How to Dramatically Speed Up Your eCommerce Website (20 Proven Tips)

Is your online store feeling sluggish? Slow page speeds hurt conversions and cost you sales.

As an experienced webmaster, I want to share insider tips to optimize your eCommerce website performance. This comprehensive guide will help you:

• Understand why fast sites equal more profits
• Benchmark and monitor your site speed
• Fix common problems causing delays
• Implement 20 proven techniques to slash page load times

With faster page loads, you can increase revenue, boost SEO rankings, and take your eCommerce business to new heights. Let‘s dive in!

Why You Must Speed Up Your Online Store

Higher profits – According to Akamai, a 1 second delay in load time can cause:

• 7% loss in conversions
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
• 11% drop in page views

More sales – Shoppers expect pages to load in 2 seconds or less. 44% will abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. [Source: Google]

Better rankings – Faster sites rank higher in search engines. Page speed is a ranking factor for Google.

Improved experience – 75% of consumers consider page speed an indicator of overall website quality. Fast sites feel more reliable and secure.

Speed impacts every aspect of eCommerce success. Optimizing performance should be a top priority, not an afterthought.

Let‘s look at how to analyze your current site speed and then improve it.

How to Measure Your eCommerce Site‘s Current Speed

First, establish a performance benchmark to know where you stand. Use these tools:

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Pingdom provides a free website speed test from locations worldwide. It grades site performance for both desktop and mobile.

Run a test from multiple locations to get average load times. Identify fast vs. slow pages.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix generates a detailed performance report and suggestions to optimize your site.

It shows how your homepage performs compared to other sites in your industry. See where you can improve.

Google PageSpeed Insights

This free tool from Google analyzes your site against their performance best practices.

It measures mobile and desktop speed then gives actionable tips to speed up your site.

Chrome DevTools

Open DevTools in Chrome to view detailed performance metrics and loading waterfalls as you browse your site.

Identify slow-loading resources causing delays during page load.

Now that you know your starting point, let‘s go through proven techniques to optimize eCommerce sites.

20 Tips to Speed Up Your Online Store

1. Upgrade to a Faster Web Host

Your choice of web host has a big impact on site speed. Using a slow or overloaded server will cripple performance.

For eCommerce stores, I recommend managed WordPress hosts like SiteGround and Bluehost that are optimized for WooCommerce.

Key hosting features that improve speed:

• Built-in caching and content delivery network (CDN)
• SSD storage for faster data retrieval
• PHP 7 or greater for 2x faster PHP execution
• HTTP/2 for more efficient delivery of assets
• Free CDN to serve images and files from servers near users
• Staging sites to test changes in a copy of your live site

Migrating to one of these hosts can shave 1-2 seconds off your page load times. Your site will run up to 4x faster compared to cheap shared hosts.

2. Enable Caching

Dynamic WordPress sites are slow by default. To speed things up, you need to add caching.

Caching generates static HTML copies of pages and serves those to visitors instead of processing requests on the fly.

This drastically reduces server load and speeds up response time since page content doesn‘t need to be rebuilt each time.

For WordPress, I recommend a dedicated caching plugin like WP Rocket or WP Fastest Cache. They implement full-page caching and other performance optimizations with a few clicks.

In addition to a plugin, make sure to enable the built-in caching offered by quality managed WordPress hosts. This multi-layered caching delivers blazing fast speeds.

3. Compress Images

Photos, product images, and other graphics slow down your page loading. Luckily, you can optimize them to speed things up.

Use an image compression plugin like Smush to automatically shrink image file sizes as you add them to your media library. This reduces page weight without affecting visual quality.

Smush can compress JPEG images by up to 60-80% without quality loss. For PNG files, it removes metadata and interlacing to minimize size. This directly speeds up your site.

You can also manually optimize images with editing tools like Photoshop before uploading them:

• Export images for web use
• Adjust the compression level when saving
• Save PNGs with optimization enabled

Finally, choose the best file format for each image – JPEG for photos, PNG for logos and illustrations requiring transparency.

4. Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML

Minification removes unnecessary characters like whitespace, comments and indentation from code. This reduces file size for faster loading.

To automatically minify resources, use a plugin like Autoptimize or enable minification in WP Rocket. They detect style sheets, scripts and HTML and minify them as pages are served.

For more control, you can manually minify and consolidate CSS and JS files with online tools or code editors. Remove whitespace, comments, etc. before saving the minified versions to your theme or plugins.

Minification compresses files by 10-20% boosting performance. It‘s an easy "set and forget" speed gain.

5. Enable GZIP Compression

Enabling GZIP compression for text-based files like CSS, JavaScript and HTML reduces their file size before sending them over the network.

With GZIP, assets can be compressed up to 70% smaller without losing data. This makes pages load much faster.

Most managed WordPress hosts like SiteGround have GZIP enabled by default. If not, use a caching plugin like WP Rocket to automatically enable compression site-wide.

Between caching, minification, and GZIP, you can shrink total page weight by up to 90% for insane site speed gains.

6. Reduce HTTP Requests

Every image, stylesheet, script, font etc. requires an HTTP request to load it. The more requests, the longer it takes a page to fully render.

Aim for under 20 requests per page for optimal performance. You can reduce requests by:

• Combining multiple CSS or JS files into one unified file
• Loading non-essential scripts like social sharing buttons only when needed
• Using CSS image sprites instead of multiple images

Monitor requests in your browser‘s developer tools and optimize pages exceeding the 20 request limit. Removing just 2-3 unnecessary requests can boost speed.

7. Add a CDN for Faster File Delivery

A content delivery network (CDN) distributes your static files across servers around the world. When a user visits your site, assets are loaded from the closest CDN server to reduce latency.

With a CDN, your images, CSS and JS files will load up to 10x faster. SiteGround and Bluehost have built-in CDNs to accelerate static files.

There are also affordable standalone CDN services like KeyCDN and Cloudflare you can add to any host. Integrate one with your site for lightning fast file delivery.

8. Upgrade to PHP 7.4 or 8.0

Switching to a newer PHP version provides noticeable speed gains. For example, PHP 7.4 is 2x faster than outdated PHP 5.6.

Contact your web host to switch PHP versions. Most good hosts run PHP 7.4 or 8.0 by default for new accounts.

Upgrading this server-side component is an easy speed win. Make sure you‘re running the latest PHP release.

9. Install WordPress and Plugin Updates

New versions of WordPress and WooCommerce contain performance enhancements. Keeping your core files and plugins updated ensures you benefit from speed gains.

Log in to your WordPress dashboard and install any available updates:

• WordPress core updates
• WooCommerce updates
• Theme updates
• Plugin updates

Also enable automatic background updates to maintain maximum uptime and speed. Outdated sites are slower and vulnerable to security threats.

10. Choose Lightweight Themes and Plugins

Your theme and plugins impact speed too. Bloated or poorly coded ones can overload your server and slow things down.

Carefully select plugins with only the essential features you actually need. Avoid plugins stuffed with extra flair and scripts that don‘t benefit your store.

For themes, use lightweight options like Astra, GeneratePress and OceanWP. Avoid heavy "page builder" themes with sliders, tabs and excessive JavaScript.

Always test new plugins and themes on a staging site to ensure they don‘t negatively affect speed before deploying them.

11. Optimize the Database

As your WordPress database grows over the years, clutter builds up slowing down queries. Periodically optimizing it improves speed.

Use a plugin like WP-Optimize to:

• Clean up stale data
• Defragment tables
• Analyze performance
• Auto-prune revisions

This declutters your database for leaner size and faster page loads. Keep it optimized for peak performance.

12. Set Up a Staging Site

Tweaking a live production site is risky. Instead, create a staging site to test optimizations and developments there first.

