The 8 fastest WooCommerce themes in 2025

Speed is an essential factor to consider when selecting a theme for your online store. In this detailed guide, we've rounded up the top fastest WooCommerce themes that will help you create a beautiful, fast-loading, and conversion-focused ecommerce website.

Searching for the fastest WooCommerce theme to create and design your ecommerce site?

Your website's speed directly impacts your conversion rates and sales. If your site loads slowly, your business will lose revenue. Even though your theme isn't the only factor that determines your site speed — factors like your web hosting provider, plugins installed, the number and sizes of images and uploaded files, and others matter too — it's one of the most important.

That's why you need to use a quick-loading theme if you plan to build your ecommerce store using WordPress and WooCommerce. Otherwise, your site will likely face performance issues sooner or later.

Thankfully, there are tons of stellar themes to pick from. In this detailed guide, we've compiled the list of the best and fastest themes for WooCommerce to help you choose the right one for your store. Each theme on this list has been thoroughly tested using three of the best website speed-testing tools. 

We'll start with a general overview of why performance matters for ecommerce stores and how your chosen theme impacts your website's speed. Then, we'll give you an inside look into our speed testing process — including the tools we used and the steps we took to make sure that our testing process is as realistic and accurate as possible. 

Finally, we'll review each theme and its key features and share their test scores and rankings so you can be confident that you are picking the best one for your WooCommerce website. 

Ready to dig into the fastest WooCommerce themes? Let's go!

Short of time?

TL;DR - In a hurry and can't wait to find out the answer to the big question: "What is the fastest loading theme for WooCommerce?" The fastest WooCommerce theme is Shoptimizer. Read on to know how it got the top score, and check out the other fantastic quick-loading themes on the list!

Why does speed matter for WooCommerce stores?

Let's discuss why speed and performance are so important for ecommerce stores. To do this, we'll need to look at the two perspectives that matter: humans and search engines.

Let's start with humans.

A slow-loading website delivers poor user experience (UX), reduces the conversion rates of your ecommerce site, and ultimately causes lost revenue.

There's a lot of research to support this:

• 63% of customers bounce off ecommerce websites when they experience page load times exceeding 4 seconds. Source: ecommerce Speed Hub
• Conversion rates of ecommerce websites that load in one second are 2.5 times higher than those that load in five seconds. Source: Portent
• Improving website speed by just 1 second per page load increases desktop conversion rates for ecommerce sites by 5.6%. Source: ecommerce Speed Hub

And what about search engines?

Google has long confirmed that site speed is a ranking factor. Although there are over 200 ranking factors in addition to speed, it's clear that it is somewhere near the top of the list. 

Overall, websites that load quickly will rank higher in search engine results and benefit from increased organic traffic and online visibility.

Say hello to the fastest WooCommerce themes

Our goal is to answer these questions by the end of this guide:

• Which WordPress themes work best with WooCommerce?
• What is the fastest e-commerce WordPress theme?

However, there are thousands of WooCommerce themes in the WordPress.org directory, not to mention the themes only available from the developers' websites and third-party marketplaces. So here's how we narrowed down the list of the fastest themes.

We began our selection process by compiling a list with a diverse range of WooCommerce themes that are well-known for their speed and performance. 

Then we tested each one and whittled down the list even further to choose the fastest themes based on their page loading times, performance optimization, and overall ability to provide a swift and seamless browsing experience. Finally, we were left with the top seven fastest WooCommerce themes. 

