Caddy – WooCommerce Side Cart & Free Shipping Bar vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

Caddy is a high performance WooCommerce side cart plugin (also known as a floating cart, sliding cart, cart drawer, or mini cart) that improves your store’s shopping experience and helps grow your sales. It replaces the default WooCommerce cart page with a sticky AJAX side cart that slides in from the edge of the screen, letting customers manage their cart without leaving the page. Built on Modern WordPress APIs Caddy v3 is built from the ground up on the WordPress Interactivity API and the WooCommerce Store API – the same modern foundations that power WooCommerce’s own cart and checkout blocks. This means: Instant AJAX cart updates – no full-page reloads. Cart changes are reactive and immediate, making it the fastest WooCommerce AJAX side cart available. Server-synced state – every cart operation goes through the official WooCommerce Store API, ensuring accurate prices, tax calculations, and stock validation. Lightweight floating cart – no jQuery dependency. Caddy uses native ES modules loaded as WordPress script modules for the smallest possible footprint. Future-proof – built on the same APIs WordPress and WooCommerce are investing in long-term. Increase average order value with Caddy’s built-in in-cart upsells and cross-sell product recommendations, reduce cart abandonment with a free shipping bar, and encourage repeat shoppers with a save for later wishlist. 🛒 Side cart, mini cart & floating cart drawer in one 🚚 Free shipping bar to lift average order value ⚡️ Built on WordPress Interactivity API & WooCommerce Store API 📱 Mobile friendly responsive design 🔄 Real-time reactive cart updates 🌏 Translated into 6 languages ⚔️ Cross-browser and cross-OS battle tested 🔒 Secure and reliable 💡 Lightweight – no jQuery dependency 💰 Boosts sales and average order value 🔄 Works with most themes and plugins 🎁 Apply cart discounts and promo codes Try the Demo | Cart Optimization Playbooks | Visit usecaddy.com Caddy Lite features: Sticky floating side cart / mini cart powered by the WordPress Interactivity API – available across your whole site Slide-in cart drawer that opens like an add-to-cart popup – no page reloads Real-time AJAX cart operations via the WooCommerce Store API – no page reloads Free shipping bar (progress meter) that shows customers how close they are to free shipping In-cart upsell and cross-sell product recommendations when customers add to cart Save products for later / wishlist (logged-in users) Quick AJAX add to cart from shop and archive pages – no page reload Cart and saved list links for your navigation menu (shortcodes + widgets) Elementor widgets: drag a “Caddy Cart” or “Caddy Saved Items” element into any Elementor header or layout, with full icon, label, and count-badge styling; clicking opens the side cart and the count stays live Add products & manage cart items without reloading the page Manage cart quantities directly in the side cart Sticky add-to-cart bubble (floating cart icon) with a live quantity indicator Apply coupon codes in the side cart Custom CSS to match your brand WooCommerce HPOS support No jQuery dependency – pure ES modules Supported Languages Caddy is translated into the following languages: English (default) German (Deutsch) French (Français) Italian (Italiano) Brazilian Portuguese (Português do Brasil) Spanish (Español) Compatibility Caddy is compatible with most themes and plugins. The following themes and plugins have been tested and confirmed working: Plugins: WooCommerce Subscriptions, WooCommerce Product Bundles, All Products For WooCommerce Subscriptions, Elementor, Divi Themes: GeneratePress, Flatsome, Astra, Hello Elementor, Kadence, OceanWP, Storefront Upgrade to Pro Upgrade to Pro and unlock powerful customization features, analytics, recommendations, and more. Caddy Pro features: 7 different cart icon styles & 30+ custom color options Cart tracking & analytics dashboard Multi-tier reward levels with free shipping, free gifts, and discounts Workflow automation engine – trigger targeted product recommendations, popup notifications, and auto-apply coupons based on cart contents, cart total, product categories, page, and customer role In-cart announcement bar In-cart product subscription upsells using with the All Products for WooCommerce Subscriptions extension Change the cart bubble position on the screen Display notices when adding to cart or adding/removing saved products Promote custom coupon offers in the cart Set free shipping meter exclusions Set product recommendation exclusions Set product recommendation fall-back rules Show save for later buttons on product pages and shop archives Manage placement of save for later buttons on shop archives Customize a welcome message to new users Hide Caddy on specific pages Hide out of stock products from product recommendations Get priority email support Get early access to new features Upgrade to Pro Now: https://www.usecaddy.com/

Compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load automatically with the powerful Smush image optimizer to keep your WordPress site fast, without losing quality. Smush makes it easy to optimize images, compress images, and deliver images faster across your entire WordPress site. This all-in-one image optimizer automatically reduces image file sizes, enables image lazy load, and serves modern formats like WebP and AVIF, all without breaking image quality or adding extra work. Whether you’re running a blog, store, or portfolio, Smush helps you optimize images at scale and keep your site fast with a trusted WordPress image optimizer. Trusted by 1+ Million Sites | 4.8/5 Star Rating Get everything you need to optimize images and speed up your site. Smush works out of the box with no complicated setup – just install and let it handle the rest. Compress images without losing quality Reduce image file size automatically while keeping your images sharp and clear. Smush is an easy-to-use image optimizer which let’s you compress images using both lossless and lossy compression, giving you the best balance of quality and performance without extra work. You can also compress images outside the media library using Directory Smush, making it easy to optimize images stored in theme folders, plugins, or other directories on your server. Lazy load images for faster pages Enable image lazy load across your site so images load only when needed. This image optimizer improves initial page speed and creates a smoother experience for visitors without extra configuration. Serve WebP and AVIF images automatically (PRO) Convert images to WebP and AVIF and serve them automatically to supported browsers. Smush helps you optimize images using next-gen formats to reduce file size and improve load times across your WordPress site. Deliver images faster with an Image CDN (PRO) Serve images through a global image CDN to reduce latency and improve load times for visitors around the world. 119 global CDN servers Up to 500 GB of bandwidth Faster image delivery based on visitor location Improved performance for image-heavy and high-traffic sites Automatically resize and fix image dimensions (PRO) Eliminate common PageSpeed warnings and improve layout stability with automatic image sizing. Smush dynamically resizes images to perfectly fit their containers, regardless of original size, helping fix the “Properly size images” warning in Google PageSpeed Insights. It also automatically adds missing width and height attributes to your images, improving rendering speed and reducing layout shifts. This helps you meet the “Ensure images have explicit width and height” recommendation without any manual work. Optimize your entire site, automatically Smush works across your whole site as a powerful image optimizer to optimize images as you upload them and maintain performance over time without manual work. Optimize images automatically on upload Compress images in bulk or individually Works with your existing media library No need to re-upload images Enable image lazy load across your site Convert images to WebP and AVIF Deliver images with an integrated image CDN Automatically resize and serve correctly sized images Optimize images outside the media library with Directory Smush Built for performance Smush improves page speed and overall performance by reducing image weight and improving how images are delivered. Reduce page load times Improve user experience Better performance for image-heavy pages Supports image lazy load and preload images (PRO) for faster perceived performance Works with your existing setup Smush is built to work with your current WordPress setup, including popular themes, page builders, and plugins. Compatible with Gutenberg, Elementor, WPBakery, and more Works with WooCommerce stores No need to change your workflow Easy to enable and configure Designed to be simple You don’t need to be a performance expert to optimize images with Smush image optimizer. Works out of the box Simple settings when you need them No technical knowledge required Safe to use on any site Why choose Smush? There are plenty of image optimization plugins, but Smush focuses on making it easy to optimize images, compress images, and improve performance without complexity. As a leading WordPress image optimizer, Smush gives you powerful optimization tools without the technical hassle. Trusted by over 1 million WordPress users Built specifically for WordPress Regular updates and improvements Backed by the WPMU DEV team Get started in minutes Install Smush, activate it, and start to compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load right away. This easy-to-use image optimizer helps most sites see improvements immediately without changing how they upload or manage images. About Us WPMU DEV is a premium supplier of quality WordPress plugins, services and support. Learn more here: https://wpmudev.com/ Don’t forget to stay up to date on everything WordPress from the Internet’s number one resource: WPMU DEV Blog Hey, one more thing… we hope you enjoy our free offerings as much as we’ve loved making them for you! Contact and Credits Originally written by Alex Dunae at Dialect (dialect.ca, e-mail ‘alex’ at ‘dialect dot ca’), 2008-11.