{"id":3002769,"date":"2020-12-08T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/?p=3002769"},"modified":"2021-06-25T11:09:45","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T09:09:45","slug":"how-wp-rocket-helped-speed-up-woocommerce-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/blog\/how-wp-rocket-helped-speed-up-woocommerce-site\/","title":{"rendered":"How WP Rocket Helped Speed up a Woocommerce Site: Q&A With Shay Toder"},"content":{"rendered":"

We love sharing stories about professionals who choose WP Rocket as a strategic resource for their businesses and make the most of it.<\/p>

We like asking questions that help our readers better understand web performance optimization\u2019s practical advantages and what they can achieve by using WP Rocket. <\/p>

Improving website performance is not always easy. That\u2019s why we also want to share some tips about common mistakes and things to know when taking the first steps.<\/p>

Don\u2019t miss the insights that our new guest shares with us.<\/p>

Interview with Shay Toder<\/h2>

Shay Toder is a well-known professional in the WordPress industry, and you\u2019ll find out why in a moment.<\/p>

Let\u2019s get started!<\/p>

Hi, Shay! Tell our readers a bit about yourself.
<\/h3>

My name is Shay Toder, and I’m a Page Speed Optimization Expert. I won both 1st and 3rd place in worldwide WordPress performance contests, respectively in 2019 and 2020.<\/p>

My job is to improve performance for clients. I also have an online course on How to speed up WordPress sites<\/a>, where I share the secrets & tricks that I use every day, which helped me win the contests.<\/p>

I own a blog dedicated to page speed optimization, where I give new and unique content. For instance, I share valuable resources about improving Core Web Vitals. It\u2019s a hot topic, especially after GTmetrix released a new report<\/a> and included the Lighthouse metrics, as Google PageSpeed Insight already does.<\/p>

What\u2019s something that non-experts believe on web performance that they\u2019re wrong about?<\/h3>

There are common misconceptions about hosting services and icons.<\/p>

For instance, some non-experts could think that hosting doesn’t matter for web performance. It\u2019s not true. Time To First Byte (TTFB) is highly impacted by hosting resources and speed.<\/p>

They could also think that as long as they use a CDN, it doesn\u2019t matter if their hosting service is slow. It\u2019s not correct as well. A CDN only serves static assets<\/a> (e.g., fonts, CSS, scripts, images) while the page comes from the server, and every time the cache is purged, users will get the assets again from the slow server.<\/p>

Non-experts also tend to load a massive amount of icons (1000+) with Font Awesome. They don\u2019t know that they can reduce requests and decrease the page size by loading just the ones they need.<\/p>

What\u2019s the most common mistake users make when it comes to optimizing web performance?<\/h3>

Many users don\u2019t understand the real value of using the Autoptimize plugin, a useful file optimization plugin<\/a>. It\u2019s not a cache plugin, and it doesn\u2019t compete with WP Rocket. You can make the most out of each plugin only if you know what they are built for.<\/p>

Another common mistake is to use a PNG file format for images without a transparent background. JPEG images are much more suitable, as they have a smaller footprint.<\/p>

How often do you use WP Rocket, and how WP Rocket helped you achieve your business goals and win the WordPress Performance Contest?
<\/h3>

I use WP Rocket all the time. I use it on my site and whenever I work on performance improvements for my clients. It\u2019s my first choice for a cache plugin. It\u2019s a combination of a powerful caching plugin without the hassle of the plugins that allow you to change many options. <\/p>

I also used WP Rocket in the worldwide WordPress performance contest 2020, held by Cloudways. I won 3rd place, lagging just by 0.1sec of full load time and 1 point in PageSpeed Insights behind the 1st<\/sup> place.<\/p>

All participants got the same very slow WooCommerce site with many issues that slowed the site down. For instance, the site had two sliders, an Instagram feed, dozens of products, Google Translate, share buttons, Hotjar, and a chat plugin. And everything was on the homepage!<\/p>

The challenge was to improve the page speed results as much as possible.<\/p>

Here are my before and after results.<\/p>

These are the GTmetrix scores (before the interface and metrics changed):<\/p>

\"GTmetrix
GTmetrix scores<\/figcaption><\/figure>

This is the result I got with PageSpeed Insights:<\/p>

\"PageSpeed
PageSpeed Insights score<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Looking at these results, someone could think that it’s not possible. How can a WooCommerce site with so many elements mentioned above have only 5 requests and 244 KB as total page size?<\/p>

Let’s break it down. It\u2019s my specialty! The page contains:<\/p>