You need auto-scalable hosting for raw, unmetered, & consistent performance to power the backend of your WooCommerce store. An optimized WooCommerce backend is significant for efficiently running operational tasks and improving site speed.
A large part of running an online store requires managing the backend operations including product updates, order management, and shipment management. These tasks can easily overwhelm your staff and potentially disrupt business operations if the backend of your store becomes slow. The majority of WooCommerce users focus on speeding up the front-end of their store and do not pay attention to the performance of the backend which is equally important for the success of your online business.
In this article, we will highlight the drawbacks of having a slow WooCommerce backend and how they affect the efficiency of your business followed by the possible causes behind a slow WooCommerce backend, and finally, the remedies that are effective in speeding up the backend of your WooCommerce store.
Convesio has direct experience in improving our clients’ backend speeds. Just ask The Golfer’s Journal:
Convesio’s stress testing and optimization strategies have significantly boosted our site’s ability to handle high traffic and complex operations.
–Brendon Thomas at The Golfer’s Journal
Read the full case study to learn more.
Why is it Important Not to Have a Slow WooCommerce Backend
Your WooCommerce backend is where everything that appears at the front-end of your store is managed. The backend has many moving parts, both automated and manual. Your staff is busy processing the new orders, updating the inventory for new customers, managing shipments, and resolving order complaints. For everything to run smoothly and efficiently, it is crucial to avoid delays at all costs. A slow WooCommerce backend might not seem like a big issue today but over time it can kill productivity, increase the chances of error, and contribute to a slow website.
A Slow Backend Leads to a Slow Frontend
Both the front-end and back-end of your WooCommerce store draw power from the same server resources, meaning a slow backend can result in a slow WooCommerce site. That means when the backend of your WooCommece store becomes slow and clunky it also slows down the front-end of your store. The backend processes could involve many plugins sending concurrent requests back and forth for updating records to fetching large data for reports. All of these tasks are resource-intensive and slow down the WooCommerce backend.
Similarly, uploading new products, updating existing SKUs, filtering through customer’s orders, and generating monthly reports can put a strain on your server resources, ultimately causing slow loading times for both the front-end and back-end of your WooCommerce store. These requests are dynamic and can not be cached, therefore, optimizing them for performance is very important. Other online businesses like membership sites and eLearning sites should also consider optimizing the WordPress backend as users access it frequently for various tasks.
Counter-Productive for Staff
A slow loading WooCommerce backend dashboard can also annoy anybody working on it. It can affect the productivity of your staff who have to wait unnecessarily for a task to be completed before they can jump to another one. This is also not good for business, especially in a busy season where more customer orders need to be processed in a set period of time. A slow WooCommerce backend might not seem like a big issue today but over time it can kill productivity and increase the chances of error.
Less Efficient for the Business
All of the above makes your online business less efficient and less profitable. As a business owner, you should look for ways to make operations run smoother as your revenue depends on it. A slow WooCommerce backend could be your first warning of a slow online store, frustrated staff, and loss of revenue.
What Makes WooCommerce Backend Slow
The first step towards speeding up a WooCommerce backend is to understand the underlying problems that make WooCommerce sites run slow.
Bloated Database
WooCommerce stores orders and products like posts data which means your database size increases over time and it takes longer to run searches and filters through this large database. This is the reason behind long delays while searching for a customer order from last month or running a search query based on a filter. In some cases, the server simply refuses to fetch results and throws a timeout error instead.
Sometimes, displaying a large number of items in the backend can also cause performance issues. So instead of displaying a list of fifty orders per page, shrink it down to just 20 and use the pagination feature instead. You won’t be working on fifty orders at a time anyway.
Too Many Plugins
Plugins are awesome but too many WordPress plugins are not! It is true that there is a plugin for everything but really you do not need to have everything on your WooCommerce store. Plugins are tempting and thousands of them are free to install but they too come with a price that your server pays in precious computing kilobytes currency. Of course, there are good and bad plugins but even the good ones need resources to run, and the bad ones can do a lot more damage.
