If you already have a WooCommerce website, you’d probably like to optimize it for appearance and speed. Here is how to do it in 6 simple steps.
6 Tips to Optimize Your WooCommerce Website
There are a few reasons why a WooCommerce website has long loading times and often becomes irresponsive. Let’s look at them one by one.
- Outdated themes and plug-ins
- Poor choice of hosting provider
- Bulky media files
- Lack of CDN
- Caching and database issues
- Unoptimized code
1. Install the suitable themes and plug-ins
Themes
First, you should remove outdated themes and disable any scripts that may slow down your website. Next, you should install themes that are developed especially for WooCommerce.
- Botiga – speed index 4.5s
- GeneratePtress – speed index 5.4 s
- Astra – speed index 5.6 s
The top three WooCommerce themes are light, fast, and use default code minification.
Plug-ins
The key point here is to install only plug-ins that match your website’s purpose. Focus on essential ones such as:
- PDF invoicing
- Wishlist
- Product slider
You can expand the list as per your store’s needs, but avoid installing unessential plug-ins.
2. Pick up the right hosting provider
The top-three WooCommerce hosting providers are:
- BlueHost
- InMotion
- A2 Hosting
As WooCommerce works inside WordPress, you should pick up a hosting provider that is WP endorsed. Of these three options, BlueHost features a WooCommerce auto-installer. It also provides unlimited bandwidth for the lowest monthly price.
3. Optimize media files
At this stage, you should take action to lighten up your web store’s images and videos.
Images
First, you should pick up the correct format. Remember that PNG is suitable for logos, pics containing text, and images in the same color.
JPEG is the preferred format for product pictures and multi-colored images. You can install loading optimization plug-ins like LazyLoad. Learn more about it in the WooCommerce ultimate guide.
Videos
To guarantee short loading times, make sure your WooCommerce videos are HTML5-compatible. MP4 is the preferred format for e-commerce videos, as almost all browsers support it.
Make sure to compress large video files before uploading them to your WooCommerce site. Handbrake is the best software to use.
4. Use CDN
How fast your online store’s pages will load depends on how close your customers are to the server. To overcome any physical distance issues, you should use a Content Delivery Network or CDN.
CDN is a group of servers that work together to cache your content and distribute it worldwide while protecting your WooCommerce site from Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks.
5. Resolve caching & database issues
Databases
The good thing about WooCommerce working under the cap of WordPress is that you can use the powerful WP-Optimize plug-in to clean your web store’s database and cache.
Once you install the plug-in, you can perform the following optimizations, together or separately.
- Optimize database tables
- Clean post revisions
- Clean auto-draft posts
- Remove trashed comments
- Clean trashed posts
Cache
Your WooCommerce site’s cache is compatible with the WP super cache, so all WP cache cleaning plug-ins will work on it as well. Here are some useful tweaks:
- Exclude WooCommerce session and cookies from being cached.
- In W3 Total Cache Minify settings, add ‘mfunc’ to the ‘Ignored comment stems’ option.
- Disable caching of the following website sections: Cart, Checkout, My Account.
6. Optimize page code
As the last step, you should delete and compress any lengthy strings of code on the pages of your WooCommerce site.
- Use the Gzip compressor to reduce the size of JavaScript files.
- Use only necessary style sheets.
- Remove unnecessary scripts.
- Remove extra spaces and unnecessary text lines from your HTML code
Conclusion
Having performed all six steps described above, you should now look at the overall design of your WooCommerce Website and remove carousels, HD images, and videos from your homepage.