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Homepage Caching Effectiveness

How much faster is the cached homepage vs uncached origin? · 4,938 WooCommerce stores with confirmed cache HIT

Cache Status Breakdown

22,787 WooCommerce stores scanned

21.7%

HIT

4,938 sites · Cache working

3.5%

MISS

803 sites · Cache miss

27.6%

DYNAMIC/BYPASS

6,294 sites · Intentionally skipped

47.2%

UNKNOWN

10,752 sites · No cache headers

Median Homepage TTFB

164ms

Without cookies (cached)

Median Origin TTFB

978ms

Confirmed uncached

Median Improvement

83.7%

Cache vs uncached

Sites Tested

4,938

With cache HIT + origin TTFB

Weak or No Caching

5.3%

262 of 4,938 WooCommerce stores get less than 30% caching improvement when session cookies are present

122 sites (2.5%) have homepage slower than origin · 140 sites (2.8%) have 0–30% improvement

Improvement Distribution

Bucket	Count	%	Interpretation
negative	122	2.5%	Cache not helping (homepage heavier than origin)
0-10%	31	0.6%	Caching broken or misconfigured
10-30%	109	2.2%	Minimal caching benefit
30-50%	310	6.3%	Partial caching
50-70%	743	15.0%	Decent caching
70-90%	2,154	43.6%	Good caching
90%+	1,469	29.7%	Excellent (full-page cache or CDN edge)

Caching Improvement Distribution

Homepage TTFB vs Origin TTFB

Points below the diagonal = caching is working. Points near/above = caching not helping. Homepage measured without cookies.

Percentile Comparison

Each column is an independent distribution — rows are not matched pairs.

Percentile	Homepage TTFB (cached)	Origin TTFB (uncached)
p10	66ms	414ms
p25	102ms	628ms
p50 (median)	164ms	978ms
p75	249ms	1518ms
p90	350ms	2355ms

Methodology

Homepage TTFB is measured in a clean browser session without any cookies — this captures the true cached/CDN response time as a regular visitor would experience.

Origin TTFB is the confirmed-uncached response (measured separately with WooCommerce session cookies): either the cart page or the homepage, whichever returned a cache MISS/DYNAMIC/BYPASS header.

Effectiveness = (Origin TTFB − Homepage TTFB) / Origin TTFB × 100.

Why negative values? A negative effectiveness means the cached homepage is slower than the uncached origin (cart page). Common causes:

No page cache configured — homepage runs full PHP on every request, and the homepage has more plugins/dynamic blocks than the cart
Cache misconfiguration adding overhead without benefit (e.g. object cache thrashing, broken Varnish rules)
Homepage is simply heavier to render: more widgets, sliders, product queries, third-party integrations
Cart page on a fast origin is lightweight (mostly static HTML), while homepage loads the full theme