Plugins that are constantly running in the background, especially the ones that track visitors’ activity and keep updating the database for generating reports or “giving a customized experience” to a user are often the reason behind a slow front-end as well as for cluttering the backend of your WooCommerce store. Plugins when activated can make multiple requests and run several database queries in order to serve their purpose whether you need them or not.
Third-party Services
Nowadays, almost every tool comes with a WordPress integration which is welcomed by its users. These third-party services include tracking services, payment gateways, shipment integrations, chatbots, off-site backups, etc. A common misconception is that these third-party services live outside of the online store, thus, are lightweight and have no impact on the performance. Which is not entirely true. Third-party services do make a lot of external calls and can load tons of client-side code at the expense of your server or user browser. All of that can slow down the backend of your WooCommerce store.
To make things worse, some third-party services are so poorly designed that they do more damage than good. Let me explain that with a real-world example. One of our clients was using an unconventional payment gateway mainly focused on their country. The site barely went live and crashed two times. It turned out that the website for that payment gateway was down and apparently they were using the same server for powering the licensing service inside their plugin. This triggered time-out errors in the licensing service preventing everything else on the page from loading.
Bad Custom Code
WooCommerce allows the flexibility of adding your own custom code to add the desired features. However, if the custom code is not written properly and does not follow the best practices as defined in WordPress codex can add unnecessary complexities that can slow down your WooCommerce backend.
It is important to ensure that the custom code does not use deprecated functions and only requests the database for the information where needed. For example, calling functions inside the init function unnecessarily can cause delays on every page load.
Bad Configurations and Server Resources
Similar to bad custom code, bad configurations, and design strategies can also slow down the WooCommerce backend. For example, one of our clients had an Order Detail page that was taking 30 seconds to load! It turned out that they had a custom field on that page with multiple menu options and the database had to query through thousands of rows just to fetch these few menu options.
Outdated WordPress Core and PHP
Outdated PHP versions and WordPress core are also major reasons behind a slow dashboard. Still, a lot of WooCommerce stores run on PHP 5.x and miss out on the performance gains of switching to PHP 7 and above. The newer PHP versions are leaner, optimized, secure, and provide better compatibility with the rest of the hosting stack. Similarly, updated versions of WordPress and WooCommerce are lightweight and much more efficient than their predecessors. Depreciated functions and inefficient coding practices lead to errors and decrease the performance of the backend.
Enabling OPCache through the PHP Extensions menu in cPanel can significantly improve PHP performance and CPU utilization.
Measuring WooCommerce Speed and Performance
Measuring the speed and performance of your WooCommerce store is crucial to identify areas that need improvement. There are several tools available to help you measure your store’s speed and performance. Here are a few:
- Google PageSpeed Insights: This tool analyzes your website’s speed and provides recommendations for improvement. It evaluates both mobile and desktop versions of your site, offering insights into how to enhance your WooCommerce store’s performance.
- GTmetrix: GTmetrix provides a detailed analysis of your website’s speed and performance, including page load time, page size, and the number of requests. It also offers actionable recommendations to optimize your WooCommerce site.
- Pingdom: Pingdom tests your website’s speed from different locations around the world and provides recommendations for improvement. This tool is particularly useful for understanding how your WooCommerce store performs for international customers.
- WebPageTest: WebPageTest offers a comprehensive analysis of your website’s speed and performance, including page load time, page size, and the number of requests. It allows you to test your WooCommerce store from multiple locations and browsers.
When measuring your WooCommerce store’s speed and performance, it’s essential to consider the following metrics:
- Page load time: This is the time it takes for your website to load completely. A faster page load time enhances user experience and can lead to higher conversion rates.
- Page size: This is the total size of your website’s pages, including images, CSS, and JavaScript files. Reducing page size can significantly improve load times.
- Number of requests: This is the number of requests made to your server to load your website’s pages. Minimizing the number of requests can speed up your WooCommerce store.
- Server response time: This is the time it takes for your server to respond to requests. A faster server response time ensures a smoother and more efficient user experience.