Here's a quick comparison table of how each theme scored in our tests. The average test score (in the last column) is the average of the Google PageSpeed Insight, GTmetrix, and Pingdom results:

 

Theme	Rank	GSI score	GTmetrix score	Pingdom score	Average score
Shoptimizer	1	100	100%	93	97.7
Zakra	2	99	100%	93	97.3
Hello Elementor	2	99	100%	84	94.3
Astra	3	99	99%	84	94
Kadence	4	100	100%	81	93.7
Avada	4	99	100%	82	93.7
ThemeHunk	5	98	98%	83	93
OceanWP	6	100	100%	77	92.3

 

Every theme on this list has met the following requirements:

• Is lightning fast — The average score of each theme on this list is more than 90 out of 100 (based on results from three of the best speed testing tools).
• Looks beautiful and can create an aesthetically-pleasing store.
• Was created by reputable theme companies and is regularly updated to fix bugs and prevent security vulnerabilities.
• Has tons of positive user reviews, comments, and feedback. Every theme on this list has a rating of at least 4.5 out of 5.
• Is highly responsive across desktop, tablet, and mobile screens.
• Can be customized by beginners and experienced WordPress/WooCommerce users.
• Is deeply integrated with WooCommerce and doesn't require CSS customization to add basic WooCommerce features and create a full-fledged ecommerce website.

Next, let's look at each theme and how it scored in more detail. If you want to know more about the testing criteria, then you can find this at the end.

Top fastest WooCommerce themes

Now that we understand the significance of fast website performance, it's time to explore the top contenders. These are the fastest WooCommerce themes that prioritize speed without compromising on design and functionality.

Shoptimizer

Shoptimizer is a WooCommerce theme from CommerceGurus built around the twin objectives of speed and conversions.

It has implemented much of Baymard's research on the topic of conversions with features such as trust badges, a fast distraction-free checkout and one-click order bumps included.

Top features

Shoptimizer includes as part of the package, the CommerceKit plugin, which adds a host of additional functionality to WooCommerce, all built in a performance focused way. Modules include a beautiful grid-based gallery with autoplaying video. Attribute Swatches transforms variable products into something far more engaging that is optimized for fast, visual product variation selection.

Order bumps are a great way to increase the average order value (AOV) by providing optional one-click upsells on the checkout page and in the slide out mini cart. Ajax search displays near-instant search suggestions and product badges makes it simple to highlight specific products on catalog pages.

Waitlists make it easy to capture interest in out of stock items and potential buyers are automatically informed when a product's stock has been replenished.

Pricing

Shoptimizer is a premium WooCommerce theme. You can buy a license for $49, which includes the CommerceKit plugin. A subscription includes updates and support for 12 months.

Fastest WooCommerce theme speed test results and analysis

Shoptimizer is the only dedicated WooCommerce theme on this list. It is hugely popular with hundreds of 5-star reviews with many references to the level of support the CommerceGurus team provides.

This is how Shoptimizer scored on the various tests that we ran:

Google PageSpeed Insights' key metrics

Total Score: 100
First Contentful Paint: 0.5s
Total Blocking time: 0 ms
Speed Index: 0.6s
Largest contentful paint (LCP): 0.5s
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

GTmetrix's key metrics

Performance Score: 100%
Structure: 90%
Largest contentful paint (LCP): 658 ms
Total Blocking time: 0 ms
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

Pingdom's key metrics

Performance Grade: 83
Load Time: 516
Page Size: 263.9
Requests: 37

Conclusion

Without question, Shoptimizer is the fastest WooCommerce theme. It had an average score of 94.3, outscoring Hello theme, OceanWP, Astra, Kadence and Avada.

If you are looking for a dedicated WooCommerce theme with a tonne of in-built ecommerce specific functionality, Shoptimizer should be at the top of your list. With unique in-built capabilities such as order bumps, free shipping notifications and product swatches it comes with a hugely desirable feature-set as standard with all modules working seamlessly together.

Zakra

Zakra is a multipurpose WordPress theme that seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce by offering dedicated ecommerce features. It has multiple ready-to-use WooCommerce templates perfect for online stores in any niche. This includes gadgets, books, fashion, accessories, and more.

Zakra's design consists of classic widgets and WooCommerce blocks. It has multiple ecommerce elements such as a single product, account, craft, shop, checkout page, etc.

The checkout pages are distraction-free as they don’t have distractions like the header, footer, and sidebar. This gives visitors a smooth shopping experience.

