How to manage your shopping app performance from your WooCommerce website?

by App My Site DIY App Builder

Studies show that 85% shoppers prefer mobile apps over mobile websites for purchasing products.

Why is there such an overwhelming preference for mobile apps? One big reason behind this contrast is performance.

Mobile apps simply offer a much higher level of performance than mobile websites. Apps integrate seamlessly in a mobile environment and are thus more equipped at delivering reliable performance.

Bad app performance defeats the purpose of starting an app in the first place. It is very easy to use an online app builder to create an app. Working on its performance though is not that simple.

This piece breaks down the steps you need to take to manage and enhance app performance from your WooCommerce website.

#1 - Select a reliable web hosting partner

When you build a shopping app with a DIY app making solution, you essentially put website and app performance in the same boat.

In other words, the speed of your WooCommerce store impacts your mobile app as well.

This makes it very easy for someone new to the mobile app space to manage speed and performance. All you really need to do is optimize the speed of your WooCommerce store.

The easiest way to optimize your WooCommerce store performance is choosing a good web host.

There are many hosting providers who promise reliability and speed. If you are an AppMySite user, you don’t need to concern yourself with the extraneous process of finding a good web host.

The WordPress web hosting add-on takes care of your hosting needs and consequently enhances your app speed as well.

Essentially, the add-on will migrate your online store to WP Engine, a superfast managed WordPress hosting service. This will have a positive impact on your app speed as well.

#2 - Remove unnecessary plugins

WordPress and WooCommerce are popular partly because they enable you to choose from a whole range of nifty and free plugins.

Many WordPress and WooCommerce plugins are very helpful and even essential to a degree. However, too many plugins can slow down your website and cause a serious impact on app performance.

Generally, people keep trying out new plugins to see if they have any serious utility. This ‘shopping’ approach to website plugins is a major cause of slow website speed.

Take a full audit of your website and remove any plugin you do not need.

Only install new plugins when you have a clear task to accomplish. Don’t just install a plugin for the sake of doing so.

You should adopt the same approach to website themes as well. There are many themes you can install on your website for free. This leads to a lot of memory being clogged by themes alone.

Select a simple theme for your WooCommerce store that makes it easy for customers to enjoy a seamless purchase journey.

#3 - Optimize images

Ecommerce stores are full of product images. If you have a clothing store, you most likely have various product variant images as well.

High quality images are great for your store, but they also slow down your website. You have to strike a balance between quality and performance needs.

It is a good idea to optimize your images and choose a more efficient image format. Using PNGs is only a good idea if you have a superfast web host. If this is not the case, converting your PNGs to smaller-size JPEGs is a much better option.

Optimizing images doesn’t mean you should choose poor quality images. You should instead strike the balance between size and performance needs.

#4 - Use CDNs

CDNs (content delivery networks) are an important tool used by websites to optimize their speed.

How do they work?

CDNs essentially distribute your website content to servers in different parts of the world. This vastly improves website speed as you’re no longer dependent on one server to act on client requests across the globe.

Most prominent hosting partners offer customers free CDNs to shore up website performance.

You can alternatively buy a CDN for your website and consequently improve app performance.

In conclusion

Ecommerce App development has become much simpler with tools like AppMySite around. Anyone can use a free Android & iOS app maker to start an app.

Optimizing the performance of shopping apps is a much greater challenge. This piece covers some simple ways you can enhance the performance of your app performance from your WooCommerce store.