The Fastest WooCommerce Themes

Speed is a big part of what makes an online store convert. A heavy theme slows every page a shopper sees, and it’s one of the easiest things to get right from the start. Trimming plugins and switching to a light theme is cheap and can make a large difference.

The themes below are ones we’ve used hands-on. All of them are mobile responsive with clean, light code, and there are free and paid options for every budget.

What Makes a Theme Fast or Slow

Fast themes tend to share a few traits:

• Less code, so the server has less to process
• Smaller files, so there’s less to download
• No dependence on the jQuery JavaScript library
• Cleaner CSS, with inline CSS so the page can render sooner

Slower themes usually load more JavaScript and lean on off the shelf libraries and services that weren’t built with speed in mind, such as Google Maps and Google Fonts.

jQuery deserves a special mention. Many themes use it for advanced features, page builder themes in particular. A theme that depends heavily on jQuery has to download and run that library before the page renders, which adds processing time.

The 8 Fastest WooCommerce Themes

1. Shoptimizer

Shoptimizer is the fastest theme we’ve found that’s built specifically for WooCommerce, which is why it’s our top pick. It’s premium, designed for speed, and packed with features aimed at lifting conversions:

• Core pages built with Elementor, so you can edit them with drag and drop
• A conversion focused checkout, with space for microcopy near the Add to Cart button
• Trust badges on the cart and checkout pages
• Sale countdown and limited stock timers
• Key product details that stay pinned at the top as visitors scroll
• A request a callback option for more expensive products

Downside: it has a lot of features, which can be overkill for a small store or someone new to ecommerce.

2. Divi

Divi has around 500,000 users and has improved a lot on speed in recent years. It isn’t the fastest theme here, but it’s powerful, flexible and fully integrated with WooCommerce. Highlights include its own Divi Builder drag and drop page builder, a shop module for placing WooCommerce products into your own designs, detailed control over fonts and colours, responsive layouts, and off canvas cart and filter menus.

Downside: it needs some work on settings and CSS to make it fast.

3. Neve

Neve from Themeisle works for almost any type of site, and its WooCommerce Booster module adds ecommerce features similar to Shoptimizer’s. It’s designed to load quickly without jQuery, has built in AMP support, comes with a large range of templates and has a free version you can download and try without signing up.

Downside: it has fewer features than Shoptimizer, which may actually suit smaller stores.

4. Astra

Astra is one of the most popular WordPress themes around and works well for stores. It comes in under 50kb and doesn’t rely on jQuery. WooCommerce features include multiple store layouts, pre-built WooCommerce demo sites, infinite product scroll, sale bubble icons, a slide down cart that doesn’t need a page reload, off canvas product filters and search, a distraction free two step checkout and quick view for products.

Downside: it isn’t built only for WooCommerce, though its design flexibility and Woo specific features make up for that.

5. GeneratePress

GeneratePress is one of the fastest WordPress themes available, largely because it doesn’t depend on jQuery. It’s a multipurpose theme under 30kb with built in WooCommerce support, a distraction free checkout mode, control over upsells and related products, an AJAX add to cart button with a sticky panel, a cart icon with a drop down for your menu, and Customizer options for WooCommerce styles and layout.

Downside: being so lean means it can be a little light on features.

6. OceanWP

OceanWP sits in the same group as Astra and GeneratePress. It’s not quite as lightweight, but it makes up for that with customisation options and very thorough WooCommerce integration. You get importable WooCommerce demo sites, sale badges, a drop down cart icon, a multi step distraction free checkout, product quick view, off canvas cart and filter menus, and plenty of layout and style options. It’s been around since 2016.

Downside: it’s not as fast as some others on this list, though its age means fewer bugs and more features.

7. WoonderShop

WoonderShop is, like Shoptimizer, focused entirely on WooCommerce and on building a conversion optimised store that works well on mobile. It includes a visual Customizer, the SiteOrigin page builder and three skins to choose from. Store features include a distraction free checkout, trust badges, a cross selling widget, AJAX product filters, autocomplete product search and AJAX add to cart with a drop down cart. There’s a 7 day free trial with no credit card needed.

8. Storefront

Storefront is the default WooCommerce theme, made by the same team behind WooCommerce. It covers all the essentials, loads quickly and is built on solid code. Some people find it plain looking, but there are plenty of Storefront child themes to give your store a more distinctive design.

Your Theme Is Only Part of the Picture

A fast theme helps, but your hosting provider matters even more. Good hosting keeps your store stable and loading as quickly as it can. The other big factors are where your server is located, whether you use a CDN, and the total weight of each page in megabytes.

Theme speed also affects SEO, because site speed is a ranking factor. In our experience page weight is a key part of that, and pages over 3 to 5MB tend not to rank well. Image optimisation, lazy loading and next gen formats like WebP are the main ways to bring page weight down.

Speed Up the Rest of Your Store

Once your theme is sorted, this video walks through optimising the rest of a WooCommerce store, and our guide to fixing a slow WooCommerce store covers each step in detail.

On WP Alpha you can also turn on Nginx static file serving and Redis object caching, and test a new theme safely on a staging site before switching your live store.