WooCommerce powers almost 40% of the eCommerce sites on entire Internet. Automattic, the parent company behind WordPress.com acquired WooCommerce in 2015 and are willing to take it to the next level. It is a powerful platforms for eStores but at the same time it is bulky too. It comes loaded with many features to allow administrator and shop managers to operate a full-fledged eStore. If you’re a complete beginner, consider taking an eCommerce course that will teach you how to create a unique and effective site. I think Cortney Fletcher’s eCom babes price is the best deal when you compare it to other online e-commerce courses.
WooCommerce checks lot many things when a customer loads the product page on browser. Some of these checks may be important but some checks may not be useful for your store. For example, in case of digital delivery of a product, the inventory check is not so important.
These checks are nothing but separate functions written in PHP language. Every function takes some execution time and finally adds up to the page load time of the eCommerce website.
Every second matters when you run an eCommerce Store.
With these simple tweaks on WooCommerce Settings page, one can make this amazing eCommerce platform even better. These tweaks will improve the page load time without any doubt. It will definitely help you grow your eCommerce website. If you’d like to get further information related to commerce retailers, look here.
Geo-location
There is an option on WooCommerce Settings page to locate the default location of the customer. The options is available under WooCommerce ==> Settings ==> General Options –> Default Customer Location. If you are not going to physically ship the product or not serving any special need based on the location, this option is of no use. Well, to locate the customer effectively, it keeps downloading the latest database from MaxMind Geolite and it must be taking certain time to fetch the details based on IP address.
Disable this option by selecting No location by default.
Inventory Management
Digital goods are always available (in most cases). Inventory management like showing items in stock or out of stock is good for physical products. WooCommerce is having a full fledged inventory management and it is great but you don’t need this feature in case of digital goods.
If you are only selling downloadable products, disable the complete inventory management from WooCommerce ==> Products ==> Inventory ==> un-check the field “Manage Stock”
Shipping and it’s Calculations
Shipping and it’s calculations are very important for eCommerce websites. It involves the delivery charges and depends on the location of the customer
But you are not going to physically ship the downloadable products, right! So avoid all the functions are features of shipping and it’s calculations. This will again speed-up your WooCommerce site and it’s performance. You can completely disable the shipping related activities on WooCommerce from WooCommerce ==> Settings ==> General Options ==> Select Disable Shipping and Shipping Calculation in the field Shipping Location(s).
Now there will be no check and calculations for shipping related processes. Now your WooCommerce setup became much lighter. But still there is scope to make it even faster.
Taxes
Many digital product sellers manage their taxes internally and in that case they do not show the taxes on billing side. This is more common if you are serving global customers. If you are not applying any taxes, the WooCommerce should not check or even care about taxes.
There is an option on WooCommerce ==> Settings ==> General Options ==> Enable Taxes. Make sure that the field is disabled else WooCommerce will keep checking for applied taxes (if any).
Limit Functions to Relevant Pages Only
WooCommerce loads many scripts and CSS files and does lot many extra things on the site as compared to non-WooCommerce sites. It has to handle the Add to Cart, Checkout, PrettyPhoto, FancyBox, Placeholders and many other elements. These things are good to have on Product pages or Cart/Checkout pages but should not load on blog posts, contact form page, about the company page etc.
This simple solution to make WooCommerce enabled eCommerce sites faster is valid for eStores selling physical products too. There is a plugin named WooCommerce Speed Drain Repair to limit such loads only to the Products and related pages.
Once you active this plugin, it executes some functions to avoid loading WooCommerce specific JS an CSS on other part of your site and make the site faster.
Increase Memory
WooCommerce sites can be speed-up by applying the best caching plugin, CDN Services and other techniques already discussed on WPOptimus. Apart from that, it is recommended to have 256 MB memory size for WordPress to make it load faster.
Increase the allowed memory of WordPress to 256 MB to make it faster.
Serve Downloads from Third-Party Services
Digital downloadable products can be uploaded to the media library and served from there. For example, if you are selling a software, the .zip file can be uploaded from the “File Up-loader” panel of WooCommerce on products page and allow customers to download it. But again, if you are uploading a large file, the download process may slow down your site and it g=is getting served from the same server.
I recommend to use third-party storage service like Amazon S3, Dropbox to serve the downloadable products. There are plugins to server digital downloadable products from Amazon S3 and Dropbox.
It will free the server bandwidth and allow the site’s pages and other resources to load faster.
Summing up
WooCommerce is made for all kind of eCommerce sites. Based on your own eStore, you should tweak WooCommerce to get the best out of it.
By simply looking at the options available on WooCommerce, you can customize it to make it best suitable for your store. Plugins are good for extra functionalities but keep an eye of that and remove plugins which are not in use or not required.
Faster WooCommerce will load the site fast, keep your customers happy and boost sales too. Share any other tweak that you did on your eStore to make it even faster, I will be glad to learn and share that too.
I spend most of my time around WordPress and related plugins. It is almost impossible to resist myself from sharing good tips, tutorials and updates related to the platform. After all, I am a blogger by passion.
Much appreciated! I have never thought about Geolocate as slowing things down. This would apply for membership sites using Woocommerce where the location of the member is not important
Thanks. Yes, membership sites based on WooCommerce should also disable Geo-location, if not is use.