Do you have an E-Commerce website (using WordPress) that loads slowly?
Don’t worry. By following a few tips, you can easily improve the loading speed of your e-commerce website, without the help of any website developer.
In this blog post, we have shared 5 DIY ways to increase the loading speed or reduce the loading time of your WordPress e-commerce website.
Let’s get started.
#1 Install a WordPress cache plugin
This is perhaps the first and most simple way to improve the loading speed of your WordPress e-commerce website, without hiring a website designer.
All you need to do is, install & activate a cache plugin and make some necessary configurations. There are many free and paid cache plugins that are available free of cost to use with your WordPress e-commerce website.
For us, W3 Total Cache Plugin Works Well.
Here are but a few ways which the W3 Total Cache Plugin improves the loading speed:
- Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript
- Minification of inline, embedded, or 3rd party JavaScript
- Minification of inline, embedded, or 3rd party CSS
#2 Optimize images for speed
Using lots of high-resolution images can also affect the loading speed of your website badly. Do your website has lots of images?
Especially if you have an e-commerce website with hundreds of images, you need a plugin to optimize the images of your website.
Thankfully, there are several great plugins available for your WordPress website that you can install and fix its loading speed issue. One of those useful plugins is SMUSH.
By using such image optimization plugins, you can easily enhance the loading speed of your website and make your web pages load faster.
#3 Use a theme that’s optimized for speed
It’s very important to test a theme on various factors before you or your web developer use it for your WordPress website.
Some of those factors are:
- Loading speed
- Last updated date
- Reviews & testimonials
Using the right theme for your WordPress website is as important as its existence.
A theme can make or break your website.
So, be extra careful while choosing a theme for your website.
You may test your theme loading speed through a reliable tool like https://tools.pingdom.com
Recommended post: How to choose the best themes for your WordPress website development
#4 Check out your plugins
We all know that a WordPress website runs on several plugins to perform a certain set of functionalities.
Most of these plugins are available to use free of cost however some of them are paid.
But all of these plugins are developed by independent web developers or web development companies.
Therefore, you must check the quality of each and every plugin that you or your WordPress developer use to create your e-commerce website. Just like a theme, a single buggy plugin can slow down the speed of your website significantly.
If your WordPress e-commerce website is loading too slowly and you have tried all the above methods, but achieved no success, you must try de-activating all of your plugins and activating them one by one.
During this process, whenever you activate any plugin, just check the performance of your website.
This way, you can identify the plugin that’s slowing down the loading speed of your e-commerce website.
#5 Use a good web hosting company
A web hosting company plays a major role in the performance of any WordPress website, especially its security & loading speed.
Therefore, before you choose any web hosting company for your website, you must ensure its reliability and efficiency.
Here are some of the essential qualities that a web hosting company must have:
- Reliability, that you can check through their existing customers.
- Support team availability (preferably it should be 24/7)
- WordPress support (your web hosting company must have WordPress support too)
A change of web hosting company may also help you to fix the loading speed of your WordPress e-commerce website.
Recommended post: 8 Questions that you must ask your web hosting company
Note:
Following the above 5 DIY ways can help you to fix the loading speed of your website, but if you are not sure about anything, you can consult your website developer.
Also, do make sure to take a backup of your website and database before you make any suggested changes.