Finally, if you love to use Elementor, then Zakra has custom Elementor widgets for WooCommerce.

Top features

Zakra theme provides multiple ready-to-import WooCommerce templates made using Gutenberg or Elementor and features various CTA buttons.

There’s full flexibility for customization. Zakra allows you to customize the template from header to footer and add your custom elements. It offers widget-packed footer styles with 10+ column combinations, while you can also customize the footer by adding blocks, menus, widgets, and HTML scripts.

Zakra follows WordPress coding standards and regularly updates to empower your website with the latest trends.

Pricing

Zakra offers free and paid versions, so you can start with the free version and upgrade to the premium plan as your business expands. While the free version has enough features to get started, the premium version offers advanced features and functionalities, more customization options, and access to premium templates. The premium version of Zakra is available for $55 per year with added value and enhanced capabilities to grow your business.

Fastest WooCommerce theme speed test results and analysis

Zakra is a popular multipurpose theme with 4.9 stars out of 5 stars on the WordPress repository. Its support team is active and gets back to you immediately.

Here are the test results for the Zakra theme, obtained using the different speed testing tools:

Google PageSpeed Insights’ key metrics

Total Score: 99
First Contentful Paint: 0.6 s
Total Blocking time: 0 ms
Speed Index: 0.9 s
Largest contentful paint (LCP): 0.6 s
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

GTmetrix’s key metrics

Performance Score: 100%
Structure: 99%
Largest contentful paint (LCP): 410ms
Total Blocking time: 0ms
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

Pingdom’s key metrics

Performance Grade: 93
Load Time: 536 ms
Page Size: 162.7 KB
Requests: 14

Conclusion

With a total score of over 90 with all the speed testing tools, we think Zakra is the second fastest WooCommerce theme. The tiny page size of the theme is particularly impressive.

Zakra stands out for its exceptional performance and offers feature-rich WooCommerce templates that are SEO-friendly, lightweight, fast, and easy to customize. As a result, we think that using the Zakra theme for your WooCommerce store is undoubtedly a great choice.

Hello Elementor

If you were wondering, "What is the fastest theme for Elementor?" You've found it.

Hello Elementor is a lightweight "starter" theme created by the folks at Elementor, the popular page builder platform. It is a feather-light, minimalist WooCommerce theme that's designed to maximize performance and flexibility.

Because Hello Elementor is a starter theme, it doesn't have a lot of styling out of the box. It also has a child theme if you'd like to make extensive customizations to its code. Hello Elementor works best when combined with the Elementor page builder, an intuitive and user-friendly visual editor. Elementor's drag-and-drop interface and extensive library of pre-built elements and templates let you create unique and visually-captivating product pages and landing pages, and add other sections to your website.

Top features

• It is fully compatible with Elementor's page builder plugin, which lets you create your site using its intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
• It has 300+ sleek templates with various tools and designs for ecommerce sites.
• It includes 15+ ecommerce-specific widgets to add features like prices, add-to-cart buttons, and more to your product pages.
• It has 90+ widgets (in addition to the ecommerce-specific ones) to add features to various sections of your website.
• It lets you easily create custom fields and add dynamic content throughout your site.

Pricing

Hello Elementor is a free theme. Plans for the Elementor page builder start at $59 per year. 

Fastest WooCommerce theme speed test results and analysis

Hello Elementor has built a solid reputation over the years as one of the fastest WordPress themes. But how does it fare with the WooCommerce plugin installed? Here's how it scored on the various speed testing tools.

Google PageSpeed Insights' key metrics

• Total Score: 99
• First Contentful Paint: 0.4 s
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Speed Index: 1.3 s
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 0.5 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

GTmetrix's key metrics

• Performance Score: 100%
• Structure: 90%
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 561 ms
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

Pingdom's key metrics

• Performance Grade: 84
• Load Time: 1.3 s
• Page Size: 301.6 kb
• Requests: 34

Conclusion

Without question, Hello Elementor is one of the fastest WooCommerce themes. Even though OceanWP's and Kadence's Google PageSpeed Insight total performance scores were 1 point higher, it scored significantly high on GTmetrix and Pingdom, giving it the highest average score among all the themes.

