Ultimate Guide to Speed Up Magento Store

by Rob Stephen getaprogrammer

This article is going to highlight a few smart tips on boosting the speed of a Magento-built eCommerce store. Read on and enhance the Magento performance.

According to a research report made by BuiltWith, worldwide almost 16% of the top 100,000 eCommerce business websites are built on the Magento platform. If the Magento Enterprise version is included, it becomes almost 22% of the top 100,000 eCommerce sites!

Even though it is one of the most sorted eCommerce development platforms trending in the market, it needs some brush ups to boost up its performance.

Customers don’t really want to wait forever to load your web pages. Hence, speedy page loading is much needed in today’s vying business era. Otherwise, they have plenty of other options to go. Increased page loading time can increase the bounce rate! Hence, making your website speedy enough is much needed.

Here is an ultimate guide to speed up your Magento-built store. Read on, follow the guide and make your Magento eCommerce store into a success.

> Use the latest version

Well, to avail most of the benefits, make sure you are always using the updated version of Magento. Usually, the latest versions offer performance improvements and contain various bugs fixes.

Install the Magento file tree of the latest version
Now, run the installer from the Magento file tree on the outdated database
Move over the custom extensions and the themes from the outdated to the latest version

Depending on which Magento version you are using, you’ll get notification of the available updates in your message inbox.

> Cleaning Magento Logs is necessary

To speed up the Magento store, you need to enable the log cleaning in the admin panel. Also, you can choose how many days the logs will be stored. Here’s a guide on how you can set it.

Simply, go to the Stores >> Configuration >> Advanced >> System >> Log.

Now, assign the value in the “Save Log, Days” field, then enable the Magento log cleaning, lastly, save the changes.

> Enable “Flat Catalog”

Usually, based on the EAV model, Magento stores the catalogue data in different tables. In the case of the flat model, only one table is used. Hence, the EAV overhead gets cleared.

Here’s how you can enable the “flat catalog”.

Go to the System >> Configuration >> Catalog >> FrontEnd. Now, you need to select “Yes” for the fields with “Use Flat Catalog Category”.

To get a detailed guidance on Setting Up a Flat Catalog, click here.

> Enable caching

Magento offers an inbuilt feature for cache management that can be used for speeding up the store. How? Here’s the path you need to follow.

Systems >> Cache Management. Now, do the necessary changes and submit it.

Usually, for impressive results, the preferred cache setting is

APC + Varnish + NGINX + Memcache.

> Merge CSS files and JavaScript

In a Magento-built store, merging the JavaScript and the CSS files is possible. The benefit of doing this is only one HTTP request is enough to retrieve the compressed content. In this way, you can save bandwidth along with improving the performance of the website. From the Magento admin panel, you can do this merging. Here’s the guide to do it.

Go to Systems >> Advanced >> Choose “Developer”. Now, in the “CSS setting”, select “Yes” for “merge CSS files”, and also in the “JavaScript setting”, select “Yes” for “merge javascript files”. Now, simply save the changes by clicking on “Save Config”.

Once you save the configuration, clear the cache in the previously mentioned way.

Well, other than al the aforementioned ways, here are some other tips to boost up your Magento eCommerce store.

Reindex data manually. You can do it from the admin panel. Simply go to the Systems >> Index management >> Reindex data and you are done!
Uninstall all the unused and unnecessary extensions.
Set up a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
Select a faster web hosting server.
Optimise the images that you’ve used in the Magento-built store.

Well, for better Magento services, it is always better to consult a Magento eCommerce development company or to hire Magento developers.

Johan Smith is a professional Magento expert presently working with GetAProgrammer, a Sydney-based Magento development company that houses the best Magento eCommerce developers in Australia. He has been serving this industry for 10+ years and has been associated with plenty of projects related to Magento development services. To follow more of his blogs and articles, follow the LinkedIn profile of GetAProgrammer.