A production audit of the LaMarie Beauty WordPress site surfaced several compounding performance and UX problems affecting the WooCommerce shopping experience. These issues were present in production for months before being formally identified. See also: [1] and [2].
During a Bookly integration review in early 2026, client-side auditor Kimberly Gehrmann identified significant cart performance degradation and UX failures on the live production site. The issues were distinct from the Bookly/staging work in progress and had been affecting real users. Asymmetric's hypothesis is that WP Rocket's lazy loading configuration is the primary driver of the add-to-cart delays.
Users experience a consistent 6–7 second lag when clicking "Add to Bag" on product pages. This was reproduced across browsers (Chrome Incognito, Firefox) on a fiber optic connection, ruling out client-side network issues.
Likely cause: WP Rocket lazy loading is deferring JavaScript execution in a way that conflicts with WooCommerce's AJAX add-to-cart handler. The static container renders quickly, but the JSON payload interaction is delayed.
Resolution path: Audit WP Rocket lazy loading rules page-by-page; exclude WooCommerce product and shop pages from lazy loading where appropriate.
Infinite scroll / pagination at the bottom of the shop page has a noticeable 1–3 second delay before loading the next set of products. While shorter than the add-to-cart delay, it creates a false impression that the page has ended, degrading browse UX.
Likely cause: Same WP Rocket lazy loading interference; possibly also bloated/minified JavaScript from accumulated plugins.
On both the cart sidecar and the /cart page, adjusting product quantity (via +/− controls) does not update the displayed price or totals until the user manually refreshes the page. The "Proceed to Checkout" button will capture the stale quantity if the user does not refresh.
Resolution path: Enable WooCommerce's built-in cart auto-recalculation setting. Verify the setting is active and not being suppressed by a plugin or theme override.
The cart sidecar (fly-out drawer) and checkout page lack the intentional styling applied to the rest of the site. UI elements such as the close (×) button are unstyled. It is unclear whether this was deferred pending Bookly work or was simply missed.
Resolution path: Apply theme styles to WooCommerce cart and checkout templates. Confirm quantity update controls are present and functional within the sidecar, not just the full /cart page.
A separate but related performance concern: the site's cache hit ratio was measured at 56%, against a target of ≥70%. The shortfall is driven by high bot traffic (Amazon bots and similar crawlers) that bypass the cache and hit the origin server directly.
Resolution path:
- Implement Cloudflare bot-blocking rules (challenge or block known bot user agents and high-volume non-US traffic patterns).
- Configure a cron job to flush the WP Rocket cache automatically 2–3 times per day, ensuring fresh cache is always available for legitimate users.
| Owner | Task |
|---|---|
| Mark | Audit WP Rocket lazy loading config; exclude WooCommerce pages as needed |
| Mark | Enable WooCommerce cart auto-recalculation |
| Mark | Style cart sidecar and checkout pages to match site theme |
| Mark | Implement Cloudflare bot blockers |
| Mark | Configure automatic cache flush cron job |