Brendan Tully0 Comments
June 17, 2022
Caching is the process of storing a certain type of data outside of the storage location where your site information is usually placed. This transient data is then more quickly accessible to any repeat site visitor that makes a specific site request. Caching specific types of data allows you to be able to serve up certain parts of your site more efficiently, thereby improving site speeds and reducing CPU usage.
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While this is a bit of a simplified definition given that there’s a bit more to caching, most people are familiar enough with the concept that they can at least understand the basic workings of the process.
However, what most people don’t know is that WooCommerce caching is actually a different beast altogether. Let’s see why this is before we go into the best caching plugins for WooCommerce.
WooCommerce caching falls under the umbrella of web browser caching. The same basic concept applies – data is stored on the hard disc of the computer where the browser is running. The reason why caching a WooCommerce site is so different from, let’s say WordPress sites, is because the content of most product-oriented sites is dynamic in nature. This is why WooCommerce sites have much higher performance requirements than standard WordPress content sites.
The sort of data that is cached on most WordPress sites most often counts as HTML code caching. This allows specific lines of code to be saved in a location on the site visitor’s PC in order to be pre-loaded ahead of time as a way of improving page load times.
The issue with WooCommerce site caching is that it brings Checkout, Cart, and Account pages into the mix. These types of pages require visitors to input their personal information into the required boxes.
Cached data works because the same information is served to each site visitor. When the cached data varies from one visitor to the other, then in the best-case scenario the visitor may see random products that they didn’t select in their cart, and in the worst case, they might have their personal information revealed to other site visitors.
What this all means is that the best caching plugins for WooCommerce are able to meet much higher performance requirements than any plugins for a standard WordPress site, which is how the worst case scenarios can be avoided.
Speaking of higher performance, maintaining your WooCommerce site and the necessary plugins will be much more difficult if you intend to do it on a cheaper or a lack-luster web hosting service.
The hosting service you go for should at least be able to support object caching. Object caching is a type of database caching that speeds up areas such as WordPress backend, the cart, checkout, order management, and various customer functions.
We aren’t new to the site optimization game, and after working on more than 3000 websites, we’re confident that we have a firm grasp on which hosting services can really provide the biggest advantages to their users.
This is why we recommend Cloudways as a hosting option. The service provides you with a WooCommerce hosting option that enables you to manage your site much more easily by using the intuitive platforms, performance-oriented tools, and site boosters.
Depending on the data centers that you use, as well as the amount of RAM, processing power, storage space, and bandwidth you need, the service can cost you as little as $10, and as much as $745. Most average-sized sites usually prefer the plans that range around $50 a month, since you get all of the best perks, without having to burn as much money as the more large corporation-focused, high-end hosting plans.
All of the plans can provide you with SSD hosting options, the 7.3 version of PHP, optimized stacks, and even a CloudwaysCDN that can help reduce the server load.
Most importantly – Cloudways is compatible with all of our choices for the best caching plugins for WooCommerce, and, in fact, comes with Redis already installed.
Before we jump into our pick for the best WooCommerce plugins, we’d like to go over a few of the more notable features that they have. Keep in mind that even with these plugins equipped, you’re still going to need to manually adjust certain settings.
Since all 3 plugins have these features, outlining them in this section will keep repetition down to a minimum, while also allowing us to draw your attention to what we consider to be the most important elements that any plugin needs to have in order to be counted among the best caching plugins for WooCommerce.
Cookies essentially keep track of the requests that site visitors send in on specific pages. This allows the sites to personalize their ads and send the site visitors offers for products they might like based on their internet search history.
WooCommerce cookies do the same thing, but they are used in order to store data about when cart contents are updated. They also allow the site to register which customers added which items to their carts.
Caching these cookies can lead to the shopping cart not updating properly and the customers either not being able to see the items that they selected in their cart, or having completely random items in their place.
This means that you’ll need to set a rule that ensures that the plugin you’re using will exclude these items from the caching process.
WooCommerce has 3 basic pages that it adds to your site. These are the Cart, My Account, and the Checkout pages.
As we mentioned before, all 3 of these pages are dynamic in nature due to the fact that each customer needs to enter their unique personal details into the boxes. This leads to a large amount of data that can’t be cached in order to prevent security leaks of confidential data.
As such, any WooCommerce plugin is also required to be able to skip the information on these pages when it comes to caching site data.
JavaScript code is a key factor when it comes to the performance of a site. The optimization of the code and the overall quantity of unnecessary or junk code can really affect the speed at which certain routines run on your site.
In order to ensure that the JavaScript code runs at optimal capacity, most sites minify it. However, the obvious problem that product-focused sites are faced with is that there is no easy way to distinguish WooCommerce specific code from general site data.
In order to circumvent this issue, you’ll need to go into your base files and manually locate and copy the WooCommerce data. Afterward, you’re going to need to go into your plugin and paste your items into the list of URL’s of Javascript files that need to be excluded from minification.
Our list of the best caching plugins for WooCommerce is likely going to be very different from others that you might see. We’re not saying that there aren’t any other choices that can give these 3 a run for their money. What we are saying is simply that we consider these 3 to be the absolute top of the line in our opinion and based on our experience.
WP Rocket is one of the best WooCommerce caching plugins that are currently available. The plugin comes with general optimization options like lazy loading that can really make an impact on your site performance and improve both the speed and processing power.
Since it’s WooCommerce focused, the plugin also comes with page caching. This will allow you to set up exclusion to the dynamic WooCommerce pages without needing to go into your site files and locating the URL files manually.
Redis is one of the best WooCommerce plugins simply because of the efficiency and speed with which it handles object caching. The plugin comes with a variety of different configuration options, serialization and compression options, as well as cache analytics and preloading features.
One of the hiccups of this plugin is that not every web hosting service supports it. The more efficient ones, like Cloudways, are an exception, but before picking up this plugin, we suggest that you make sure that everything is ok with the hosting service that you’re using, or simply change providers.
This plugin will only cost you $5 per month, and for that price, you’ll be able to gain access to all of the WooCommerce specific features that we previously mentioned which were present in the other plugins, as well as a variety of general WordPress performance-boosting options.
This plugin works well with CDN’s and has a lot of features that go well with high-end sites that are expecting to see a large visitor turnout on a regular basis.
If you’re interested in any of these plugins, remember to run a full analysis on your site after you’ve installed any of them. The chances that there would be a problem that could arise from using these caching plugins is low, but there are certain web host servers and site features that don’t play well together.
If your site and server are compatible with any of these plugins, then you’re going to see quite a difference in overall performance.
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