Your online store’s speed is vital to improving user experience (UX) and sales performance.
In fact, Japanese eCommerce brand Rakuten 24 found that fast loading speeds increased its website conversion rate by up to 61.13%.
Magento is an eCommerce platform known for delivering fast loading speeds at scale.
This makes it a popular choice for online brands with heavy product inventories or high traffic volume looking to provide an industry-leading shopping experience.
But choosing Magento as your eCommerce platform isn’t the only way to speed up your online store.
Below, we have listed 10 Magento performance optimization steps to ensure lightning-fast store speeds as your brand grows.
We also showcase the top Magento optimization tools, the benefits of running a fast-loading e-store and examples from our portfolio.
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Top Tips To Optimize Your Magento Store’s Loading Speeds
Magento provides high-end shopping experiences for scaling businesses, making it a strong choice in relation to the likes of Shopify or WooCommerce for enterprise eCommerce brands.
However, there are numerous steps to take to further optimize your site.
Follow these 10 steps to optimize your online store’s performance and leverage the full extent of Magento’s capabilities.
1. Choose A Fast Hosting Provider
Web hosting is a service that stores your site information on a web server, making it accessible through the internet.
These services come as either dedicated, cloud or shared hosting.
While shared hosting is the cheapest option, choosing a dedicated hosting solution means your online store receives an entire server to itself — boosting page loading speeds.
This makes choosing the dedicated or cloud hosting solution from a Magento-specialized web hosting provider, like Nexcess or Cloudways, an important first step in optimizing your e-store.
Once you choose your hosting provider, set up a content delivery network (CDN) in your Magento 2 store.
Solutions like Cloudflare or Fastly distribute your content globally, reducing latency — the delay between a user’s action and its effect.
2. Ensure Correct Server Configuration
You can choose a managed hosting solution for your Magento store or configure your web server in-house with the help of expert developers.
Either way, there are several steps to take to ensure that your server configuration maximizes store speed.
To ensure correct server configuration:
- Enable Gzip Compression to reduce the size of files sent from your server to increase the speed at which they are transferred to the browser.
- Use the latest PHP version supported by Magento, as it offers better performance and security.
- Configure MySQL properly by optimizing database queries and indexing.
3. Enable Caching
Storing data and making sure it can be displayed instantly for every request means you can greatly reduce rendering and loading times.
Make sure to facilitate all types of caching in Magento, including:
- Full page cache
- Block cache
- Browser cache
In addition, use varnish cache if available, as it is more efficient for full-page caching than the built-in Magento cache.
4. Optimize Your Content
Your content, specifically your e-store’s images and custom code, has a direct impact on page loading speeds.
The heavier the files, the longer customers wait to explore your online store and the more likely they are to leave your site.
Best practice suggests keeping a webpage under 500KB, but often this isn’t possible. In turn, the average webpage for retail websites in the United States is 3.6MB.
To optimize your content for seamless Magento performance, you can:
- Minimize CSS and JavaScript files by enabling Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML in the Magento admin panel.
- Merge CSS and JavaScript files to reduce the number of HTTP requests.
- Optimize images by using tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to compress images without losing quality.
5. Optimize Your Database
Maintaining an organized, up-to-date and streamlined database is crucial for ongoing efficiency and managing your query performance as your Magento website grows.
It can also help you spot potential issues that may be slowing down your site.
When optimizing your database, consider:
- Regularly cleaning logs and sessions in the database to keep it lean
- Optimizing database tables using database tool providers, like Amasty, or Magento-specific modules
6. Consider Themes & Extensions
Pre-built Magento extensions and themes can be extremely code-heavy, slowing down your rendering speeds and negatively impacting your e-store’s usability.
Choose a lightweight Magento theme designed for speed or enlist the support of Magento developers to create an optimized custom theme that maintains fast loading speeds as your business scales.
Also make sure to remove unnecessary extensions and ensure that all installed extensions are optimized and up to date.
7. Examine Code & Rendering
The way your Magento store’s frontend renders for your visitors significantly impacts your overall page speed performance and user experience (UX).
To ensure your e-store’s rendering doesn’t cause customer frustrations and high bounce rates, you can:
- Defer JavaScript loading to allow the rest of the page to load without waiting for scripts.
- Use lazy loading for images so that images are only loaded when they are visible to the user.
