The first of the 14 Focus Points is Site Performance and Stability, the foundation of every high-performing eCommerce experience. Before adding new features or conversion optimizations, a site must be fast, reliable, and error-free.
Optimizely Configured Commerce is a robust B2B eCommerce platform out of the box, but like all enterprise solutions, real performance depends on proper configuration and optimization. Overlooking certain setup or integration details can lead to slow speeds, downtime, or data delays, issues that quickly affect customer experience and revenue.
Here are five common causes of poor site performance and stability, and how to address them.
1. Background Jobs
Optimizely runs many background jobs by default. Over time, these can accumulate and compete for resources, slowing down page loads and transaction speeds. It’s a common question from clients: “Do I have too many jobs running?” or “Which Optimizely jobs can I eliminate?”
Running too many concurrent or unnecessary jobs creates bottlenecks. A recent client’s daily product data job was taking hours to complete, failing mid-cycle, and leaving outdated data on the site. The solution was to divide that job into smaller, manageable segments that ran consistently and updated the site in near real-time.
2. Fragile Front-End UI
Developers often combine multiple off-the-shelf JavaScript libraries to achieve functionality quickly. However, this can create fragile UIs prone to asynchronous timing conflicts, resulting in unpredictable errors or inconsistent performance.
The fix is simplification. Reduce the number of external libraries and optimize API calls for stability. While modular architectures can be elegant in theory, they often add unnecessary complexity. Consolidating requests and using stable, well-tested components improves load times and reduces bugs. Learn more about this topic here.
3. APIs and Third-Party Integrations
APIs and connectors that pull data from systems like ERP, DAM, or PIM are often performance bottlenecks. If one of these systems lags or times out, your entire site may appear slow. Implementing proper caching strategies and asynchronous JavaScript calls keeps the user experience fast, even when backend systems are delayed.
In short, make sure your integrations are fault-tolerant and optimized for asynchronous data flow to maintain responsiveness under load.
4. Large Database Bottlenecks
Optimizely’s database does not currently support horizontal scaling, which can cause challenges for large catalogs exceeding one million SKUs. The best solutions combine infrastructure and data hygiene improvements:
- Ensure the SQL server is sized appropriately for your data volume and concurrent user load.
- Use database replication in a SQL cluster to improve read performance.
- Schedule regular cleanup jobs to remove abandoned carts, inactive users, and stale orders.
These small but consistent actions improve database performance and reduce server strain.
5. Hardware Scaling
Finally, scaling your hardware to match site traffic and catalog size is critical. Underpowered servers are one of the most common causes of sluggish performance. Follow Optimizely’s performance and scaling recommendations to ensure proper infrastructure for your growth trajectory.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing Optimizely performance is not just a technical task, it’s a business imperative. A faster, more stable site improves user satisfaction, boosts conversions, and protects brand credibility. By addressing these five areas, jobs, UI, integrations, database, and hardware, you set a strong foundation for ongoing eCommerce success.
Ready to improve your Optimizely site’s performance? Let’s talk.
Site Performance and Stability is the first of Layer One's 
See the other 13 Focus Points for Manufacturers and Distributors here!