Choosing a best-suit eCommerce platform is significant since it influences most development and operation processes of an ideal eCommerce system. With various strengths, Magento sounds like a potential candidate for businesses and individuals who want to develop a professional eCommerce website long term. However, it can still have issues, and most of it is about its slow speed. This article will show you the causes of the problems and give you a detailed Magento performance optimization guide. Let’s dig into this!
Contents
Brief Introduction To Magento
Magento is an eCommerce platform written in PHP frameworks that helps web developers build a splendid interface and rich function online store.
As open-source software, Magento users are free to customize or extend the source code. Therefore, it can provide limitless customization to freely apply creative ideas about any store.
Besides, it also provides vast third-party extensions and themes to meet their business needs. Thanks to Magento’s seamless integration ability, you are free to enhance any function of this story with plugins.
Magento pricing plans:
- Magento Open Source: a free version.
- Magento Commerce Edition: This edition costs around $22,000–125,000/year.
- Magento Commerce Cloud Edition: The most expensive plan, you must spend $40,000–190,000/year for its license.
Magento performance optimization: Why Is Magento 2 So Slow?
In fact, Magento 2 speed can not slow since many experts have proven its speed. Its lousy performance is caused by negligence or a lack of Magento 2 performance optimization expertise.
Here are the top 5 culprits:
#1: Using lots of unnecessary and inappropriate extensions
Many extensions play vital roles in enhancing your business’s working results, such as OneSaas for finance, AdRoll for marketing, Fraud Prevention for security, etc.
Because of their potential, it is difficult to get rid of them. However, besides those beneficial extensions, there are also unnecessary ones. Using those plugins without testing or safety confirmation will sometimes lead to the use of buggy extensions. Furthermore, some of them are unused, causing the speed of Magento 2 to suffer.
#2: Magento hosting is unavailable
Hosting (or web hosting) is an online service that helps you publish your website or web application to the Internet. When you sign up for a hosting service, you rent a place to store data on a particular server.
However, since hosting is a yearly paid service, many people choose low-cost providers. This may lead to issues such as low level of security, server location, unclear limitations of the Hosting Plan, and the like.
#3: Insufficient hardware
Magento 2 stores have a hardware requirement benchmark (up to 2GB of RAM). When the new Magento version is available, your upgrade might fail if your hardware doesn’t have enough space.
As a result, you’re stuck with the old Magento versions, often not optimized for the latest Magento technologies, leading to bad performance.
#4: The data caching is off
The cache is a temporary storage area of a device that helps retain certain data types. It’s an area that stores frequently used data or processes for faster access in the future. In other words, with this function, your Magento store will keep the data about your customers to save page load time in the future.
You may have turned off your data caching. For this reason, HTTP requests, database queries, or images will not be cached in your browser. So, you have to wait a little longer for it to run from scratch for each visit.
#5: Flat catalogs are not enabled
One of the most common issues is the database’s read speed, and flat catalogs are the best solution for this problem. Specifically, it makes querying the database the shortest and most accessible. As a result, the bloating database problem, which will often lead to Magento slow, is also reduced. So if you turn them off, the page data fetching speed may be limited.
9 Effective Ways For Magento Performance Optimization
#1: Update Magento regularly
One of the simplest yet most effective ways to optimize your Magento loading pace is by updating your store to the latest version.
Suppose you frequently update your website’s Magento version every time the vendor releases a new patch. It will help your eStore match the platform’s technology and improve your site performance.
There are 3 simple steps to update Magento 2:
- Backup your store:
It is necessary to protect all data from the disappearance through Backup Management if there is an error on the website.
- Turn on maintenance mode:
This step takes your site temporarily offline and sends users to the Temporarily Unavailable Services page by default.
- Upgrade to Magento 2 with CLI:
Another option to upgrade Magento 2 is using Command-Line. You need to Connect SSH and go to the Magento Root Directory structure, or you can use it through your Windows command prompt if you are handling or upgrading it in the local system.
#2: Check out Third-Party Extensions
You should also check the installed extensions since some of them may slow down your eCommerce website. Try enabling/disabling modules, clearing cache, and see if site speed changes. If you have found the extensions that adversely affect your page’s loading speed, you should optimize or remove them.
You need SSH access to disable the extension. Most hosting companies will supply you with the necessary credentials and allow you to access the server through SSH.
#3: Select the suitable hosting
Many factors affect a website’s performance, the server being one of the most important. Choosing the right hosting provider is a crucial step when building your store. Check that your Magento hosting provider has enough server resources to handle a particular amount of users and server requests. Besides, select hosting that allows you to expand.