8. Implement Advanced Techniques
As a complex eCommerce platform, Magento can be shaped and adjusted to fit your exact brand strategy.
Unless you have expert developers with a deep understanding of how Magento performance optimization works, we suggest partnering with a technical web design agency that specializes in managing e-stores for enterprise solutions.
Some of the more technical solutions you can implement to increase your store speed include:
- Enabling HTTP/2 if your server supports it, as it allows multiplexing, header compression, and more efficient resource loading
- Using Redis or Memcached for session storage and caching to reduce database load
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9. Monitor & Analyze Your Performance
Your store’s speed is only as fast as its latest performance.
This makes consistently monitoring and analyzing your webpage loading times an important step in continuing to provide an industry-leading UX for your customers.
To effectively monitor and analyze your Magento store’s performance, you can:
- Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom to analyze and monitor your website’s performance.
- Address the recommendations provided by these tools to continually improve your site’s speed.
- Monitor third-party services and scripts, as they can often become bottlenecks.
10. Install Regular Updates
Magento is continuously updated, with each new version often including performance enhancements and bug fixes.
One of the major recent updates was the transition from Magento 1 to Magento 2, resulting in e-stores that upgraded to the latest version experiencing enhanced site speeds and performance.
By keeping your Magento installation up to date, you ensure your store is taking advantage of the latest speed optimizations and security improvements, helping to maintain optimal performance and protect your customers’ data.
5 Magento Performance Optimization Extensions
Magento is a robust eCommerce platform known for its fast loading speeds, which are considered one of its core advantages over competitors like Shopify and WooCommerce.
However, there are several Magento performance optimization extensions to make your online store even faster.
Five of the best include:
1. Full Page Cache By Amasty
[Source: Amasty]
Full Page Cache is a dedicated Magento performance optimization extension that improves page loading times.
The extension stores each page in cache, bypassing Magento’s page rendering times to reduce waits for fully loaded pages.
Full Page Cache can ensure your e-store loads 40 times quicker than the average website, at 0.045 seconds.
Pricing:
- Community: $239
- Enterprise: $439
2. Google Page Speed Optimizer Pro By Amasty
Developed by Amasty, Google Page Speed Optimizer Pro is a Magento 2 extension that aims to improve e-store performances based on Google’s website requirements.
The tool offers a range of page speed diagnosis features, from code structure and hosting options to on-page optimization, so you can understand where your Magento store is falling short and how to improve it.
Google Page Speed Optimizer Pro directs your decision-making to achieve green scores in the Google PageSpeed Insights tool while improving your shopping experience for customers.
Pricing:
- Google Page Speed Optimizer: $0
- Google Page Speed Optimizer Pro: $169
- Google Page Speed Optimizer Premium: $599
3. Defer JavaScript By MageAnts
[Source: MageAnts via Adobe Commerce Marketplace]
Defer JavaSript is a Magento 2 extension by MageAnts that targets the order in which your webpage loads.
A webpage normally loads from top to bottom. When there is JavaScript within the head or body of your page, this can slow down your loading speeds.
Defer JavaScript reorganizes the pattern, completing HTML and CSS loading before tackling the JavaScript. This reduces rendering times for customers in your Magento store.
Pricing:
- Magento Open Source: $99
- Adobe Commerce On-Premise: $199
- Adobe Commerce Cloud: $399
4. Magento Speed Optimization Service By Magefan
MageFan’s Magento 2 Speed Optimization Service is an end-to-end solution designed to boost website loading speeds, improve SEO, increase conversions and drive sales.
The service tackles your e-store’s core web vitals by providing a range of tactics, such as web server configuration, database optimization, cache adjustment, and media content compression.
Pricing:
- Custom quote only
5. Magento 2 Convert Images To WebP By BSS Commerce
Magento 2 Convert Images to WebP by BSS Commerce optimizes online stores by converting jpg, jpeg and png images to WebP files.
Automatically changing any images uploaded to your Magento store to WebP format reduces the file size, taking up less space and minimizing frontend loading times.
The extension also ensures that your high-quality website images remain clear and continue to provide an engaging UI for your customers, despite the reduction in file size.
