WooCommerce slows down WordPress…
For several years, we used WooCommerce for our software site. Basically overkill for a few software products and also a bit annoying, since you needed a whole bunch of plugins and customizations to ensure legal compliance in Germany or to have certain payment methods and license key generation.
But since we were using WordPress, it integrated well at first glance. We weren’t really happy with it, though. A major issue was performance. With WooCommerce enabled, the site was noticeably slower.
WooCommerce slows down the website
Page loads were noticeably slower; adding an item to the cart sometimes took a few seconds. It was even worse in the admin area. Things often got really sluggish there. Creating or editing products was a test of patience, and the other sections were slower too because so much extra processing had to be done.
A few typical figures that matched our experience.
On top of that, many things were either not configurable at all or relatively complicated.
The alternative: our own shop, developed with AI
For some time, the idea of developing our own shop system had been floating around in our heads. Tailored to our needs. Often, a simple order form for the website is sufficient.
With AI, we now had the time to set up our own shop system, specifically tailored to our requirements. We could have done it without AI, but it wouldn’t have been feasible in terms of time.
Google PageSpeed after the shutdown
We were curious when we disabled the plugins and WooCommerce last week. Let’s just say we were very pleasantly surprised. On mobile, we used to barely get out of the red zone; now we’re scoring over 90, sometimes even 100, when the server isn’t too busy.
Conclusion and Google Ranking
Things are looking good on desktop as well. Since speed also affects Google rankings, we’re curious to see if we’ll see positive effects here too.
Right now, we’re thrilled with the improved performance, and we’re also saving on licensing costs every year.