Hello Elementor lives up to its reputation as a solid WooCommerce theme. Its lightweight nature and super-clean code help ensure your online store loads quickly for shoppers. Plus, its seamless integration with the Elementor page builder adds a layer of flexibility and customization to your website design process.

Astra

Another standout multipurpose theme for WooCommerce, Astra has gained significant recognition for its performance, flexibility, and extensive customization options.

The Astra theme is blazing-fast. Similar to Hello Elementor, the theme itself is a blank canvas, making it easy for you to customize your website as you prefer. It also includes a variety of template sites that you can import to speed up your design process. In addition, you can use Spectra, Astra's dedicated page builder plugin, to design your website using a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. 

With its minimalist design and extensive customization options, Astra empowers store owners to effortlessly create stunning and fast-loading ecommerce sites.

Top features

• You can display products on your WooCommerce "Shop" page using a customizable and responsive grid layout.
• Its dropdown cart feature built with ajax lets you show customers a quick summary of products added to their cart without requiring them to leave the page. 
• You can easily create eye-catching effects and popups on your WooCommerce "Shop" page to draw the attention of shoppers to ongoing sales and promotions.
• It lets you add custom filters and widgets for customers to navigate your online shop and find their desired products easily.
• It includes the infinite scroll feature that loads and showcases products dynamically as customers scroll down the page.
• Several layout options to customize the checkout page, such as a two-step checkout, distraction-free checkout, and more.

Pricing

Astra has both free and premium versions. The free version provides a solid set of features to kickstart your online store. The pro version unlocks advanced functionalities and extensive customization options. There are various plans starting at $59.

Fastest WooCommerce theme speed test results and analysis 

Astra is the first non-default theme to achieve over one million active installs on WordPress.org, so it's definitely a solid theme option. Let's see how it scored on the various speed testing tools.

Google PageSpeed Insights' key metrics

• Total Score: 99
• First Contentful Paint: 0.4 s
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Speed Index: 1.2 s
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 0.5 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

GTmetrix's key metrics

• Performance Score: 99%
• Structure: 91%
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 808 ms
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

Pingdom's key metrics

• Performance Grade: 84
• Load Time: 1.68 s
• Page Size: 301.65 kb
• Requests: 34

Conclusion

Astra is the  fastest WooCommerce theme. It scored the same as Hello Elementor  on Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom; however, Hello Elementor slightly outperformed it on GTmetrix, making it a close second.

Astra is a multipurpose theme ideal for creating a wide range of ecommerce websites, including fashion boutiques, electronics retailers, furniture shops, and more. If you're searching for a fast, easily-customizable, and SEO-friendly theme for WooCommerce, Astra is undoubtedly a worthy choice. 

Kadence

Built with a focus on speed and functionality, Kadence provides a solid foundation for creating stunning WooCommerce websites. 

Kadence is a highly optimized and lightweight WooCommerce theme that focuses on speed without compromising style or functionality. It's built with a clean and efficient codebase, making it an excellent choice for those who prioritize speed and efficiency in their WooCommerce store.

Top features

• Multiple specialized starter sites designed for WooCommerce to enable you to create stunning WooCommerce sites to showcase products effectively.
• Its drag-and-drop website builder and block editor let you add features and elements to design your entire website in a few minutes.
• It comes with an extensive range of modules and customization options, from unlimited color schemes to custom typography, sidebars and flexible header and footer builder options, so that you can personalize your WooCommerce store easily.
• You can enable breadcrumbs using the breadcrumb generator engine embedded within the theme or by using an SEO plugin.
• It has live-editing capabilities that let you view the changes you're making to your website in real time, so you can be sure that your website design is just as it should be.

