Ways to Improve the Speed of Your Magento Store
More than half of all respondents abandon their purchase if the website loads too slowly. 36 percent of Germans only have ten seconds of patience for a transaction, otherwise, it will be aborted. This shows that speed is the key to online shopping success.
20 percent of visitors even get really angry if the targeted page is too slow. This means that saving on additional technical tools to speed up your Magento shop really pays off in the end. You can even say: Every additional second of loading time costs you 10 percent of your buyers. Here we present the 3 most important extensions for better Magento shop performance.
A simple reminder: you can always contact us for Magento speed optimization services.
Basic requirements for better Magento shop performance
In order to optimize your Magento store, you need to choose the right hosting provider for your realization. Here, you have to query exactly the settings that your shop gets the most out of in the implementation. Provide your resources with cache headers (for static pages), with a meta tag in the template, or individually for each page in the “Options” tab (for dynamic pages). Then the resources do not have to be retransmitted with each request.
Check the configuration of your database, as sufficient memory must be kept ready here. Magento offers the option of installing a buffer pool for half of the total working memory. Also, make sure that you reduce your amount of data. This shortens the transmission time of the data. You can achieve this e.g. by:
- Making image optimizations (Image Optimizer;)
- Optimizing the JavaScript code;
- Compressing the JavaScript and CSS files;
- Performing a rendering performance optimization.
Tuning Tool #1: Varnish
Now that everything is optimally set, you can start optimizing your Magento shop performance. If your shop receives many requests from visitors, the queries that end up in the database are a burden for the algorithm. Of course, it would be better if such actions did not have to be carried out at all, but instead, the answers were stored statically.
This is exactly why Magento developed Varnish, which is placed in front of the server as a full-page cache. Varnish also decides which requests to deliver directly from the cache and which dynamic content areas to forward to the server.
If your shop is now highly frequented, it is thus possible to quickly manage a large number of pages and to deliver the correct search results. In addition, Varnish can accelerate the dynamization of your content with additional ESI includes.
Tuning Tool #2: ESI (Edge Side Includes)
Another important feature of Magento is ESI. Because a website is of course only valid for as long as the most up-to-date part of it.
Example: You have news on your page that is constantly updated. There is little point in caching this page as a whole in the user’s cache for a short period of time. The complete page must always be calculated here when a visitor responds to a call-to-action.
ESI solves this timing problem because it takes time to calculate an entire page. ESI breaks down your website into individual parts and sees each part as a separate page. These parts are controlled directly via XML elements, and the Varnish tool interprets and then reassembles your page (your Magento shop).
This promises the visitor enormous performance and even has an advantage in search engine optimization, as it always has a complete file available. And complexity, development time, and deployment costs are minimized.
ESI Specifications:
- ESI language specification: The content of the website is provided by an XML-based language.
- Edge architecture specification: Extension of the web infrastructure by inserting HTTP proxies.
Tuning Tool #3: Improve the Speed of Magento Store – Cache Warming
With the normal Magento cache, all the sources, the configuration, etc., have to be reloaded for each instruction.
Cache warming is designed to reduce the times it takes to execute the first few queries against a database. The database pages that were clicked the last time the database was started are preloaded into the database server’s cache. In the case of rebuilt page views, the call naturally takes longer than retrieving the markup from the cache.
By using the cache warmer, all individualized pages are called up automatically at certain times. A suitably set up caching architecture and clean process management of the cache contents require a capable programmer. However, if everything is implemented professionally, this can be the key to optimal performance.
A mature caching concept that considers all levels is undoubtedly a good investment and quickly pays off with a successful shop and satisfied customers! Do you need help integrating the tuning tools? If you need help migrating to Magento 2, go to. As the leading Magento agency, we support you.