Once you‘ve tuned the staging site‘s speed, safely replicate those changes over to your live site. This avoids disrupting real visitors with downtime or a slow experience from testing.

Many managed WordPress hosts like SiteGround offer integrated staging with one-click copying of your production site. Use it to perfect optimizations offline.

13. Lazy Load Images and Videos

Lazy loading defers offscreen images and videos from loading until users scroll near them. This prevents large media from hurting initial page load.

Enable lazy loading with a lightweight plugin like Rocket Lazy Load. As users scroll down, media will dynamically load only when needed.

Lazy loading can improve page speed by several seconds, especially on product pages heavy with images towards the bottom.

14. Load CSS Asynchronously

Render-blocking CSS holds up page rendering until it finishes loading. For faster page display, load CSS asynchronously.

This allows the HTML to load immediately while CSS loads in the background. The page content appears quicker.

To load styling asynchronously, use a plugin like flying-pages or enable the option in Autoptimize.

15. Defer Non-Essential JavaScript

Some JavaScript isn‘t needed until later. Deferring its load prevents it from blocking page rendering.

Use async or defer attributes when enqueuing scripts or enable this option in performance plugins like Autoptimize and WP Rocket.

This speeds up page display and DOM readiness by loading non-crucial JS in the background.

16. Optimize Images With Next-Gen Formats

Newer image formats like WebP and AVIF outperform old formats like JPEG and PNG. They produce better compression and faster loading.

Use Ewww Image Optimizer to convert your images to WebP and AVIF. Users with compatible browsers will load the faster format. Others will gracefully fall back to JPEGs or PNGs.

Serving smaller image files saves bandwidth and directly speeds up your site.

17. Analyze Performance in Lighthouse

Lighthouse is a free performance analyzer built into Chrome DevTools. Run audits to detect performance issues and opportunities:

• Test mobile and desktop speed
• See optimizations needed to improve grades
• Fix errors like render-blocking resources
• Learn where you can save the most time

Checking regularly prevents new problems from creeping up over time.

18. Monitor Speed Continuously

Occasionally testing is not enough. You need to continuously monitor website performance to catch issues quickly.

Use tools like UptimeRobot and Pingdom to get alerts if your site goes down or becomes slow from a new plugin update, traffic spike, or server problem.

Constant monitoring gives you actionable data to diagnose and fix performance regressions as they happen. Don‘t wait for customers to complain about slow speeds.

19. Improve Email Deliverability

Every eCommerce site relies heavily on emails – order confirmations, shipping notices, password resets, promotions and more.

Most hosts limit or completely block outgoing emails. Trying to send transactional or bulk emails through your web host will result in failures, lost messages, and blocked accounts.

So I recommend using a dedicated email delivery service like Sendlayer or SendinBlue instead.

They specialize in getting eCommerce emails to the inbox. This ensures good deliverability rates so customers reliably receive your important store notifications. Reliable email improves customer experience.

20. Optimize Conversion Tracking Tools

Tools like live chat, emails, popups, heatmaps and A/B testing help you optimize conversions. But loading multiple external scripts can slow down your site.

Carefully evaluate conversion tools before adding them. Select an all-in-one solution like Userlytics to avoid loading multiple scripts.

Only enable session recording tools like heatmaps and screen recordings during initial analysis. Turn them off on your live site after gathering data to remove their performance impact.

The bottom line – add tools judiciously and remove unnecessary ones. Test them first to minimize speed impact. Conversion optimization should improve revenue without hurting site speed.

Achieve Blazing Fast Site Speed

With these 20 tips, you‘re well on your way to optimizing your online store‘s speed for higher revenue and happier customers.

Start with the low-hanging fruit like caching, image optimization and switching web hosts.

Test changes on a staging site to tune performance safely. Use speed tools to catch regressions.

Consistently faster sites increase visitor satisfaction, lower bounce rates, boost SEO rankings and improve sales. Now go make your eCommerce site blazing fast!