Pricing

Kadence offers both free and paid theme versions. The free version includes essential features and is excellent for small businesses and for exploring the theme's capabilities. The pro plan has various pricing options, starting at $59.

Fastest WooCommerce theme speed test results and analysis

Kadence is a relatively new WordPress theme. However, it has exploded in popularity and garnered a lot of praise for its high quality. Here's how it scored on the various tests that we ran.

Google PageSpeed Insights' key metrics

• Total Score: 100
• First Contentful Paint: 0.4 s
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Speed Index: 1.1 s
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 0.5 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

GTmetrix's key metrics

• Performance Score: 100%
• Structure: 90%
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 563 ms
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

Pingdom's key metrics

• Performance Grade: 81
• Load Time: 645 
• Page Size: 362.97
• Requests: 36

Conclusion

Kadence outscored Hello and Astra on Google PageSpeed Insights; however, its Pingdom scores were slightly lower. This makes it the third fastest WooCommerce theme (a tie with Avada). 

If you are looking for a fast and feature-rich WooCommerce theme that doesn't compromise on style or functionality, Kadence should be near the top of your list. Its focus on speed optimization, its versatile design, and extensive customization options make it an excellent choice for WooCommerce store owners that prioritize performance as well as aesthetics.

Avada

Avada is a best-selling multipurpose WooCommerce and WordPress theme that combines speed, functionality, and customization options to help you create exceptional websites. 

Because Avada has been around for over ten years, it offers one of the most streamlined setup options. Out of the box, it has nearly 100 pre-built website templates that you can use to kickstart your website design, detailed documentation, video tutorials, and an award-winning support team to assist you if needed.

Top features

• Its powerful drag-and-drop page builder, Fusion Builder, allows you to create stunning and fully customized layouts without any coding knowledge.
• It includes 120+ design elements that you can use to add features, such as buttons, pop-ups, wish lists, lightboxes, forms, sidebars, image carousels, etc., to your store.
• Its WooCommerce builder includes 90+ prebuilt shop websites for online stores across various niches — fashion, pets, jewelry, etc.
• Its mega menu builder lets you create a mobile-friendly, highly flexible expanded menu that can display multiple levels of navigation in a dropdown format.
• It has a live visual editor that lets you see how the designs look on the front-end of your site as you're making them.
• It includes a built-in performance wizard that scans and analyzes your website and provides recommendations to improve its speed. 

Pricing

Avada is a premium WooCommerce theme. But even though it does not have a free version, it's pretty affordable. You can buy a regular license for $69, which includes lifetime updates and six months of world-class customer support.

Fastest WooCommerce theme speed test results and analysis

Avada is a power-packed theme with a myriad of features. Let's take a look at how it performed during our speed tests.

Google PageSpeed Insights' key metrics

• Total Score: 99
• First Contentful Paint: 0.4 s
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Speed Index: 1.3 s
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 0.5 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

GTmetrix's key metrics

• Performance Score: 100%
• Structure: 90%
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 693 ms
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

Pingdom's key metrics

• Performance Grade: 82
• Load Time: 864 ms
• Page Size: 372.69 kb
• Requests: 34

Conclusion

With consistently high scores across all three speed testing tools, Avada is the joint-third fastest theme for WooCommerce.

Overall, Avada is a user-friendly theme that balances customization with speed. Its powerful and intuitive features provide most of the design elements you'll need to create your ideal WooCommerce store. The best thing about Avada is that you don't need any coding experience — the theme makes it simple to add various WooCommerce features without several layout options, in-built builders and elements.]

Shop Mania

Shop Mania is engineered for performance. It offers a clean slate, allowing you to tailor your website to your exact needs. It comes with a range of 50+ pre-built templates that you can import to streamline your design process.

Additionally, you can leverage Elementor, and Gutenberg, Shop Mania’s specialized page builder plugin, to create your site with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface.

A theme comes with a bundle of eCommerce Features that enable your store’s hidden power, and you don’t need to pay any extra fee. It is built and comes bundled with most of the advanced features available in most popular eCommerce websites like Amazon, Flipkart, Etsy, Walmart, Alibaba, etc.