How to Speed Up WooCommerce Backend with WooCommerce Speed Optimization
Speeding up a WooCommerce backend is a lot simpler after you have identified the possible causes that slow it down in the first place. Using a cache plugin can also help in reducing the load on your server and speeding up the backend. The process of speeding up the WooCommerce backend is different from speeding up the WooCommerce front-end. That is because, on the backend, the optimization is more like an elimination process where we shred the extra load and fix bugs in the code. We also need to dig a little deeper with the help of certain tools to find the real culprits behind slowing down the dashboard.
Install Query Monitor
Installing the Query Monitor plugin should be the first step toward speeding up the WooCommerce backend. Query Monitor is a debugging and monitoring tool that gives you visibility of slow database queries, API requests, and AJAX calls that take longer times and make the WooCommerce dashboard slow. WordPress Query Monitor plugin is a great and convenient way of monitoring every transaction that happens between your WooCommerce store and server. It is a tool that helps you make sense of what’s going on and what actions you can take to fix the issues.
Let’s briefly look at the Query Monitor in action.
Inside your WordPress admin, go to Plugins and add a new plugin. Search for Query Monitor, install it, and activate it.
Once the plugin is activated, you will notice a new option at the top bar of your admin panel. These numbers represent Page generation time, Peak PHP memory usage, Database query time, and the number of database queries made. This shows that the Query Monitor plugin has already started working and gathering useful data about your WooCommerce site.
Click on these numbers and a complete Query Monitor dashboard will expand. The complete overview of this dashboard is out of the scope of this article, however, I will walk you through the two important sections that will help you speed up the WooCommerce backend. The first section is Queries which contains a list of all the database queries running on your site. Next to each query you can also see the time it takes to process it and the component requested that query.
You can also filter the types of queries and the components. For example, if you wish to see just the queries made by a suspected plugin, select that plugin from the component’s list. Another useful feature of this plugin to help you speed up the WooCommerce backend is the Scripts feature.
This gives you complete visibility of all the scripts running on your site. From this option, you can filter the scripts based on their host and identify third-party scripts. Similarly, you can also filter through the script’s dependencies and the corresponding elements depending on these scripts. This way you can see what features are dependent on what scripts and what will be the outcome of removing that script.
Query Monitor is an effective tool for monitoring database queries and API requests. Install it and start playing with it to understand what each section does and can help you make the right decisions in speeding up the WooCommerce backend.
Remove Unnecessary Plugins and Use a WooCommerce Speed Up Plugin
After installing and understanding how Query Monitor works, getting rid of unnecessary and problematic plugins should not be an issue. Based on the Query Monitor’s report, you can identify the plugins that take a longer query time or make an unusual number of requests to your server or to a third-party service. At this point, you can either decide to deactivate them and activate them only when required or replace them with a better WooCommerce plugin or simply uninstall them.
You can skip Query Monitor altogether and simply check the performance of your WooCommerce backend by deactivating and then activating each plugin one by one. Although this method might not give you very useful insights you can still use it to make a quick check especially if you have doubts about a particular plugin that you recently updated or installed.
Monitor Using New Relic
New Relic is a renowned Application Performance Management (APM) tool that gives far more in-depth performance analysis of your WooCommerce store than Query Monitor. It is free to use with 100GB of data and for 1 user which for the majority of small to mid-sized WooCommerce stores is sufficient. Let’s see how you can integrate this useful tool to speed up the backend of your WooCommerce store.
Go to the New Relic WordPress Quickstart website and create your account. Once the account is created, add your data source which is the process of generating a command inside the New Relic dashboard that connects New Relic with your server and your WordPress application. This integration is beyond the scope of this guide as it can vary from host to host. Some hosting providers do not allow root access and you need to contact their support to get New Relic installed on your server.
After getting New Relic, you can begin exploring various features. The tool offers a huge range of options to analyze the performance of your WooCommrce store. The most important feature of New Relic is its Transaction traces feature which gives a detailed snapshot of all the transactions happening on your site. It allows you to filter through slow transactions, database calls, and external resources.
Similarly, it also gives a detailed usage breakdown of WordPress themes and plugins. From New Relic’s dashboard, you can see which theme or plugin takes a long time to respond and contributes to a slow WooCommerce backend.
