WooCommerce is the most popular and free e-commerce platform for WordPress, powering over 5 million websites worldwide. However, running a successful online store requires more than just installing WooCommerce and adding products. You also need to make sure that your website is fast, secure, and optimized for SEO and conversions.
Why is speed important for WooCommerce websites? Because speed affects everything from user experience to bounce rate, from search engine rankings to revenue. According to Google, the probability of bounce increases by 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. And a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.
So how can you speed up your WooCommerce website in 2023? In this post, we will share 14 proven tips that will help you improve the performance of your online store and boost your sales.
1. Choose a Better E-commerce Hosting Provider
The first and most important step to speed up your WooCommerce website is to choose a reliable and fast hosting provider. Not all hosting providers are created equal, and some are better suited for e-commerce than others.
For WooCommerce websites, you need a hosting provider that offers:
- Cloud hosting with high availability and scalability
- Premium network with low latency and high bandwidth
- Powerful servers with enough CPU and RAM resources
- NVMe SSD storage for faster disk access
- Redis object caching for faster database queries
- Cloudflare Enterprise CDN for faster content delivery
- LiteSpeed web server for faster HTTP requests
- Full page caching for faster page rendering
- Free SSL certificates for secure transactions
- Automatic backups and staging environments for easy updates
- WordPress and WooCommerce optimized environment for better compatibility
- 24/7 support and security monitoring for peace of mind
One of the best hosting providers that meets all these criteria is Kinsta. Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress hosting provider that uses Google Cloud Platform’s infrastructure and Cloudflare’s CDN to deliver blazing-fast performance for WooCommerce websites. Kinsta also offers many features and tools that are specifically designed for WooCommerce, such as:
- WooCommerce caching rules to exclude cart, checkout, and account pages from caching
- Automatic database optimization to clean up expired transients and customer sessions
- Plugin updates service to keep your WooCommerce plugins up to date and secure
- WooCommerce performance monitoring to identify and fix any issues that affect your store’s speed
Kinsta also has a friendly and knowledgeable support team that can help you with any questions or issues related to your WooCommerce website. You can check out Kinsta’s plans and pricing here.
2. Install a WordPress Caching Plugin
Even if you have a fast hosting provider, you still need a WordPress caching plugin to speed up your WooCommerce website. A caching plugin can reduce the server load and improve the page load time by storing a static copy of your web pages in the browser or on the server.
There are many WordPress caching plugins available, but not all of them are compatible with WooCommerce. Some of them may cause issues with dynamic features such as cart, checkout, and account pages. Therefore, you need to choose a caching plugin that works well with WooCommerce and has options to exclude these pages from caching.
One of the best WordPress caching plugins that is compatible with WooCommerce is WP Rocket. WP Rocket is a premium plugin that offers many features and options to optimize the speed of your WooCommerce website, such as:
- Page caching with automatic cache clearing on product updates
- Browser caching with GZIP compression and cache lifespan settings
- Preloading with sitemap-based cache warming and prefetching DNS requests
- Database optimization with automatic cleanup of revisions, transients, spam comments, etc.
- File optimization with minification, concatenation, and deferment of CSS, JS, and HTML files
- Image optimization with lazy loading, WebP conversion, and CDN integration
- Advanced rules with options to exclude pages, cookies, user agents, etc. from caching
WP Rocket is also very easy to use and configure. You can install it on your WooCommerce website in minutes and activate it with one click. You can also fine-tune the settings according to your needs and preferences. You can check out WP Rocket’s features and pricing here.
3. Use the Latest PHP Version
PHP is the programming language that powers WordPress and WooCommerce. The version of PHP that you use on your server can have a significant impact on the performance of your WooCommerce website. The latest version of PHP is faster, more secure, and more compatible than the older versions.
According to WordPress.org the recommended PHP version for WordPress is 7.4 or greater. However, many hosting providers still use older versions of PHP by default. This can slow down your WooCommerce website and expose it to security risks.
To check the PHP version that you are using, you can use a plugin like Display PHP Version or WP Health. If you are using an outdated version of PHP, you should contact your hosting provider and ask them to update it to the latest version. Alternatively, you can update the PHP version yourself from your hosting control panel, if your hosting provider allows it.
Updating the PHP version can improve the speed and security of your WooCommerce website. However, before you update the PHP version, you should make sure that your WordPress theme and plugins are compatible with the new version.