Top Features

• Pre-Buid Sites- The theme has 50+ Premium ready-to-import demo templates.
• Frequently Bought Together- It is the most common feature in eCommerce websites. You can increase your store sales using this feature.
• Off-Canvas Sidebar- Using the Off-canvas sidebar you can display more products without engaging or using page space
• Floating Cart- The theme has an amazing floating cart to improve your potential customer’s buying experience.
• Product Compare- Customers can compare products on your website using the product compare feature.
• Header Styles- The theme comes with amazing 7 premade header styles to select from.
• Single Product Layout- The Single Product comes with two different Layouts, with multiple gallery combinations like Grid, Slider, Vertical Slider etc.
• Checkout Page- You will get 3 checkout page premium layout styles.
• White Label- Shop Mania theme provides 100% control over theme branding. You can add your logo, Name, Description, and URL by replacing shop mania branding.
• Elementor Booster- Shop Mania brings 23+ premium widgets that help to make your site more stylish and fast.

Pricing

The Shop Mania theme offers both free and premium versions. The free version provides a range of features to help you start your online store, while the Pro version offers additional power and advanced features to further enhance your store. Various plans are available, starting at $49.

Fastest WooCommerce theme speed test results and analysis

Shop Mania theme is growing and gaining popularity very fast due to its speed and value-for-money features. Here's it scored on the various tests that was ran.

Google PageSpeed Insights' key metrics

• Total Score: 98
• First Contentful Paint: 0.7 s
• Total Blocking time: 0.1 ms
• Speed Index: 1.8 s
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 0.8 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0.5 s

GTmetrix's key metrics

• Performance Score: 98%
• Structure: 88%
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 688 ms
• Total Blocking time: 10 ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0.4 ms

Pingdom's key metrics

• Performance Grade: 83
• Load Time: 688
• Page Size: 489.97
• Requests: 40

Conclusion

Shop Mania is a leading choice for those seeking a fast and secure WooCommerce theme. It performs similarly to other themes in Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom.

Shop Mania is versatile and suitable for various eCommerce sites, including online stores, fashion sites, electronics stores, and marketplace websites. If you need a fast, customizable, SEO-friendly, and feature-packed WooCommerce theme, Shop Mania is a compelling option.

 

OceanWP

OceanWP is a well-known and highly versatile WooCommerce theme that offers a one-click install. OceanWP's popularity lies in its templates — it includes thousands of templates capable of creating various types of websites with a single click and 100+ templates specialized for ecommerce stores alone.

In addition to its templates, OceanWP is deeply compatible with various page builders like Elementor, Divi, Gutenberg, Beaver Builder, WPBakery, and more. This makes it super simple to create fast and stunning designs for your website.

Top features

• It has 100+ ecommerce-specific templates with deep WooCommerce integration, which you can use to create your online store with a single click.
• It has deep compatibility with Elementor, Visual Composer, and other popular drag-and-drop builders, so you can design your site and add multiple functions without touching a single line of code.
• You can use its product lightbox feature to let customers view product details without having to visit individual product pages.
• It includes a floating "add to cart" button on product pages that makes it easy for users to add products to the cart.
• You can add filters to allow customers to narrow down their choices and enhance their shopping experience.

Pricing

OceanWP is a freemium WooCommerce theme. Its free version is an excellent option for creating your online store with essential features. The premium theme starts at $49 for an annual single-site license.

Fastest WooCommerce theme speed test results and analysis

With over 6 million downloads and a user-friendly interface, there's no doubt about OceanWP's popularity. But how fast is it?

This is how OceanWP scored on the various speed test tools.

