Your site’s initial speed is the first interaction you have with your customers, so it’s your virtual first impression, and it counts. If you were a brick-and-mortar store you would want your customers to have a positive experience, right?
The same goes for your website. When your customer comes to your site you want to leave a great impression and you want them to have a high-quality, issue-free experience! Having a slow site is going to drive the consumer into the arms of another website.
Some hosting services focus so much on appearance and content that they forget about site speed. This is a huge lapse in judgment because no one is going to see your content if they close their browser because your load time was too long. Make that first impression count!
Does site speed impact SEO?
Yes and no. Site speed definitely matters for your SEO rankings. Why? Well, if your users keep abandoning your site due to long load times then that’s telling Google that your site isn’t a quality resource. No matter how good your content is, if your load times are too long for consumers to stick around, you’re going to see your SEO rankings nosedive over time.
If you load times are too long for consumers to stick around, you’re going to see your SEO rankings nosedive.
How Can You Make Your WooCommerce Faster?
The first thing you need to do is audit your site. This will give you a good baseline to work off of. Go to one of the free tools like GTMetrix or Google Page Speed Insights to first audit your site speed.
1. Choose a premium hosting provider
If you use WooCommerce, the premium WordPress hosting providers I recommend are Kinsta and WP Engine. Kinsta is my preferred choice to host my WordPress and WooCommerce sites. They offer free migrations from any host. A downside is that they are slightly more expensive than WP Engine or SiteGround but well worth it!
Another option is WP Engine. I started using WP Engine for my agency after being fed up with GoDaddy, HostGator, and other budget hosting platforms. WP Engine is a very solid hosting provider and I still have a 30-site plan that I use.
2. Set up a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Premium WordPress hosting providers like Kinsta provide a free CDN with every plan.
3. Resize and optimize your images
If your image on your site only fits 600 pixels then resize your image to EXACTLY 600 pixels wide.
Here are some free image compression tools to use:
4. Advanced optimization
- Enable compression
- Minify CSS, Javscript, and HTML
- Reduce Redirects
- Leverage browser caching
A popular optimization plugin is Autoptimize. I also recommend WP Rocket if you want the easiest interface and straightforward optimization plugin.
Overall, don’t make your customers question if their internet is down. Utilize these simple tips above to make your site FASTER than Usain Bolt.
