WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that we use to convert the WordPress website you have to an e-commerce website. With merely a few clicks, e-commerce website development is possible. WooCommerce is swiftly becoming an eCommerce solution provider for the vast collection of plugins it allows. It is helping small to medium as well as large businesses to go live and improve the products to a concerned community. Being powered by WordPress is among the core reasons that make WooCommerce a preference for setting up online stores. Whether you are a rookie or have secured the fundamentals of running an eCommerce website, using WooCommerce is not hard anymore. But, you need to speed up your WooCommerce site or else the efficiency is lost.  The following are some of the tips that may help you to speed up your WooCommerce site.

  1. Run as little code as possible
  2. Uninstall and delete plugins you do not need
  3. Fix all known errors and bugs
  4. Validate pages with W3C Validator
  5. Database table types and indexes
  6. Keep .htaccess small
  7. Use HTTP/2, and don’t combine files in PHP
  8. Optimize your images, and use correct sizes
  9. Choose fast hosting
  10. Use caching correctly
  11. Use actions to extend WooCommerce
  12. Don’t use Visual Composer or other Page Builders
  13. Disable Cart Fragments
  14. Use A Lightweight WooCommerce Theme
  15. Delete Unused Themes + Deactivated Plugins
  16. Clean Your WooCommerce Database
  17. Upgrade To PHP 7.2
  18. Setup Cloudflare’s Free CDN
  19. Pinpoint The Problem With Query Monitor
  20. Ignore Google PageSpeed Insights (Use GTmetrix)

Tips and tricks in detail

There are a few fundamental systems to follow, to speed up your WooCommerce site. And when you are operating with WooCommerce, it is necessary to keep in mind that WooCommerce itself is fast, it is everything you add to it that can cause it to become slow.

Run as little code as possible

Every piece of code you execute on your site has at some point made a result on how fast a page loads. It is always a great idea to run less code to speed up your WooCommerce site. If you write the code yourself, you must make sure to write proper limits for whether or not to run particular pieces of code, and in what context. A mere case is that it is very essential to not run code that is only needed for the product page, on the category pages. Doing so is a very popular misconception.

Uninstall and delete plugins you do not need

A general problem in WooCommerce, and WordPress in common, is the application of bad plugins. Plugins are an excellent way to extend WooCommerce with superior functionality, but many plugins include irrelevant and bad code. If you have been running the same store for many years, then most probably you will be working with plugins that are no longer maintained, and outdated.

Fix all known errors

All web servers have an error-log, and that is one of your most essential tools when it comes to producing a well functioning plus fast WooCommerce. All PHP-errors are logged in the error log, and if there are mistakes in the log, you should fix them! There are two causes for this. Firstly, it is impossible to keep control of all pages on a WooCommerce site, it often contains thousands of pages – and errors can hide in the most unfamiliar places. Your users and robots will visit almost every part of your site in aggregate. Secondly, and more importantly – performance. It’s easy for a developer to guess that “it’s just a Warning” or “that bug doesn’t produce any visible error”. But all errors take time to process. How much time these errors consume is regularly underrated.

Validate pages with W3C Validator

Correctly structured and perfectly written HTML is critical to assure fast and smooth rendering. And to review for this, you should utilize W3C Validator. If you provide precisely formatted HTML, the browser doesn’t need to calculate how it “thinks” this should be visually reproduced, it can just display it rightly at once – saving resources for other more significant developments.

Database table types and indexes

WooCommerce needs to have a well functioning database. You should employ advanced table types for data storage, like InnoDB. Besides, many plugins query the database in ways that are by default unsupported, or very slow. The basic practice is that all queries shall make precise use of indexes. For the average WooCommerce shop we move in on Servebolt, the plugin gives  20-30% speedier loading times.

Keep .htaccess small

The .htaccess file is an Apache server configuration file used to configure the server. This file is used by WordPress for redirects and other functionality. Some of the banned plugins above try to build entire applications in this file, which will confirm your WooCommerce site with slow performance. You can place .htaccess files in any folder, and as an outcome, the web server will search all paths for .htaccess when you request any file. This is time draining and gets more unfavourable if the .htaccess is large – because the server will have to re-read and re-parse the results on every access. Thus keeping the .htaccess file small is another way to speed up your WooCommerce site.