Google PageSpeed Insights' key metrics

• Total Score: 100
• First Contentful Paint: 0.4 s
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms 
• Speed Index: 0.9 s
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 0.5 s
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

GTmetrix's key metrics

• Performance Score: 100%
• Structure: 90%
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): 516 ms
• Total Blocking time: 0 ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

Pingdom's key metrics

• Performance Grade: 77
• Load Time: 903 ms
• Page Size: 583.43 kb
• Requests: 55

Conclusion

OceanWP scored last on the list of the fastest WooCommerce themes. Its Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix scores were quite strong; however, it didn't score so well on Pingdom, which lowered its overall score.

Don't get us wrong; OceanWP is still quite fast — its average speed score is 92.3 out of 100, which leaves it in the top 1% of the best WooCommerce themes. However, it's not the absolute fastest theme for WooCommerce.

With its sleek design and extensive customization options, OceanWP is a multipurpose WordPress theme. It is suitable for various types of online shops, ranging from small boutiques to large e-commerce websites. Plus, it has several layout options, making it super simple to design your store from scratch using its built-in templates and drag-and-drop editor.

Criteria for testing theme performance

No speed test tool provides absolute results. However, we wanted to ensure our test results were as accurate and close to a real-world situation as possible. So we followed a systematic approach to measure each theme's speed and performance. 

Here are the full details of our testing process, the tools used, as well as the key metrics used to measure each theme's performance. 

Test website

We tested each theme on a fresh WordPress website installation and used the same standard hosting infrastructure for all the tests.

Each test WordPress site we created included the following:

• The WooCommerce plugin.
• The standard WooCommerce sample data with 17 products and their descriptions, images, and other details.
• Two menus — header and footer.
• A static homepage.

Because each WooCommerce store is set up differently, we didn't download additional WordPress plugins or create extra pages.

Furthermore, even though most ecommerce sites use speed optimization plugins to increase performance, we did not use caching and optimization plugins to optimize images and media, as that would skew the results.

Also, we stuck with the default configuration settings for each theme. We didn't use demo sites, starter templates, or page builders. Neither did we change the custom settings or add extra WooCommerce features — all of which can increase page load times.

Finally, we ran the speed tests on each theme's WooCommerce "Shop" page instead of the home page or any other random page. The "Shop" page lists all the products added to the store, which makes it the heaviest page on each site. 

All of these measures helped keep things consistent and ensured that our tests were as accurate, fair, and realistic as possible.

Test tools

We used three different — and equally powerful — tools to evaluate the speed and performance of each WooCommerce theme. Using multiple speed testing tools helped provide plenty of insights into each website's performance and reduced the probability of inaccurate test results.

The tools we used are:

• Google PageSpeed Insights: This is Google's own web performance analysis tool. Google PageSpeed Insights analyzes a site's mobile and desktop performance and assigns performance and user experience scores, together with suggestions for improving them.
• GTmetrix: GTmetrix is a popular testing tool that combines Google PageSpeed Insights and Yahoo! YSlow rulesets to evaluate different performance aspects of a website. This tool primarily focuses on two critical aspects of web performance: page load speed and overall website optimization. 
• Pingdom: Another popular speed testing tool, Pingdom allows you to test website performance from multiple locations around the world. It also assigns performance grades and scores based on various factors like page size, number of requests, and overall loading speed.

Metrics from each tool

Every tool is different. This means that each tool calculates web performance using a different set of metrics. Here are the key metrics we gleaned from each tool.

Google PageSpeed Insights metrics

• Total score: The total score (also called the PageSpeed Score) is the overall measure of a website's performance. It's a numerical score out of 100. Higher scores indicate better performance.
• First contentful paint (FCP): This is the time it takes for the first image or text to show on the screen. Lower scores are better.
• Total blocking time: This measures the responsiveness and interactivity of a web page. Lower scores are better.
• Speed index: This metric shows how quickly the content of a page loads. Lower scores are better.
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): The time it takes for the most prominent element or block of content on a page to become visible. Lower scores are better.
• Cumulative layout shift (CLS): How much the elements on a page shift or change position unexpectedly while a page is loading. Lower scores are ideal.