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WordPress site transactions and their duration. Source: New Relic
Optimizing WooCommerce Settings for Performance
Optimizing your WooCommerce settings can significantly improve your store’s performance. Here are a few settings to consider:
- Disable cart fragments: Cart fragments can slow down your website by making unnecessary requests to your server. Disabling them can improve your website’s speed. You can do this by adding a small snippet of code to your theme’s functions.php file.
- Disable AJAX cart: The AJAX cart feature can also slow down your website by making unnecessary requests to your server. Disabling it can improve your website’s speed. This can be done through the WooCommerce settings or by using a plugin.
- Limit the number of posts on your blog feed: A large number of posts on your blog feed can slow down your website. Limiting the number of posts can improve your website’s speed. You can adjust this setting in the WordPress Reading settings.
- Disable pingbacks: Pingbacks can slow down your website by making unnecessary requests to your server. Disabling them can improve your website’s speed. This can be done through the WordPress Discussion settings.
Image Optimization for WooCommerce
Images can significantly impact your WooCommerce store’s speed and performance. Here are a few tips to optimize your images:
- Compress images: Compressing images can reduce their file size, making them load faster on your website. You can use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to compress your images without losing quality.
- Use the correct image format: Using the correct image format can also improve your website’s speed. For example, using JPEG for photographs and PNG for graphics can improve your website’s speed. WebP is another format that offers excellent compression and quality.
- Use image lazy loading: Image lazy loading can improve your website’s speed by loading images only when they are needed. You can use plugins like Lazy Load or WP Rocket to enable image lazy loading, ensuring that images are only loaded when they come into the viewport.
- Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN can distribute your images across multiple servers, reducing the load on your server and improving your website’s speed. Services like Cloudflare or MaxCDN can help you implement a CDN for your WooCommerce store.
Caching and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Caching and CDNs can significantly improve your WooCommerce store’s speed and performance. Here are a few tips to consider:
- Use a caching plugin: A caching plugin can store frequently-used data in memory, reducing the number of requests made to your server. You can use plugins like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache to enable caching. These plugins can cache pages, objects, and database queries, speeding up your WooCommerce store.
- Use a CDN: A CDN can distribute your static assets across multiple servers, reducing the load on your server and improving your website’s speed. Services like Cloudflare or MaxCDN can help you implement a CDN, ensuring that your WooCommerce store loads quickly for users around the world.
- Enable browser caching: Browser caching can store frequently-used resources locally, reducing the need for repeated requests. You can use plugins like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache to enable browser caching, ensuring that returning visitors experience faster load times.
Mobile-First Optimization for WooCommerce
Mobile-first optimization is crucial for WooCommerce stores, as most online shoppers use mobile devices to shop. Here are a few tips to optimize your WooCommerce store for mobile devices:
- Use a responsive theme: A responsive theme can adapt to different screen sizes, ensuring that your website looks great on mobile devices. Choose a WooCommerce-compatible theme that is optimized for mobile performance.
- Optimize images: Optimizing images can improve your website’s speed on mobile devices. You can use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to compress your images, ensuring they load quickly on mobile networks.
- Use a mobile-friendly page builder: A mobile-friendly page builder can help you create optimized and lightweight pages for mobile devices. Plugins like Elementor or Beaver Builder allow you to design mobile-responsive pages with ease.
- Enable mobile caching: Mobile caching can store frequently-used data in memory, reducing the number of requests made to your server. You can use plugins like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache to enable mobile caching, ensuring that your WooCommerce store loads quickly on mobile devices.
By following these tips and optimizing your WooCommerce store for mobile devices, you can provide a seamless shopping experience for your customers, regardless of the device they use.
Host on Optimized WooCommerce Hosting
Achieving high performance is almost impossible if you are not hosting your WooCommerce store on an optimized hosting provider. At the end of the day it is your hosting that powers the backend and front-end of your WooCommerce store. Thus, it is important to carefully pick the best WooCommerce hosting for your online store.