Pricing:
- Magento Open Source: $59
- Adobe Commerce On-Premise: $209
- Adobe Commerce Cloud: $359
| Tool Name | Provider | Main Feature | Price |
| Full Page Cache | Amasty | Caching | $239-$439 |
| Google Page Speed Optimizer Pro | Amasty | Page speed diagnosis and recommendations | $0-$599 |
| Defer JavaScript | MageAnts | Code rendering reorganization | $99-$399 |
| Magento Speed Optimization Service | MageFan | End-to-end page speed solutions | Custom quote |
| Magento 2 Convert Images To WebP | BSS Commerce | WebP image conversion | $59-$359 |
Why Is It Important To Fix Magento Performance Issues?
Fixing Magento performance issues is a crucial factor in delivering a high-quality UX that satisfies your customers and drives repeat purchases.
More specifically, Magento performance optimization helps to:
1. Reduce User Journey Frictions
Slow loading times create friction in your customer journeys, frustrating your website visitors and leading to high bounce rates.
In fact, mobile sites that take longer than three seconds to load are abandoned by 53% of visitors.
Magento performance optimization techniques ensure a smooth experience that keeps users engaged and reduces abandonment.
2. Limit Cart Abandonment Rates
Cart abandonment is a common issue for e-stores of all industries.
According to Baymard Institute, 70.19% of all shopping carts are abandoned globally.
Slow site speed is a key contributor to this, with users leaving the checkout process if it is too complex or if purchase pages take too long to load.
Improving the flow of your conversion funnel and optimizing your Magento store speed helps recover lost sales by making checkout fast and seamless.
3. Improve Brand Perceptions
A slow website with a poor UX reflects poorly on your brand, damaging perceptions of professionalism and trustworthiness.
This can lead to a low repeat customer rate, impacting your sales and wider brand loyalty. In fact, 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad user experience.
Optimizing the performance of your Magento store protects your reputation and encourages repeat business from satisfied customers.
Examples Of Fully Optimized Magento Stores
Our developers have optimized the performance of countless Magento stores.
See some of our results in action:
1. Geissele Automatics
Website: https://geissele.com/
We delivered a full suite of digital solutions for Geissele Automatics, including custom Magento website design.
The straightforward eCommerce website benefits from its simplicity and optimized performance. While an extensive main navigation menu shows customers the exact products they need, top-rated loading speeds ensure a seamless journey to Geissele’s product pages and checkout area.
In fact, the homepage takes just 1.9 seconds to fully load for mobile visitors, ensuring consumers experience a high-quality UX regardless of their chosen device.
2. Smallwood’s Yachtwear
Website: https://www.smallwoods.com/
We partnered with Smallwood’s Yachtwear, a leading provider of uniforms for private yacht crews, to optimize, update and improve their online store.
In addition to a performance audit and optimization, our solutions for Smallwood’s included migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 and a new design that showcases the brand’s premium products.
In optimizing the Magento store’s performance, we helped to increase engaged user sessions 95% and increased user interactions 45%.
3. Eurolux
Website: https://www.euroluxhome.com/
We collaborated with Eurolux to create a high-speed e-store that drives conversions.
As a seller of expensive antique furniture, Eurolux’s shopping experience needed to reflect the brand’s professionalism and trustworthiness.
Mobile and desktop visitors need to wait only 1.3 seconds and 1.2 seconds respectively for Eurolux’s homepage to fully load, providing instant authority and boosting satisfaction from the moment potential consumers land on the e-store.
We build custom e-stores. Request a Quote
Optimize Your Magento Store With Digital Silk
Magento is a platform that offers your enterprise business the opportunity to provide seamless, industry-leading shopping experiences to your customers.
However, without implementing Magento performance optimization techniques, your e-store will fail to reach its potential.
At Digital Silk, we’re Magento specialists. That means we’ve worked with various Magento projects to deliver top-rated user experiences centered around fast loading speeds.
What’s more, as a full-service web design agency we work to grow your brand online through a full suite of services that include:
- Custom web design
- Custom web development
- eCommerce web design and development
- Magento development
- Digital branding
- Digital marketing
But what sets our services apart from other agencies?
The fact that we always:
- Take project ownership
- Communicate with transparency
- Deliver measurable results
Looking to optimize your e-store’s performance?
Visit our contact page, call us at (800) 206-9413 or complete the Request a Quote form below to schedule a free, custom consultation with our award-winning eCommerce team.
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