This document discusses the importance of website speed for e-commerce stores. It notes that slow loading sites can negatively impact conversion rates and search engine rankings. The document provides tips for improving WooCommerce store speed, including changing to a lighter theme, using a faster host, compressing images, disabling unnecessary scripts, implementing a CDN like Cloudflare, adding caching, lazy loading images, and using a plugin like WP Rocket to optimize files. Specific hosts are benchmarked, showing much faster speeds from services like Kinsta and Liquid Web compared to slower defaults. An example theme is tested before and after optimization to demonstrate dramatic speed improvements that can be achieved.

1. EVERY SECOND COUNTS
SPEED UP WOOCOMMERCE & CLOSE MORE DEALS

2. “THE WHOLE ONLINE WORLD
IS GETTING SLOWER,
RIGHT WHEN WE WANT
EVERYTHING TO BE FASTER”
Me
tapping my feet while waiting for the
Microwave to finish heating my pizza rolls
@chrislema

3. In 2018, Pingdom looked at
the top 100 eCommerce
websites. The worst
performers took 5 or
more seconds to load.
Poor performing stores
Running on WooCommerce
Can often take 2-4x that.
But this isn’t unique to a
Particular platform…

4. 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
pourmoi.co.uk/charnos
Milk.co
thecandifactory.com
Yogarebel.com
Helmboots.com
marcwenn.com
Triangl.com
argentwork.com
Bluebella.com
gymshark.com
Unconditional.uk.com
TaylorStitch.com
kharakapas.com
shethinx.com
2019 Performance of the Top Shopify Clothing Stores
FirstContentfulPaint
@chrislema

5. Google’s PageSpeed Insights, shows more than
just load time. You also see “time to interactive.”
That’s the moment when the site can actually
React to the user, when it’s Useful.
The average for those stores was 17.6 seconds.
@chrislema

6. This isn’t a Shopify thing.
This isn’t a WooCommerce thing.
This is a you-need-to-learn-how-to-deal-
with-your-images-CSS-third-party-code-
and-JavaScript-thing.
@chrislema

7. 79% of customers who report
dissatisfaction with website
performance are less likely
to buy from that same site again.
@chrislema

8. 53% of mobile users leave a
Site that takes longer than
Three seconds to load.
@chrislema

9. A one second delay in load times
Has been linked to 7% fewer
Conversions & if you make $100k
A day, a one second improvement
Brings in $7,000 daily.
@chrislema

10. Maybe the most important dynamic
Is simply this – if your store is slow
You’ll drop down in Google’s Search
Results. The first 5 results pull in
68% of all the clicks. That means
Saying goodbye to ALL that traffic.
@chrislema

11. SO WHAT CAN YOU DO TO SPEED
UP YOUR WOOCOMMERCE STORE?
@chrislema

12. CHANGE YOUR THEME – because MOST
OF THE “BEST” WOOCOMMERCE THEMES
Come with bloat.

13. CHANGE YOUR HOST
2000 Products
37,000 Orders
9,000 Customers
HOST Browsing – 50 VU Browsing – 200 VU Buying – 50 VU
Bluehost 10 sec – 12 min errors 4.59 sec – 12 min
WP Engine 3.13 – 3.21 sec 3.16 – 3.21 Sec 5.08 – 6.03 sec
SiteGround 1.89 – 4.74 sec 2.52 sec – 2 Min 2.93 – 58 sec
Kinsta 1.91 – 2.46 sec 1.95 – 2.17 sec 1.73 – 1.91 Sec
Liquid Web 1.65 – 1.99 sec 1.67 – 1.76 sec 1.65 – 1.88 sec

14. COMPRESS IMAGES –
My two favorite are
Jetpack (FREE)
& Imagify (NOT FREE).

15. Disable CART
FRAGMENTATION &
WooCommerce Scripts
on pages That don’t need
them
–
I use Perfmatters (NOT
FREE) to do this.

16. GET CLOUDFLARE - IT IS A FREE CDN.
@chrislema

17. USE FIREWALL
RULES AT
CLOUDFLARE
to protect
against bad
bots.
@chrislema

18. Make the
GTMetrix
waterfall
Your FRIEND
Every time you want
to add a plugin to
your store, run
tests before and
after to see how the
plugin affects your
performance
scores.

19. The waterfall shows you what’s slow

20. HERE ARE
four MORE
THINGS YOU
CAN DO
@chrislema

21. Minify HTML
& CSS Files

22. Lazy load
your images

23. Control the
WordPress
Heartbeat

24. Clean up
your
database

25. The easiest way to do those four things
Is to use WP Rocket

26. Here’s One of
those “Best”
WooCommerce
Themes

27. Hosted on
Vultr,
here is the
performance
on the single
product page
@chrislema

28. Here it is again
but with Astra
hosted on
Liquid Web

29. Applying all
the tips above,
the score
changes
dramatically
@chrislema

30. Even Google
gives the new
version a
really great
mobile score

31. Want more tips for store builders?

32. Chris Lema
VP, Products
Liquid Web
@chrislema