Magento is the leading e-commerce platform and it is a large open source digital e-commerce platform in the world. It is more scalable, flexible, secure and reliable compared to other e-commerce platforms which have many files and big database. The site performance depends on catalogue size and installed extensions.
Let’s look into the steps on how to improve the performance and speed up your Magento website.
System Requirement
It important to choose a Magento specialized hosting provider with good server configuration and a satisfying installed version of Magento system requirement.
Enable Magento Cache
System –> Cache Management, Click “Select All” and choose “Enable” under “Actions”.
Implement Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Implement CDN with Magento store. It will help your website’s static contents (Images, JavaScripts, CSS, etc) to be delivered from the nearest CDN Edge Server when users are accessing it.
Implement Magento Full Page Cache
The full page cache plays a very important role in Magento site. LiteMage Cache, Extendware Full Page Cache, Varnish cache, etc are some full page cache options for the Magento. It helps to cache the static contents of the website and reduce the loading time.
Enable Frontend Flat Catalog
Frontend Flat Catalog is especially useful when you have a large store with a lot of products.
Enable Log Cleaning
Configuration –> Advanced –> System –> Log Cleaning , Choose “Yes” for “Enable Log Cleaning”.
Consider reducing “Save Log, Days” as well. The Magento logs can grow to a very large size over time and this will seriously affect performance, which is why log cleaning must be enabled to keep it in control. It is mandatory to enable Magento Cron job in order to run the log cleaning properly.
Merge JavaScript and CSS Files
Configuration –> Advanced –> Developer –> JavaScript Settings/CSS Settings, Choose “Yes” for both “Merge JavaScript Files” and “Merge CSS Files”.
Disable Mage_Log
Most clients do not find the logs collected by Magento helpful and will opt to disable Mage_Log, which will significantly reduce the queries to the MySQL database and thus speed up loading time.
Enable Compilation
System –> Tools –> Compilation, Click “Run Compilation Process”.
This compiles all files of a Magento installation to make one embody path to extend performance.
We need to disable Magento Compiler initially before making any changes to the website like putting in a replacement extension or initiating upgrade/downgrade/installation or removal of any Magento module.
GZip Compression
Enable the Gzip compression by uncommenting the rules in the .htaccess file so that it compresses the web pages and style sheets before sending them over to the browser.
Expire Headers
This helps to request the files from the browser cache and reduce the loading time.
Use Fewer Extensions/Modules
It is better to use fewer extensions/modules with Magento to improve the site performance. Some inefficient Magento extensions/modules reduce the site performance and slow down the site. When the site faces the slowdown issue, try to disable the extensions/modules one by one and find the cause of the slowdown.
Optimize images
Optimize all site images and reduce the size and that will help to improve the website speed.
Defer loading of JavaScript
It is not necessary to load and execute all the scrips in the initial page render. So, defer the JavaScripts after the initial render or after other critical parts of the page have finished loading. This will help to reduce resource contention and improve performance.
Minify JavaScript
Minify the JavaScripts to reduce their space and speed them up. Check with your web designer or theme developer as it may break the website for some themes or make conflict issue with the JS/Jquery theme and modules.
Minify CSS
Minify the CSS to reduce their space and speed them up. Check with your web designer or theme developer as it may break the website for some themes.
Online site Performance Testing Tools
1) Webpagetest : https://www.webpagetest.org/
2) Google PageSpeed Insights : https://developers.google.com/speed/
3) GTmetrix : https://gtmetrix.com/
4) Pingdom Website Speed Test: https://tools.pingdom.com/