by Do you have an online store on WordPress and is loading too hard? Unfortunately, you are not alone.
More and more site administrators are looking for solutions to increase the performance of online stores created on WordPress. So you didn’t do anything wrong. Or rather, you did nothing, in particular, to bring you into this situation.
In order to sell well in an online shop, it is not enough to constantly invest in paid advertising. It certainly helps, but it is not enough. You will soon see that the results are not exactly what you hoped for.
As usual, growing sites over time requires an optimization plan. Yes, this is the SEO plan that everyone is talking about. However, the rules you follow are not generally valid. They need to be thoughtful based on the performance of your online store.
As we all know, for some time now, loading speed has been the most important criterion for ranking sites by indexing algorithms. In short, if you have a “stinky” site, you may not really exist in organic positioning – exactly what matters most.
So let’s see how you solve this problem that can lead to penalizing your online shop.
Hard loading online store on WordPress: getting relevant data
Each optimization must start from some relevant conclusions. So, don’t get me wrong. Run short scans for your online store to see exactly what its loading speed is.
You can do this in many ways – there are many platforms that offer analysis services for the performance of sites and online stores. I recommend that you do not use them. The results they provide are not exactly accurate and may try to trick you into becoming a customer. Yes, marketing in the modern age⁇
What I recommend if you are at the beginning of the road are 2 services: PageSpeed Insights and LightHouse. They are free services provided by Google developers and are based on the analysis algorithms used in the organic ranking and indexing process.
PageSpeed Insights checks the loading speed and provides a performance score. You also have opportunities to optimize results, although the score obtained should interest you the most.
LightHouse is a more complex program that provides more data about the performance of your online store on WordPress. In addition, it provides you with recommendations on how to fix the problems you find.
To use LightHouse, open your site in Chrome. Then press Ctrl + Shift + J and from the developer console click Audit.
This way, you can see if you are facing the issue of loading a heavy online WordPress store. In addition, you will see how serious this problem is for you.
Heavy loading WordPress online store: 3 practical solutions to follow
In most cases, online stores on WordPress are difficult to load due to the issues we are talking about below.
But keep in mind one important thing: WordPress is not a dedicated platform for online shopping.
WooCommerce is the module used on WordPress to create the online store. We are talking about a module that has its own loading time, time that is added to the basic WordPress processes.
So, despite the many benefits offered, WordPress also has a big downside. This disadvantage is missing in the case of platforms dedicated to the development of online stores.
You don’t have an efficient hosting service
For small online stores with few products and low online activity, you do not need a dedicated hosting service. You can even choose the basic package because it will be enough.
However, when the number of products you sell exceeds 1,000, when there are variations of the products, and when you have many daily orders, everything changes.
As WordPress was created for blog development, the platform does not have a feature developed for online commerce. In this case, a separate module is used, and it publishes and uploads your products.
That’s why we require a special hosting service that provides enough performance for efficient uploading.
So, select a hosting package according to the activity of your online store. Do not worry; you can change this package of services when required, depending on the evolution of the shop.
The images you use are not optimized
Usually, a heavy load of the WordPress online store is given by the images of the published products. This is especially true for multi-product sites, or products published daily.
As a general rule, it is a good idea to compress it before uploading a new picture. On WordPress, you can use dedicated plug-ins that do this automatically. Remember one thing: each plug-in also slows down the loading speed of the site.
Therefore, it is best to compress the images separately. You can use Optimole, or other more intuitive services such as RIOT (Radical Image Optimization Tool) or ShortPixel.com.
If you have over 10,000 products (here we also include the existing variations: for example variations in size, color, diopter, cylinder, shaft, and so on) it would be good to outsource the pictures of the products.
Even though for so many products I recommend replacing the WordPress platform with a dedicated one (like Magento), the outsourcing solution is quite efficient. In short, look for a cloud to upload all the pictures on the site.
This way, WordPress will no longer upload images from its own library but will download them directly from the cloud.
Another solution is to delete photos that are no longer used. Being an online store, you definitely have products that are no longer in stock. Or pages that no longer exist but for which the images are still uploaded to the library.
Search Console can be a great help in this regard.
Do a general cleanup to increase server performance and site load speed.
You use too many plugins
As I already told you, the more plugins you use, the worse it is. Heavy loading online store on WordPress is a problem influenced by the number and quality of existing modules in the shop.
For example, one of the hard-to-load plugins is AIO SEO. I know, it’s hard to do without him, and I don’t recommend that. But if you installed 10 more modules in addition to AIO SEO, well, then I think you know what I mean.
You can perform a load time analysis for each installed plugin using a different plugin. I know, the irony is already obvious, but P3 will show you what to give up. After cutting the meat, don’t forget to deactivate the P3 plugin for a cleaner platform.
You are probably wondering how to replace the benefits provided by the modules you are uninstalling. You can replace them with more efficient ones, but the loading speed will continue to suffer.
The best solution is to seek the help of a programmer. It can develop your site exactly the way you want it without the help of plug-ins.
Heavy loading WordPress online store: tips as conclusions
WordPress is an intuitive platform and easily accessible to anyone. But he can’t do them all.
If you still have the same problem after following the above solutions, you will need some more radical actions.
You can consider changing the theme with one that gives you more customization options right from the source code.
You can remove from the graphic design elements that make it difficult to load certain pages. And you can even optimize the feed that updates products based on stock or price.
But, most of the time, it will not be enough. When running an online store with many products, the solution is either a custom theme or a change in the development platform.
You have many options to choose from and Magento, OpenCart, or PrestaShop are just the most popular of them.
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