WooCommerce sites should be super active in all spheres, including the site loading speed factor.
Why?
It has been found that the minimum time a customer waits for an eCommerce site is about 2 to 3 seconds. If it’s taking more time, then the bounce rate increases for sure.
Moreover, the site loading speed is also a significant factor when it comes to search engine rankings.
So if you are an active WooCommerce owner you have to be really serious about optimizing the store images for better user experience and performance.
Because it consumes a hell of a lot of loading time of your WooCommerce store. But we can’t also compromise on the quality of images, since they are one of the main attractive factors of your WooCommerce store.
So that’s where image optimization comes into play!
Image optimization can be simply defined as the process of delivering the highest quality of images in the suitable format, dimensions, size and resolution while keeping the smallest size possible.
Let’s see how this process works and or how it can be optimized in your best interests.
Why is Image Optimization important and its benefits?
As we have discussed above Image optimization is very much important if you want the best results possible from your WooCommerce store.
In short, image optimization helps to improve your page loading speed, boosts SEO rankings and improves user experience.
Techniques to optimize WooCommerce Store Images for Web and Performance
Limit Installed Plugins
As a rule of thumb, you should only install the most essential plugins on your site. In all cases, you should select the plugins with a reputation for speed and performance. To assess plugin speed, make use of a great tool that gives a good idea of how long it takes to load each plugin and if it is worth keeping it on your website.
Optimize Images for Web
Image optimization is essential for the overall speed optimization of WooCommerce stores.
Indeed, images often represent the majority of the bytes downloaded for a page. As a result, image optimization often results in a reduction in page size; hence, it helps you speed up WooCommerce stores. This also has the benefit of reducing the consumption of client bandwidth.
Understand that optimizing store performance is not “one-size-fits-all”. This means that I will not give you specific plugins but describe general strategies for image optimization.
Eliminate and Replace Images
The very first question you need to ask yourself is, “is this image necessary?” Good design should be simple without image overload. As we know, a well-placed image transmits more information than a thousand words. It is up to you to find the right balance.
The following three tactics are often deployed for image optimization on WooCommerce stores.
- Base64: This technique is as old as the Web. It allows you to reduce the number of requests to the server and display images instantly. Be careful not to abuse Base64 and use it on small images, because this can affect the size of your product pages.
- Inline SVG: The inline SVG offers all the advantages of Base64 encoding, but none of the disadvantages. Beware, inline SVGs are not supported on older versions of popular browsers.
- Sprites: The Sprite CSS is also a very old technique for optimizing the display. When you develop your WooCommerce theme, it may be beneficial to group most of your small images into one.
Note that if your store is on HTTP/2, the above three tactics will be counterproductive.
Image Formats
The right image format can make a significant difference in the page load speed of your store.
- JPG: Use JPG for photos, and high-resolution images where you need to show a lot of details.
- PNG: Use PNGs for icons, logos, illustrations, transparent images, etc.
- GIF: GIFs are not so bad for small images, but they are very rarely superior to PNG. So, use GIFs only when you want an animation.
Image Dimensions
Be careful not to upload unnecessarily large images than necessary on your store. Resize images manually or use a plugin such as Imsanity to automatically resize images to acceptable dimensions.
Image Compression
You can compress images manually (through Photoshop) but it is tedious, to say the least.
Compress JPEG & PNG images plugin offers the best performance, besides being easy to configure. You only need to get an API key and the plugin is available to your store. The extension is free for up to 100 images per month. This should prove to be sufficient for many WooCommerce stores.
Responsive Images
What if a mobile visitor visits your store? A 1200px image is inappropriate for him. That’s why some developers have created the RICG responsive images plugin that will display the right image size based on the screen width.
Optimize Website Code
The number of files on a WooCommerce store can be staggering for many users and the number continues to grow over time. The result is slow WooCommerce stores, as the visitors’ browsers have to load up large files for every page.
File Compression
The best-known compression is undoubtedly Gzip compression which reduces the size of static resources. For example, you can compress JavaScript files to half of the original size without affecting the performance. To find out the compression status of your store, try the Gzip compression test.
CSS Resources
There are several techniques for optimizing CSS resources. One of them is simply keeping the number of style sheets to a bare minimum.
The browser must wait for a full load of all stylesheets before displaying anything to the visitor. By reducing the number of style sheets, you considerably speed up the WooCommerce store for the visitors.
It’s good to reduce the number of style sheets, but with WooCommerce it’s almost impossible. Themes are very often focused on “features” and there is, of course, a style sheet for every feature.
It is possible with a plugin to concatenate these files easily. Beware that concatenation is a delicate operation and it is common for this operation to break your live WooCommerce store. I recommend it to test on a staging site first.
