Magento 2 Speed Optimization: Easy Ways To Speed Up Magento Store

Performance optimization is an essential element to achieving the highest level of success when it comes to utilizing Magento. In this article, we’ll uncover the most reliable and easy ways of Magento speed optimization that will help you ensure the platform’s performance is improved to meet customer needs and expectations.

Why Does Magento Speed Matter?

Magento is the go-to eCommerce platform for many retailers, and speed matters for both shoppers and store owners. Its speed directly affects website performance and, consequently, sales. Research suggests that if a website fails to load within 3 seconds, it can lead to nearly 50% of visitors abandoning the site. Additionally, modern users expect webpages to respond almost simultaneously; therefore, slow loading times can result in customer dissatisfaction and an increased shopping cart abandonment rate, negatively impacting businesses.

Furthermore, search engine algorithms such as Google consider website speed when determining the listing order for web searches. Suppose your Magento site isn’t meeting performance standards. In that case, it will be less likely to appear at the top of search engine pages, and customers won’t locate your business or product offerings easily.

A fast website is essential to maintain your customer’s trust and loyalty and prevent them from moving on to your competitor. Magento’s advanced features ensure that websites can run faster, increase customer satisfaction and generate more organic traffic. It prioritizes page speed optimizations by utilizing best practices such as JavaScript bundling, content caching, and server-side CSS generation. Moreover, it considers the type of device used by customers when further optimizing speed performance so that you can maximize conversions for all users regardless of their choice of device or Internet connection.

Still, there are some common issues with its performance.

Common Issues with Magento 2 Performance

Issues such as slow-loading pages, lagging user interface, and website crashes are not uncommon amongst Magento 2 users. These problems generally arise from improper hosting configurations, software bugs, and complex code structures. Let’s look at those in more detail:

• Inadequate hosting: Performance optimization requires a hosting plan specifically tailored to eCommerce websites. It needs to provide powerful server resources and support, such as high-speed SSD storage, PHP7+, SSL certificates, multiple CPUs, and RAM. Furthermore, selecting a hosting provider that offers technical assistance for Magento development and deployment can often prove beneficial in ensuring optimal performance and reliability of the system.
• Incorrect operation mode: Operation modes are settings that tell Magento how to interact with various components such as 3rd party services, caches, and databases. Disregarding the proper operation mode can cause latency to increase and aggravate any performance issues that may arise from other sources. To ensure the best performance of your store, make sure you are using the appropriate operation mode in accordance with the needs of your business.
• Poorly configured caching: Caching is a process of offloading intensive activities from the server, allowing its resources to be used on other tasks more efficiently. By failing to configure caches properly, the entire functionality of your system can be impacted, resulting in a much slower loading time for pages and an unresponsive experience for users. It’s also important to note that proper configuration also depends on your hosting service: many managed scripts come with advanced configuration support, which makes configuring caching simpler and less fraught with potential issues.
• Bloated theme or excessive extension use: If themes and extensions are loaded with unnecessary code and features, they can cast a drag on the user experience. It’s essential to be mindful of which extension you install to ensure there are no conflicts or slowdowns when using multiple extensions. Taking preventative steps will prevent headaches in the long run and help maintain a great user experience for customers browsing your store.

Magento 2 Speed Optimization Tips

Speed is one of the most essential eCommerce website metrics. By following the tips we listed below, you can rest assured that your Magento site can remain at its peak performance levels. Let’s start:

Update to the Latest Version of Magento

Keeping your Magento site up-to-date is an essential part of maintaining a secure and efficient online store. As technology and online security measures continually evolve, so do the versions of Magento. That’s why we strongly recommend keeping with the latest Magento release by downloading necessary updates and patches to ensure optimal performance.

If you still doubt migrating Magento 1 to Magento 2, keep in mind that updates generally include increased security measures, new features, enhanced functionality, and bug fixes. This will help you get the most from your eCommerce platform, ensuring your store is secure and delivering an excellent customer experience.

Choose Reliable Hosting

Finding the best hosting provider for your Magento 2 website is essential to ensure optimal page loading speed. If the provider cannot accommodate the amount of traffic or number of visitors, it can significantly slow down your website’s loading time. Some proven factors to consider when selecting a web hosting provider are CPU power, RAM, storage capacity, and connection to the network. Additionally, make sure you look out for hosting plans that offer Magento 2 optimization features, such as advanced caching systems, log cleaning options, and data compression tools, in addition to isolation abilities.

Avoid Built-in Cache Solutions

Built-in caches are designed to benefit speed and performance, but they can sometimes have the opposite effect. Since different stores have different requirements in terms of speed and performance, using a more specialized caching solution may be necessary to obtain the desired results.

