Has your eCommerce website been developed using WordPress & are you facing a slow loading speed of your website? And if you think that you may be losing a lot of sales because of the slow loading speed of your WordPress eCommerce website, let me tell you that you are 100% correct.
Several studies have proved that more than 40% of online users would quit a website immediately if it’s not loaded within 5 seconds. Not only that, but you may also be losing the opportunity for your website to rank in higher positions in search engines.
Most eCommerce developers never care about optimizing the loading speed and you won’t even realize this problem with your website until your customers start complaining about it. But it’s never too late.
In this post, I am going to share 5 ways that will help you enhance the loading speed of your WordPress-based eCommerce website.
#1 Use the WordPress Caching Plugin
One of the best ways to speed up your WordPress eCommerce website is to use a caching plugin like W3 Cache.
What does a cache plugin do?
A cache plugin saves dynamically generated HTML files and serves them from the cache (i.e. reusing previously generated data). So, when any user makes a request, the website would render the pages from cached data rather than loading all of the PHP scripts from WordPress every time.
As a result, your site loads far quicker for all its visitors.
#2 Optimize WordPress Database
Why database optimization?
All the information on your website is stored in a database & whenever a query to delete a product, post, page, or any other data is run, it removes the data, which we all know. But do you know when this happens, it leaves empty space in the database tables which takes up a few bytes. Over a period of time, if not optimized, these empty spaces can result in oversizing the database.
By optimizing your website database you can reclaim the empty space and this also helps your database size to remain optimized.
You can optimize your database either from phpmyadmin or by using a WordPress plugin.
A plugin like WP-Optimize can help you optimize your eCommerce website database regularly and keep it free from unused spaces. With a few clicks, you can set your database to get optimized without writing any manual scripts or codes.
#2 Update WordPress Plugins Regularly
If your WordPress eCommerce website is running slow, you must check and make sure that all of the plugins that you have used for your website are always updated. Outdated plugins not only slow down the websites but they also invite intruders to enter the website and inject malicious scripts in the files.
Updating WordPress plugins is a few clicks process only. So, even if you don’t possess technical skills, you can also update the plugins yourself. However, its always a great idea to take a full backup of the whole website before you update any plugin or theme because if there are several customizations done in the original plugin, updating that plugin may cause the website to show errors.
If you see any error or problem in your website after updating any of the plugins, restore your backup and consult a WordPress developer who can help you to resolve the problem.
#4 Choose WordPress Themes Carefully
A beautiful and attractive WordPress theme may also become the reason for the slow loading speed of your eCommerce website. If you are not sure about it, just switch to a basic theme and observe the performance. If you find that the loading speed is improved by disabling your original theme, they you must search and find an appropriate theme for your website.
Before doing so, you may also try hiring a WordPress designer for fixing up the codes of your existing theme. Sometimes, few minor changes in the theme can lead to a great result.
#5 Choose Reliable Web Hosting
Web hosting, up to a certain extent, is also responsible for the performance of a website. So, if you’ve tried all the methods mentioned above but your eCommerce website loading speed is still slow, then you must consider switching over your web server.
With a cut throat competition, its not difficult today to find a reliable web hosting provider at affordable prices. There are several recommended web hosting companies like Hostgator, iPage and iPower that provides outstanding servers and great support at unbeatable price.