JavaScript files
Like CSS resources, large JavaScript files negatively affect the page load speed. Developers can use the same minimization and compression tactics that they use for CSS files.
Unlike style sheets, it is possible to render “ASYNC” scripts to no longer block the display and thus speed up WooCommerce stores. Sometimes concatenation and change of loading type can also break WooCommerce stores. The more scripts you have, the more difficult it will be to optimize them.
Optimize HTML Code
Your HTML code is the roadmap for servers to read.
Through this map, the server can compile and deliver the pages requested by the visitors. However, note that it is your responsibility to keep your code as clean as possible.
Things like additional spaces and hidden texts (for black hat SEO) in your code can have a big impact on the load time of the page. Experts suggest going through your code with a fine comb, to speed up your WooCommerce store dramatically.
Minimize Redirects
Think of your WooCommerce store as a map.
Every time someone clicks on a link to a page on your store, the server counts it as a redirect. Essentially, the server has to divert visitors to the correct location. Although this only takes a few seconds, it may seem like an eternity to the users and is a direct contributor to the bounce rate of your store.
If you have tons of redirects throughout your website, you are eating into server resources and increasing the final page load time for the visitors. Thus, if you can reduce the number of redirects, you will see a significant jump in the page load speed.
Use Server and Browser Cache
WordPress cache plugin is honestly not easy to surpass in terms of performance and ease of configuration.
Developers tested the different cache plugins and discovered that Breeze performs significantly better. This is particularly important because the more complicated a plugin is to configure, the more likely it is that users will make configuration errors.
Server Cache
A WooCommerce store is dynamic and you need to make it static to speed it up. Otherwise, each your server must fetch all the assets from the database and waste valuable time. If your server supports a caching solution, it would simply return the HTML.
Browser Cache
A browser cache can greatly speed up WooCommerce stores for visitors who visit multiple pages of your store. Indeed, the browser can cache all static files such as style sheets and JavaScript files. This allows repeat viewing of the pages much faster.
Improve Web Design
Good performance always starts with good design. Ultimately, performance is about respect. Respect your users’ time and they will be more likely to walk away with a positive experience. Good performance is [a] good design. It’s time we treat it as such.
Does your WooCommerce storefront start with a huge carousel? Are you aware that carousels are virtually useless? Does your WooCommerce store load a video or an HD image in the background? Does your store display all social widgets?
If so, do not forget that all these design elements have a direct impact on the speed of your WooCommerce store. No one prevents you from integrating these elements. I just want to mention that if performance is a priority, you will have to make a choice!
Choose Lightweight Theme
In many cases, the aesthetic decision of a website is on the designers’ end who do not take into account the page load speed. As a result, often the aesthetics of the front end takes precedence over the page load speed.
When finalizing the theme of your website, I strongly suggest picking a theme that is lightweight and optimized for performance. In addition to being responsive, the theme should have a clean codebase that prioritizes speed over aesthetics.
Go for Reliable Hosting
In many ways, hosting is the MOST IMPORTANT factor that affects WooCommerce store performance. Indeed, the underlying hardware architecture is responsible for handling the traffic and serving the relevant data to the users. Thus, the best WordPress hosting should be your first priority.
It is best to choose a hosting provider that:
- Provides data centres across the world
- Offers CDN and SSD-based storage
- Integrates performance-boosting technologies
Note: It is important to choose the server closest to your audience, as it will reduce server response time.
Without talking much about the traditional (Shared, Dedicated, and VPS) hosting solutions, I will only discuss Cloud Hosting.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting offers the best mix of performance and costs for WooCommerce stores. The good thing is that most of the cloud hosting providers follow a pay-as-you-go model that ensures that you pay only for the resources that the store actually consumes.
During the holiday season, the traffic and user requests increase exponentially and traditional hosting solutions could fail in such scenarios. Thanks to the scalability of cloud hosting solutions, businesses can continue to grow despite the load on their WooCommerce store.
Managed WooCommerce Hosting
If you do not want to spend too much time configuring your servers for optimal performance, managed hosting for WooCommerce is the best solution for your store.
All market-leading managed hosting solutions include 1-click free backups, firewalls and other security measures, server upgrades and patches and support by WordPress experts.
Add WordPress CDN
If your WooCommerce store serves customers globally and has a lot of multimedia content or styles to make it much more impressive, I advise you to add Content Delivery Network (CDN). It serves static elements of your store from the location closest to the visitors. This significantly improves the page load time and user experience eventually.
With all the tips and techniques mentioned, it is time to improve WooCommerce performance. If your WooCommerce store takes more than 2 seconds to load, you should start worrying as it will negatively affect everything: from user experience to SEO ranking.
It’s your turn now!
