Magento Optimization to Speed up Your Online Store

For modern e-commerce, one of the key points is the page load time. It depends not only on the speed of the Internet on the user's device, but also on the quality of the website itself.

For every online store, it is important to make your website, app, or adapted version as fast as possible to avoid losing users. Nowadays, every second counts, because a delay of a few seconds when a page loads can turn a customer away from your site forever. That's why today we're going to talk about optimizing your Magento website to achieve maximum speed on different devices.

SQL queries are a set of commands to a database. These commands give permission to obtain the necessary information. However, those queries that are not optimized correctly can have a negative impact on the speed of the store. This is the first thing you should optimize when you start improving the speed of your online resource. Here are some tips:

• you can use database monitoring tools that identify slow queries;
• you need to analyse query execution and find problem areas;
• you can add indexes to database tables to speed up data retrieval;
• optimize the structure of queries to minimize the amount of data the system selects.

These are two systems that allow you to cache various data that is often used in the server's RAM. This allows you to reduce the load on the database, which speeds up data access. These systems are similar to each other but have differences.

Redis. Supports more different types of data: strings, lists, and more. It has the function of saving data to disc and data replication.

Memcached. A simple and fast tool for work, but it does not support complex data structures like Redis. The system stores data in the key-value format.

Varnish is a reverse proxy tool. Its task is to cache static resources: images, styles, scripts. All this is done on a network server. To use Varnish, you need to:

• install Varnish on the server and configure it to work with Magento;
• configure Varnish to work with the necessary resources;
• from time to time, it is necessary to clear the Varnish cache (this procedure is performed when the content on the site is updated).

Working with images and media files is an integral component of optimization work. Many people forget about this component. They can cause delays in page loading. What should you pay attention to?

1. Before uploading images to your website, you need to compress them without losing quality.
2. Choose only modern formats for posting media, such as WebP format. WebP is a relatively new graphic file format that guarantees compression of large files without loss of image quality.
3. Use lazy loading on your website. This will allow you to load images and media gradually rather than at once, which will speed up the loading of the page itself. Lazy loading is a strategy that aims to identify some resources that are not critical (not the most important) in order to load them at the moment when the user needs them.
4. Minify and combine CSS and JavaScript files. Minification is the process of reducing program code by removing unnecessary characters without changing the functioning of the program.

CDN is a network of servers. If you plan to enter the international market, this is an important component. After all, there is a delay in file transfer.

For example, your company is based in the UK, but the server is located in Germany. A client from India wants to place an order with you. Of course, it will take them a long time to load the pages. There are thousands of kilometres between India and the servers in Europe. It would be more convenient for your potential customer if your server was located somewhere in Asia.

This approach not only allows you to expand your audience, but also increases the number of orders and the level of customer loyalty.

To set up a CDN, you need to:

• connect your online store to a CDN provider;
• configure the CDN to cache static resources;
• run tests and make sure that content is delivered to users from the nearest servers.

Optimization of an online store on Magento is a complex, complicated process. However, the result of optimization works cannot be overestimated, as they have a positive impact on the conversion rate and user loyalty to the online resource.

All the optimization measures we've described above will help you create a fast, functional online store that will contribute to the growth of your business. If you need help with creating an online store or marketplace, our company is always happy to help you implement your ideas.