Currently building a new website for a graphic design business that will also have an associated shop and I’ve noticed that some sites use a shop.domain.com option while others use the domain.com/shop option.
Is there a speed advantage to using a subdomain since it would technically be a separate WP install and WooCommerce wouldn’t drag down the main site as much?
Thanks for any input!
With improvements in the HTTP protocol with HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, delivering content from subdomains doesn’t yield the same benefits as it did with HTTP/1 if speed is the only thing you’re looking at the moment.
Performance is a continuum and there are a variety of things that you can do to boost it ranging from content delivery networks, compression, lazy loading, system fonts, deploying well-developed/designed themes plus plugins, minifying JS and CSS, hosting and more.
Depending on the size and scale of the sites, you could either run them off the same domain or subdomain. If you have a range of products than span 100,000 plus, you may also want to think about whether WordPress is the best platform for it.