WooCommerce speed optimisation.
Slow stores lose sales. WooCommerce is slow for specific, fixable reasons.
WooCommerce gets a reputation for being slow, which is only half fair. It is heavier than a brochure site because it genuinely does more — but most slow stores are slow for a handful of recurring, identifiable reasons rather than because the platform is incapable.
What’s included
- Full performance audit of store and server
- Cart fragment and AJAX overhead reduction
- Checkout performance, where abandonment costs most
- Database cleanup: transients, sessions, orphaned meta
- Product and category query optimisation for large catalogues
- Caching that works correctly with carts and logged-in users
- Plugin audit — finding what is actually costing you
The usual suspects
Cart fragments running on every page load including ones with no cart. A wp_options table full of expired transients. Product queries without appropriate indexes on a catalogue that has grown. Six plugins loading assets on every page to support a feature used on one. And a checkout that cannot be page-cached, so it exposes every backend inefficiency directly.
Checkout deserves separate attention
Checkout cannot be cached the way a product page can, so it is where slow backend code shows up most plainly — and it is the point where slowness costs you actual revenue rather than just patience. It is usually where I look first.
Plugin audit
Most stores accumulate plugins over years, several of which are no longer used but still load on every request. Measuring the real cost of each and removing or replacing the expensive ones is often the largest single win available, and it requires no new code.
Common questions
Will optimisation break my store?
Changes are tested on a staging copy first. Caching in particular is configured carefully around carts, checkout and logged-in users, because that is where careless caching causes real problems.
Can you help with a large catalogue?
Yes. Large catalogues have their own issues — query performance, indexing and admin usability — that differ from a small store.
Do we need to change hosting?
Sometimes, and I will tell you if the server is genuinely the constraint. Often it is not, and moving host is an expensive way to avoid fixing the real problem.
What results can we expect?
It depends on the starting point. I will measure first and tell you what is achievable before you commit.
Have a project in mind?
Tell me what you're building and roughly when you need it. I reply to every genuine enquiry within one working day.