Tips to speed up your Magento 2 website

by JONATHAN PAUL Jonathan Paul working at PHPProgrammers, a leading

You can create a fast and high performing website with Magento 2. All you need to do is keep a few tips in your mind. An expert Magento developer of Sydney has shared a few here in this article.

The loading time of a website is one of the most crucial factors you need to consider. No one prefers to explore or use slow websites. A fast loading site can ensure to bring much more sales by converting more visitors to customers. This increases the search engine ranking as well.

So, here are tips to speed up a Magento 2 website unboxed by a Magento developer in Sydney.

Select a fast hosting server:

The hosting server you choose for your Magento 2 website plays an important role in the overall performance of the site. Hence, choosing the fastest hosting plan within your budget is essential. Also, just make sure the hosting server you are choosing meets the requirements for the Magento 2 site.

Third-party extensions:

Before getting started with Magento 2 optimisation, it is important to inspect all the third-party extensions that are installed on the website. There are many extensions available both for free and paid ones. But, not all of these extensions are made to speed up a site. Some may even slow it down. Hence, you need to inspect it by just turning each one of them off one by one and test the speed of the site. Once you have checked all of them, use the extensions that ensure speed and high performance to the Magento 2 site.

Enable flat categories & products:

If a Magento 2 store has too many products, then the slowing down of the site becomes a very common problem. Too many products actually make the site heavier, which ultimately slows it down. But, Magento 2 comes with an in-built feature that helps to enable flat categories and products in the store. This helps in reducing the loading time and even makes the store database run faster.

To enable it, just go to the admin panel, and follow this path: -

Stores-->configuration-->catalog-->storefront-->choose ‘yes’ in the flat catalog and category field.

Use in-built cache, skip varnish:

By default, this version of Magento comes with two choices for full-page caching – in-built application and varnish. Out of the two, varnish needs extra software to get installed and to be managed on the site’s server. Hence, experts recommend not to use varnish because of two reasons: -

Varnish needs very frequent maintenance and upgrades
It is quite difficult to set up varnish over the SSL

Turn on the production mode:

You can operate a Magento 2 store from different modes – from default mode or the production mode. The default mode is mainly used for debugging codes but never used for a live site. However, you can use the production mode for a live site. Get all SSH details from the hosting server to find out on what mode the site is currently running and turn on the production mode if required.

Apart from these tips, you need to keep a few more in your mind while optimising a Magento 2 website. Keeping the database optimised is always essential. Use a content delivery network for better reach and performance. Minification of CSS and JS files can boost the site speed to a great extent. Image optimisation is another trick to end up with a fast-loading Magento 2 website.

Jonathan Paul is an experienced Magento developer of Sydney associated with a leading company, PHPProgrammers. The author has suggested these tips and strategies to help out developers to optimise a Magento 2 store easily.