This document provides tips for optimizing a WooCommerce website. It discusses how page speed and the number of maximum supported users are both important metrics for performance. It highlights that websites can collapse if they are not planned to handle traffic spikes from sales, viral products, or influencer mentions. Over 50% of users will leave a site that takes over 3 seconds to load. The document then analyzes factors that can cause a store to slow down or fail, such as inefficient plugins, a large database, or excessive HTTP requests. It provides tools to analyze a site's performance and recommends improving search functionality, eliminating unnecessary cart data, and using a compute-optimized infrastructure and offloaded search to boost speeds, conversion rates, and

2. The Ultimate Guide to
Optimizing Your WooCommerce
Website
Chris Wiegman
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER, WP ENGINE
chris.wiegman@wpengine.com

3. To cover this area exactly:
Size & Rotation
Height = 3”
Width = 4.3”
Position
X-position = 0.5”
Y-position = 0.5”
About Chris Wiegman
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER, WP ENGINE
 University of Florida
 10up
 iThemes
 St. Edward's University
 Southern Illinois University
 And many years as a pilot and teacher

4. WooCommerce Performance

5. WooCommerce Performance
is more than page speed

6. Page Speed Vs Max Users
Page Speed
The speed at which an individual page
loads on the site. This is how “fast” a
user perceives your site to be.
Max Users
How many concurrent users your site
can support before it fails.
Max users is important in
WooCommerce because functions
such as the checkout process and
others aren’t easily scaled.

7. To cover this area exactly:
Size & Rotation
Height = 3”
Width = 4.3”
Position
X-position = 6.5”
Y-position = 0.5”
Slow And Steady Doesn’t
Make The Sale
 Small stores require little thought as to scaling
 Large stores face challenges that can be solved over
time
 Stores of all size collapse when traffic spikes
▪ A popular sale
▪ A viral product
▪ Mentioned by an influencer

8. Websites Collapse If Users Aren’t Planned For

9. 53%
of users who will leave a site with a
page load speed of > 3 seconds
Failure Isn’t The Only Risk
SOURCE: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/

10. Why Stores Slow Or Fail
A RANGE OF FACTORS CAN LEAVE YOUR
STORE UNABLE TO SCALE
 Inefficient plugins or theme
 Too much data in your WordPress database
 Insufficient hosting plan
 Feature bloat
 Poor content choices

11. Analyzing your site

12. What Do We Look For To Predict Problems?
Excessive Function
Calls
1,000 large, well written
plugins is better than 1
small poorly written
plugin.
Large Database
Queries
The WordPress database
is not efficient at scale.
The more we look for data
in it, and the more data we
have to look through, the
slower our site will be.
Extra and/or large
HTTP Requests
The more a user has to
download the slower their
site experience will be.

13. Analyzing Your Site
WORDPRESS PLUGINS AND TOOLS TO ANALYZE YOUR SITE
WordPress plugins to find problems
 Debug Bar
 WP Query Monitor
Other analysis tools
 webpagetest.org
 tools.pingdom.com
 websitecarbon.com
 Google Core Web Vitals
 New Relic APM
 Browser tools
Don’t keep these
active on your
production site!

14. Analyzing
Your Site

15. Analyzing
Your Site

16. Analyzing
Your Site

17. Analyzing
Your Site

18. 3 (And A ½) Ways To Speed Up
Your Site

19. Themes Are Not The Future
Of WordPress

20. Search Matters
64%
use search to
address the
“I-want-to-buy
moment”
43%
of users go directly
to the search bar
39%
are influenced by a
relevant search

21. Our First Elasticpress User
+3%
Orders
-2%
Bounce
Rate
+3%
Revenue
per visitor
+$4,000/yr.

22. Search improves conversions
because shoppers find what
they’re looking for faster.

23. Kill The Cart
Fragments

24. Don’t Hoard Order Data
 Large amounts of order data cost processing time
 Removing obsolete order data is best
 Elasticsearch can index order data
 Most stores export order data to their accounting
software
 Once an order is no longer actionable to a user, it may
no longer need to be saved

25. Easiest way to improve your WordPress store
Faster stores
 Compute optimized infrastructure
 Offloaded search
Improved conversion rates
 Instant Store Search (powered by ElasticPress)
Increase site security
 Automated plugin updates
Faster content creation
 Block collection and creation tools

26. Thank You
Chris Wiegman
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER, WP ENGINE
chris.wiegman@wpengine.com