Fixing a Slow Checkout: A WooCommerce Page Speed & Plugin Audit
Client: A mid-sized e-commerce store selling niche gourmet food products.
Challenges We Faced
The client’s site had high traffic but a terrible conversion rate, especially on mobile, due to critical woocommerce seo issues:
Failing Core Web Vitals
The Google Search Console (GSC) report showed over 90% of their URLs were “Poor” on mobile, primarily due to a high LCP (Largest Contentful Paint).
High Cart Abandonment
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) showed a massive 85% drop-off rate during the checkout process.
Slow Product Filters
Their product category filters (a common woocommerce seo optimization issue) took 5-8 seconds to load.
“Plugin Bloat”
The client had 30+ active plugins for reviews, pop-ups, and shipping, which were slowing down the entire site.
Unoptimized Images
Years of large, uncompressed JPG product photos were killing their load times.
Speed Up Your WooCommerce Store
“Is a slow checkout killing your sales? Our woocommerce page speed optimization service is built to fix plugin bloat and boost conversions.”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Comprehensive WooCommerce SEO Audit
We used PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to get a baseline. The mobile score was 32/100.
Plugin & Page Speed
We audited all 30 plugins, identified the 10 “slowest” ones, and replaced 5 of them with lightweight, modern alternatives.
Technical WooCommerce SEO
We specifically optimized the cart and checkout pages, deferring non-critical scripts on those steps.
We implemented server-side caching for their product filters to provide near-instant results.
Image Optimization
We bulk-compressed all existing product images and converted them to the fast-loading WebP format.
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google PageSpeed Score (Mobile) | 32 | 91 | +184% |
| Core Web Vitals (Mobile) | “Failing” (90% URLs) | “Good” (95% URLs) | Passed |
| Mobile Conversion Rate | 0.8% | 2.1% | +162.5% |
Free WooCommerce Speed Test
“Not sure why your store is so slow? Claim a Free Speed Audit and let our woocommerce seo agency find the bottlenecks!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- Your plugins are your biggest enemy. An App & Plugin Analysis is the first step in any wordpress page speed optimization service.
- Optimize your checkout process. For woocommerce page speed optimization, a slow checkout is a direct cause of cart abandonment.
- Use a premium caching plugin like WP Rocket. It’s the fastest way to fix code minification and caching issues.
- Convert your images to WebP. It’s a non-negotiable for e-commerce.
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- The Plugin & Page Speed audit was the biggest win; we removed 8 plugins that were redundant or slow.
- Fixing the slow product filters had a massive, immediate impact on user experience.
- The server-side caching and WP Rocket configuration drastically reduced the TTFB (Time to First Byte).