Magento 2-based businesses can greatly benefit from the speed optimization benefits offered by Memcached and Redis, two commonly used memory caching systems. With Memcached, you can run caching operations directly from the RAM instead of pulling from a server or database, which can increase the speed of certain data fetches by up to 500%. Redis is a great choice for page caching as its built-in memory system ensures that all commands initiated by users are stored in an isolated area – alleviating load issues that commonly plague systems without such a safeguard. Both services provide advanced performance and scalability with low implementation costs associated, making either an exceptional choice for Magento 2 speed optimization.

Keep Indexers Updated

Indexers are processes that facilitate the sorting, filtering, and searching of products in your store. You’ll ensure that customers have a smooth and efficient shopping experience by keeping them up-to-date. Outdated indexers will lead to slower page loading times and an overall poorer user experience. For these reasons, it’s recommended to regularly re-index all indexers in the Magento admin area or through SSH commands from the command line interface. Doing so is also important for getting accurate search queries, correct category counts, and rule-based promotions to function properly.

Use Varnish Cache

Varnish Cache is a useful tool for web applications that rely on large amounts of dynamic content. This open-source, high-performance web accelerator works as a content delivery network and is easy to install and configure for the Magento environment. With Varnish Cache in place, static content such as images and stylesheets can be served quicker, resulting in improved page-load performance. In addition, this tool also has the capability to cache pages that are generated dynamically, making it a complete solution for optimizing Magento 2 speed.

Varnish works by storing copies of webpages in its own memory and serving up a response for repeat visitors instead of getting content from the backend web server. In addition, Varnish works with multiple simultaneous requests, which helps handle rising customer traffic during peak periods. Ultimately, implementing this technology in your Magento store will not only expedite the site’s loading times but also improve overall user engagement and experience.

Audit Third-Party Extensions

It can be quick and easy to install third-party extensions. Still, it’s important to remember that these applications can change over time due to updates and modifications, so it’s a good idea to stay alert regarding their management. Performing an audit periodically allows you to ensure that all installed extensions are compatible with your store and aren’t negatively affecting operations or slowing down page loading times. As part of this process, consider how the software affects page loading times, web server usage, and any other relevant metrics related to your store’s performance. By ensuring these external components are compatible with your version of Magento 2, businesses can avoid costly downtime and reap long-term benefits through faster loading times, improved scalability, and enhanced user experience.

Enable Magento Flat Catalogs

Enabling Magento flat catalogs is a simple yet effective way to improve the performance and scalability of your store. By leasing the burden of product data management away from MySQL requests and internalizing it within PHP code, website owners can experience an up to 200% increase in speed when retrieving category and product information. This feature also reduces disk I/O, further improving web page loading times. With Magento flat catalogs activated, store operators can expect drastically improved website performance. To take advantage of this upgrade, all you need to do is activate the feature from the store’s administration panel, run a reindexing process, and watch as your store’s pages load faster and customers spend less time browsing your products.

Optimize Product Images

Optimize product images to maximize efficiency and improve Magento store performance. Image optimization can improve page load time and reduce bandwidth usage, leading to faster site loading speed and improved search rankings. A variety of image optimization techniques are possible, including reducing the file size of product images, enabling content delivery network (CDN) hosting for images, or utilizing web formats such as WebP for images. Implementing these techniques can help ensure that customers have a seamless online shopping experience and can help merchants obtain better returns on investment.

Minify CSS and JavaScript

Optimizing the performance of your Magento site is essential to success, and one powerful tool for doing so is minifying CSS and JavaScript code. Minification helps developers remove scripts such as CSS code comments and whitespace characters, as well as language programming like JavaScript variables to allow for faster transmission of content over HTTP requests. Minifying these two code formats helps reduce load times and improve the overall performance of your Magento store. The effects of this can be even more profound with larger sites; fractions of a second in loading speed can make a huge difference in customer experience and page navigation.

Companies should ensure that their development team is able to correctly minify files before deployment in order to get the best speed advantages. Doing a periodic check to ensure CSS and Javascript files are minified is an easy way to help keep your site running efficiently.

Final Word

In an effort to create the best experience for customers and site visitors, it’s important to regularly upgrade speed optimization strategies and monitor your website for any potential performance issues. Setting up a reliable hosting environment and deploying a suitable caching strategy are key components of any comprehensive optimization plan. With the right engagements from your technical teams coupled with the right alerting system, Magento 2 sites can be kept running optimally for better user experiences and higher conversions.

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