GTmetrix metrics

• Performance score: This score represents the overall performance of a website. It is given as a percentage, with higher scores indicating better performance.
• Structure: This metric indicates how efficient and organized a webpage is. It assesses factors like the usage of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as if there's any unnecessary or redundant code used. Higher scores are better.
• Largest contentful paint (LCP): LCP measures the time it takes for the most prominent content element on a web page to become visible to the end user. Lower scores are better.
• Total blocking time: This measures the responsiveness and interactivity of a web page. Lower scores are better.
• Cumulative layout shift (CLS): CLS measures the visual stability of a web page during loading. It shows how much the page layout shifts unexpectedly, which can cause frustration for users. Lower scores are ideal.

Pingdom metrics

• Performance grade: This is an overall evaluation of how optimized a website is for speed based on factors like load time, page size, and the number of requests. This grade is given as a letter (i.e., A, B, C, etc.), with higher scores indicating better site performance.
• Load Time: The time for all the elements (images, scripts, stylesheets, etc.) on a web page to fully load and become usable. Faster load times are better.
• Page Size: The total size of all the files on your web page. Smaller page sizes are better.
• Requests: The number of server requests the browser makes to load a web page fully. Fewer requests are better.

How themes impact the speed and performance of WooCommerce stores

There is a strong expectation for websites to load quickly. And as we've discussed earlier, your chosen theme plays a significant role in determining how fast or slow your website loads.

Let's unpack how your website theme can impact the speed and performance of your ecommerce stores.

Code efficiency

WordPress and WooCommerce themes are designed by developers with varying levels of skill. The quality of the code used to create a theme can significantly affect its performance.

Well-coded themes follow best practices and use optimized code that is lightweight and efficient. On the other hand, poorly coded themes may include unnecessary scripts, bloated stylesheets, or inefficient coding techniques — all of these results in slower load times and decreased performance of your WordPress site.

Theme elements

A theme's design elements, layout, and structure can influence its speed. Themes that contain excessive animations, large image files, or complex visual effects may look appealing, but they can also increase the load time of your WooCommerce site.

Choosing a lightweight and optimized theme can help reduce web page sizes, minimize the number of HTTP requests, and improve the overall loading speed of your store.

Responsiveness

Many customers prefer to shop on their mobile phones. That's why having a theme that adapts well to different screen sizes and devices is essential. Responsive themes are designed to adjust to different screen sizes and devices automatically. This ensures an optimal browsing experience for your customers, whether they are shopping on desktops, tablets, or mobile devices. 

Websites created with themes that are not mobile-friendly or responsive may load slower on smaller screens, leading to awkward layouts and frustrated shoppers who bounce off quickly.

Compatibility with plugins and extensions

Many WooCommerce stores use various plugins and add-on extensions to customize their store and add features that are not available in Core WordPress and WooCommerce. How compatible your theme is with these additional extensions can affect your site performance. 

You must choose a theme that works well with all the plugins and extensions that you plan to use on your ecommerce store. Themes that are not compatible with the plugins installed on your site may conflict, which can cause errors or slow down the website. 

Updates and support

Web performance standards change frequently. That's why it's best to use themes that are actively updated and maintained by their developers because they tend to address bugs, security vulnerabilities, and performance issues early on.

In addition, responsive and helpful support from the theme developer can be valuable when it comes to resolving performance-related issues or optimizing the theme for your specific requirements.

Conclusion

We hope this guide answers the questions, "What are the fastest WordPress themes?" and "Which WooCommerce theme is the fastest?"

If you want to create your own WooCommerce store, choosing a fast theme will set your site up for success and make it easier to deliver a delightful shopping experience to your customers. Shoptimizer - closely followed by Zakra - was our top pick after testing the most popular themes which are known for their fast performance.

Each theme on this list is lightning-fast and would be an excellent choice for your website, so it's really just about choosing your preferred option. Of course, it is also a good idea to conduct speed tests yourself before settling on a final choice for your store's theme.

Do you have any other questions about the fastest WooCommerce themes? Drop them in the comments below!