Use HTTP/2, and don’t combine files in PHP

HTTP/2 launched a technology called multiplexing. Multiplexing facilitates the server to send multiple files to the client over one connection, as opposed to HTTP/1 where every element on the page needed a separate roundtrip. This means that any profits we once got from aggregating and bundling files, now will just make your site slower – because it is additional work. It is nice, and suggested, to use compilers as Grunt or Gulp – but avoid connecting elements and files using PHP.

Optimize your images, and use correct sizes

Modern websites use multiple images. WooCommerce uses WordPress’s media function for image administration, which means that all images that are uploaded are automatically produced in a mixture of dimensions. Even though this is a slightly old school way to scale images, you can speed up your WooCommerce site if you make certain to use the suitable image sizes.

Choose fast hosting

No matter how much, and how hard you work to make WooCommerce fast – your site’s speed will forever be restricted by the speed of your hosting. Consequently, you should choose the most high-speed hosting you can get hold of. If you are having trouble with a slow WooCommerce, you should check out for fast hosting services for WooCommerce.

Use Caching Correctly

You should not use Full Page Caching as a performance enhancer in WooCommerce. That will get you into trouble. What you should do though, is to use Object Caching and Transients. The Object Cache is a mechanism that stores the result of a database query briefly to the memory so that the result can be reused later. This is a technique you should practice if you are reusing data.

Use actions to extend WooCommerce

WordPress has an Action API that makes it attainable to add functions to various parts of WordPress or WooCommerce. Defined in layman’s terms the actions represent different points of time in your code. This makes it easy to add elements to particular places on your front-end, or functions that only run when WordPress or WooCommerce load, etc. In addition to WordPress’s builtin actions, WooCommerce also has a list of actions that makes it very easy to prolong WooCommerce.

Don’t use Visual Composer or other Page Builders

Visual Composer and other page builders are often incorporated in themes you buy. That’s because the page builders include a lot of functionality, and make themes more accessible to sell and milder to configure. As mentioned earlier, more code (read more functions) does always run slower than less code. To get full compliance in the page builders, they load a bunch of variables from the database and trigger tons of PHP code.

Disable Cart Fragments

The most effortless way to disable WooCommerce cart fragments is with Kinsta’s perfmatters plugin. It also lets you disable remaining widgets (including WooCommerce widgets) to make the admin load faster and has other characteristics like disabling the WooCommerce status meta box, disabling scripts, limiting post revisions, heartbeat control, and other things that can decrease CPU usage and make your WooCommerce website load faster.

Use A Lightweight WooCommerce Theme

It is always recommended to use StudioPress themes rather than themes like Avada, which are bloated with useless features. Light themes are supported by a reliable team with proper documentation, frequent updates, and support.

Delete Unused Themes

All themes that you don’t use should be removed. Deactivated plugins and unused themes store settings in your database and they are irrelevant. If you’re not using it, it is better to delete it.

Clean Your WooCommerce Database

You can schedule a database cleanup every 1-2 weeks using WP-Optimize or WP Rocket. This removes trash files like expired transients, spam comments, pingbacks, trackbacks, etc. Always take a backup before executing this.

Upgrade To PHP 7.2

WooCommerce sites should always be working on a fast PHP version (eg. PHP 7.2). Higher PHP versions the faster your site runs. Yet, most WordPress users run their site on outdated PHP versions as they don’t know about it. website development company Toronto

Setup Cloudflare’s Free CDN

There’s unquestionably no reason you shouldn’t be making use of Cloudflare’s CDN. It hosts your website on more than 200 data centres all around the world. This reduces the distance between your server and visitor while offloading resources to their data centres. Cloudflare is easy to set up – sign up for a free plan, run the scan, and they will assign you 2 nameservers that you will change in your hosting account.

Pinpoint The Problem With Query Monitor

Query Monitor has a ton of data that can aid you to debug why your WooCommerce site is slow. It shows you slow loading queries, PHP errors, hooks and actions, and more. Fixing items in Query Monitor may want some technical expertise, but it is deserving of hiring a developer who can repair the problems.

Ignore Google PageSpeed Insights (Use GTmetrix)

Google PageSpeed Insights is not a comprehensive tool for measuring or optimizing your site. Pingdom is one of the most precise tools for measuring load times, but for actual performance suggestions, GTmetrix is preferred. Now you have come across the tips and tricks to speed up your WooCommerce site. For e-commerce website development in Toronto to enhance your business ideas, contact the team of experts at Skyhidev.