Managed WooCommerce hosting like Convesio encapsulates all the features needed to run your WooCommerce store optimally and without any hiccups. We do this through a highly scalable and performant hosting stack built to solve these crucial issues. Unlike conventional VPS hosting, we use container technology to host your WooCommerce store which auto scales without any downtime to accommodate growing traffic and scales down when traffic goes back to normal. This ensures an ample amount of computing resources like RAM, CPU, and PHP workers are always available to your WooCommerce store.
Furthermore, we use Redis as an in-memory object caching that runs database queries way faster than conventional methods and makes the WooCommerce backend runs a lot faster. Since the WooCommerce backend is dynamic and can not be cached, Redis speeds up the query processing time as it runs on RAM instead of disk storage. This reduces the latency to microseconds as it eliminates the need of searching through the data inside a disk which is a lot slower.
On top of that, Convesio business and enterprise customers can use Object Cache Pro free of cost. Object Cache Pro is a WordPress caching plugin designed to give a performance boost through compression, serialization, and optimization of Redis-related processes. It is fully compatible with WooCommerce and even other caching plugins like WP Rocket and W3Total Cache.
Final Thoughts
The advantages of speeding up the WooCommerce backend are obvious. It not only improves the productivity of your staff but also ensures uninterrupted backend operations which is crucial for the success of any online business. You may begin your optimization journey by installing the Query Monitor plugin or configuring New Relic with your server and if that sounds too complicated then try Convesio managed platform and experience the difference instantly.
FAQs for WordPress Speed Optimization Service: Speed Up Your Site
1. Why is it important to fix a slow WooCommerce backend?
A slow WooCommerce backend impacts operational efficiency by delaying tasks such as order management and product updates. This not only frustrates staff but also slows down the frontend of your store, affecting user experience and potentially reducing sales.
2. How does a slow WooCommerce backend affect my online store?
A sluggish backend leads to a slower frontend as both draw resources from the same server. This can result in delayed order processing, slow product updates, and poor customer service. Optimizing the backend ensures smooth operations and enhances user satisfaction.
3. What are the common causes of a slow WooCommerce backend?
Common causes include a bloated database due to large amounts of product and order data, excessive plugin usage, poorly optimized third-party services, inefficient custom code, outdated PHP or WordPress core, and improper server configurations.
4. How can Convesio help speed up my WooCommerce backend?
Convesio offers high-performance hosting optimized for WooCommerce. Our platform handles backend optimization through efficient server configurations, support for updated PHP versions, and scalable resources that prevent slowdowns during traffic spikes.
5. What steps can I take to speed up my WooCommerce backend?
Key steps include using tools like Query Monitor to identify slow database queries and plugins, removing unnecessary plugins and scripts, optimizing database tables, updating to the latest PHP and WordPress versions, and configuring caching and server settings.
6. How can Query Monitor help in speeding up my WooCommerce backend?
Query Monitor is a plugin that provides insights into database queries, API requests, and script dependencies within WooCommerce. It helps pinpoint plugins or scripts causing slowdowns, allowing you to deactivate or optimize them for improved performance.
7. What role do plugins play in slowing down the WooCommerce backend?
While plugins add functionality, too many or poorly coded ones can significantly slow down backend operations. It’s crucial to regularly review and deactivate unnecessary plugins to reduce server load and enhance performance.
8. Can New Relic be used to monitor WooCommerce backend performance?
Yes, New Relic is an advanced Application Performance Management (APM) tool that offers detailed performance analysis for WooCommerce. It tracks transactions, database calls, and plugin performance, making it easier to optimize your store’s backend.
9. How does Convesio optimize server configurations for WooCommerce backend speed?
Convesio optimizes server configurations to handle WooCommerce’s specific requirements. This includes scalable resources, efficient load balancing, and support for modern PHP versions to ensure your store operates smoothly even under heavy workload.
10. Why choose Convesio for WooCommerce hosting?
Convesio provides specialized WooCommerce hosting designed to enhance backend performance. With automated scaling, dedicated support, and proactive optimization, Convesio ensures your online store runs efficiently without the hassle of managing complex server configurations.
For more information on optimizing your WooCommerce backend or to explore Convesio’s hosting solutions, visit Convesio’s WooCommerce Hosting page.
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