter any file, be sure you have a backup.
After your site gets online, you can improve your memory. Navigate to the wp-config.php file in the WordPress root folder. Add the following to the message “Happy Blogging” at the end of the file:
define(‘WP MEMORY LIMIT’, ‘256M’); define(‘WP MEMORY LIMIT’, ‘256M’); define(‘WP ME
Last but not least, save the modifications you’ve made.
Resources from the Outside
Any font style, sharing tool, style sheet, or script that isn’t hosted on your WooCommerce server counts as an external resource. Outside resources must be kept to a minimum. The more external resources you employ, the more difficult it is to optimize them. External servers cause your site to load slowly.
Plugins, without a doubt, aid performance. Widgets and sharing tools connect your WooCommerce store to social networking. Many people use third-party resources to improve the appearance of their websites. The issue is that as you add more widgets or sharing options to your site, it becomes slower. This does not assist you in achieving your ultimate goal of increasing the user’s experience.
Remove the widgets and replace them with identical code blocks to eliminate the dependence and increase speed. Using basic share buttons rather than widgets will also help with speed. The share buttons don’t make additional HTTP requests, reducing internal DNS queries. Install only the plugins that you genuinely require.
Images should be compressed.
Let’s face it: a shopping site with no graphics is plain dull! On the other hand, images make up 51% of all web content and take 50% of the load. This significantly slows down your website. This is why compressing the photographs before submitting them is a brilliant idea. This reduces the file size by deleting all extraneous information.
Make sure you’re using the correct file format: JPEG files are the most efficient way to load an image. They’re not as big as PNG. When you need a lot of detail and high quality, JPG is the way to go. Use PNGs for transparent pictures, logos, icons, and illustrations.
Use the proper size:Â If you only have 500 pixels, don’t submit a 1500-pixel-wide image.
GIF: This format is excellent for small images. You have about 2 to 3 seconds to show an animation.
Optimize the Content Distribution Network (CND)
This service consists of servers that distribute material to website visitors. When a client accesses your site from a place close to the server that hosts it, the transferred data does not have to travel far. As a result, it happens swiftly. However, if the distance between your site’s server and the visitor is great, content must travel a longer distance, causing delays. Your content will be served to the server nearest to the person seeking to shorten delivery time.
Using a CDN service can help to overcome the difficulty of physical distance. This is especially critical for WooCommerce stores that sell internationally.
Select Affiliated Ads Carefully
Yes, affiliate advertising pays well. However, having too many of these advertisements on your WooCommerce site can cause it to slow down. Affiliated ads usually include many pictures or animations that are hosted on external servers. As previously said, the bigger your site’s dependency on external servers, the slower it becomes.
Reduce the number of redirects
Every time someone visits your WooCommerce site, they are redirected to a related page. This results in delays. Remove any unnecessary redirects from the entire website. Not only do frequent redirects irritate users, but they also deplete service resources, resulting in a high bounce rate. Removing as many redirects as feasible improves page load dramatically.
Keep in mind to clean the database.
Your website has a lot of information. HTML pages, category pages, and product pages are all available. Then there’s the information gathered when a customer comes in. Customer information, payments, and inventory updates are all part of this. If this information isn’t correctly arranged, it can cause your site to slow down. This not only frees up space but also increases page loading speed.
Increase the speed of your website by using a cache.
Caching is the process of saving resources on the initial request so that the user can be provided quickly on subsequent requests. After that, the cache is held on the server or the user’s device. This is the most straightforward method for speeding up your WooCommerce store. The following are the steps that were taken:
- For a site, the user will request a browser.
- A DNS will work its magic and produce an HTML Page.
- The webpage will be restored using a server-side solution such as WordPress.
The program runs scripts such as JavaScript and queries the database to create a web page. Finally, the webpage is returned to the browser to view.
All of these steps take seconds when done individually, but imagine the load when thousands of users are executing them simultaneously. The cache comes in helpful at this point. It improves website performance while also reducing server strain.
Conclusion
Over one out of every four persons you meet is an internet shopper. The online purchasing trend is accelerating at a breakneck speed. As the number of people increases, so do the expectations. Online buyers have been proven to have a low tolerance for sluggish websites. A WooCommerce store will be abandoned in the first two seconds unless it is incredibly responsive. Using the tactics suggested will ensure that your consumers have a quick and exciting shopping experience that they will find difficult to leave.