WordPress has made creating a website child’s play. You no longer have to be a professional web designer to get your site up and running. With the introduction of the WooCommerce plugin, business owners can now create their own online shops, no fuss involved.Â
Although this plugin has indeed facilitated this whole process, it is not without its faults. If you have already used WooCommerce to set up your shop, you might be noticing that your website is much slower than it should be. So, what causes this? Read on to discover why your WooCommerce website is slow.
You’re Not Investing Enough in Web Hosting
Once upon a time, when the internet was still a novelty, web hosting was prohibitively expensive. However, this service has become very affordable nowadays. This does not mean that all hosting service providers are created equal, though. If you are investing only $12 a month in web hosting, then don’t expect your website to be fast; you simply get what you pay for. In general, there are four types of hosting you can go for: shared, dedicated, VPS, and cloud. If you are subscribed to a shared package, this might be what is slowing down your site since you are basically sharing server space with other users. You do not have to go all the way and get a dedicated server, though, because this can cost $120-$190 a month. Instead, go for VPS packages, as they are usually best suited for people who want to stick to a small budget without sacrificing website speed and responsiveness.
You’re Not Using AMP
Who still uses their computer nowadays to surf the web? Well, we are sure that some people still do, but the vast majority has ditched this old way of doing things. Smartphones are what most people use now to access the internet. In fact, experts project that all internet users will depend solely on their phones for browsing by 2025, isn’t that crazy? This is why the folks at AMPWPTools.com point out that you need to leverage AMP, Automated Mobile Pages. This is a framework originally created by Google to increase website loading speeds on mobile devices. There is an official WordPress plugin you can use if you think that your site needs an extra boost to appeal to smartphone users. You can also install many themes to customize how your website looks when accessed through a mobile device. It is an option worth looking into if you are suffering from slow loading speeds, especially when it comes to the mobile version of your site.
Your Photos Are Too Big
When it comes to the size of your product photos, you may think that bigger is better, but this is not always the case. Actually, photo files that are too big can do more harm than good. Of course, the higher the resolution of a photo is, the larger the file size becomes. This, in turn, makes your WooCommerce website slow.Â
However, you do not have to sacrifice the quality of your photos to make your site faster. With some simple steps, you can compress your photos without affecting their quality. There are a few ways to achieve this. You can either use the plethora of free tools you can find online, or you may search for WordPress compression plugins. In any case, by doing this, your site will become much faster.
You’re Using Too Many Plugins
Customization constitutes a big part of WooCommerce’s appeal. Being able to personalize even the smallest detail of one’s website is what has driven many people to use this service in the first place. Yet, this level of customization can be a double-edged weapon. By adding too many plugins, you are practically slowing down your site. The good news is that you most probably do not use all the plugins you have installed over the years. So, take a look at the plugins you have and get rid of the ones you do not need anymore.
You’re Not Leveraging Lazy Loading
Lazy Loading is a term that refers to the process of retrieving files only when they are needed. For example, if you have a scrollable gallery for your merchandise, it does not make sense to configure your website to load all of the photos at once when most of them are not even visible. By leveraging lazy loading, the site will fetch the images only when they are visible, which will help it become smoother and more responsive.
Having a WooCommerce website is great for driving online sales, which is a must if you run an e-commerce business. To ensure customer satisfaction, making your site faster should be your top priority. Luckily, slow loading WooCommerce websites can be fixed by employing a myriad of methods, which include reducing the number of plugins you have and compressing your photos. So, give the above suggestions a try to be able to pinpoint the root of the problem and fix it right away.
