Do you have a WordPress-based e-commerce website & have you been facing issues with its loading speed?
This blog post may help you or your web developer to enhance the loading speed of your WordPress e-commerce website.
First, let’s understand why speed is so important for e-commerce websites and why most WordPress e-commerce websites face loading speed issues.
Why speed is so important for e-commerce websites?
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 on search engines.
Why loading speed becomes an issue with most of the e-commerce websites that have been created using WordPress?
Most WordPress developers don’t pay attention to the optimization of all the websites that they build. As a result, webmasters or business owners have to face the loading speed issue. Eventually, they end up losing sales & business because of the poor loading speed of their website.
Here are 6 great tips for your web developer to optimize the loading speed of your WordPress e-commerce website:
#1 Choosing WordPress Themes Carefully
This is perhaps the most important advice for any WordPress developer. While choosing a theme for any e-commerce website, they must make sure that their chosen theme has the minimum below pre-requisites:
- Optimized loading speed (can be checked through a tool like https://tools.pingdom.com).
- Has good reviews from previous buyers & users.
- The developer is responsive to answering queries.
- The last updated date of the theme must not be too old.
#2 Choosing Web Hosting Company Carefully
Yes, web hosting plays a vital role in the performance of any website, especially WordPress e-commerce websites. There are several web hosting companies like BlueHost that offer specialized servers to run WordPress websites.
Before subscribing to any web hosting company, you or your web developer must ensure that they provide:
- 24/7 Support
- High-performance servers for quick loading
- Quick WordPress installation
#3 Choosing WordPress Plugins Carefully
Similar to the selection of the right theme, it’s equally important to choose appropriate plugins as well. Again before choosing a plugin for any WordPress e-commerce website, a web developer must ensure that it has:
Good reviews from previous users.
The developer is responsive to answering queries.
The last updated date of the plugin must not be too old.
In the event that a plugin causes your e-commerce website to slow down, you may request your WordPress developer to replace it with an alternative plugin.
#4 Updating WordPress Plugins Regularly
Most WordPress websites face a slowdown in their loading speed because of the outdated plugins that have been used to build these websites.
What’s the solution here?
You must hire a WordPress developer for maintaining your website regularly and make sure that all of the plugins on your website are always up-to-date.
If you’re thinking you may not have a budget to do so, you may also consider hiring Indian WordPress developers to build & maintain your e-commerce website. You can easily find plenty of web developers in India who can provide WordPress web development services at an affordable price.
#5 Optimizing WordPress Database
Why database optimization is important?
All of the information on your WordPress e-commerce 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. But 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 your web developer can reclaim the empty space and this also helps your database size to remain optimized.
Your WordPress developer can optimize your database either from PHPMyAdmin or by using a WordPress plugin.
If you know a bit about WordPress website management, you can also optimize the database using any of the reliable plugins for this purpose.
For instance, a plugin like WP-Optimize can help him to optimize your e-commerce 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.