The first thing to consider is the type of hosting. There are 4 common types:
- Share Web Hosting
- Dedicated Web Server
- Cloud-Based Hosting
- Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Another crucial aspect of any eCommerce site is security. There are some of the most important security features:
- Server hardening
- Powerful firewall
- DDoS protection
- SSL integrated
- Backups automatically
Also, there are some of the top Magento hosting providers and their advantages:
Cloudways (Cloud Hosting):
- Pricing packages have been simplified
- having a chatbot that can recommend a specific plan
- deliver website files as quickly as possible
- Applying to choose the Cloud Host for you
A2hosting (Cloud hosting):
- Have a fast page loading speed
- Ensure 99% uptime when users use it.
- Equipped with a 24/7 customer service
- Having a friendly interface
- Support high-security features
FastComet (Shared hosting):
- have free SSL
- Guaranteed uptime
- Managed WordPress Features
- Support via direct message
Nexcess (Shared hosting):
- Have a unique eCommerce solution
- Cloud infrastructure with auto-scaling
- easy to use
- support 24/7
HostGator (Dedicated Web Server):
- High-speed server
- Very low annual downtime rate
- Highly customizable packages
- Good customer support
Hostinger (Virtual Private Server)
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Great benefits that increase speed
- Free domain name
#4: Turn production mode on
Magento 2 has three operating modes, and production is the fastest one. The production model can boost your Magento site’s speed since the static files are saved in the pub/static directory and the source code has been compiled to run faster. For this reason, production mode should always be enabled on a live website.
To change the mode:
- To display the mode in use, you run the command:
php bin/magento deploy:mode:show - To switch to Production mode, use the command:
php bin/magento deploy:mode:set production
#5: Minifying CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and JS (JavaScript) files:
HTML provides the basic structure of web pages. It can be enhanced and modified by other technologies such as CSS and JavaScript.
If you don’t know about programming languages, CSS is used to control presentation, formatting, and layout. JavaScript is used to manage the behavior of different elements. However, keeping these 2 types of files consumes a lot of data, making the website take a long time to load. So Magento developers created a feature that combines JS and CSS files.
Here are the steps to merge CSS and JavaScript in Magento 2:
- Go to Store -> Configuration. Go into the Advanced tab and the Developer tab under configuration.
- In the JavaScripts Settings, change the values of Merge JavaScript Files, Minify JavaScript Files to Yes
- In the CSS Settings tab, change the fields Merge CSS Files and Minify CSS Files to Yes
#6: Implement Content Delivery Network
Setting up a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a great way to reduce the web loading time. It allows your assets (product images, javascript, CSS) to be received from different locations worldwide, helping shoppers load pages faster.
To set up:
- Go to Store -> Settings -> Configuration.
- In the General tab, click on the web. Configure Base URLs and Base URLs (secure).
- In the Base URLs tab, enter the CDN URLs for the Static and JavaScript (User Media) Files.
- In the Base URLs (Secure) section, enter the same data in the Secure Base URL for Static View Files and the Secure Base URL for User Media Files fields.
- Save the changes.
To choose the best Content Delivery Network, there are some remarkable points:
- Cache and retention policy
- Details of the service level agreement
- Number of failures
- Supplementary services
- The technique of call forwarding.
#7: Disable the JavaScript Bundling
Although the JS bundling reduces the number of HTTP requests to the server required to load the page, it slows the Magento site. The website page will not load until the browser has downloaded all JS bundles. Furthermore, every time a browser requests a new page, Magento loads JS bundles. This makes the user feel that the page speed slows down more and more each time they reload the page.
You can turn it off in the backend:
1. Click on Stores -> Settings -> Configuration from the left sidebar
2. Choose Advanced from the sidebar, select the Developer tab
3. At JavaScript settings, select Developer Tab
4. Open the JavaScript Settings section, Enable JavaScript Bundling to Yes
5. Click on Save Config
In Magento 2.2+, these settings are only supposed to be in developer mode.
#8: Optimize image
When accessing a website, all the page’s content, including the images, is loaded simultaneously. As a result, it leads to the loss of page load time. Thus, the website slows down. With the lazy loading method, which will gradually load the image while scrolling down the page, the image loading process will be optimized.
There are other ways to make images load faster:
- Compress Images
- Change to Modern file formats
- Enable image optimization fastly
- Use multi-version images for different screen sizes
#9: Use caching
As mentioned, the cache is vital for Magento 2 performance optimization since it can store customer data.
However, developers and designers sometimes disable the Magento cache to perform more smoothly when working on a website. If they don’t enable it after they’re done, your website will load slowly, and your clients will have a negative experience.
There are many reasons why the cache is disabled: a 3rd-party developer, integrator, or in-house designer has not enabled it. So if your web becomes slow and unresponsive, follow these steps:
In the backend, go to System -> Tool, and click on Cache Management. Check the cache type that needs to turn on/off. Select the option to enable or disable on the top left sidebar, then click the submit button.
To clear cache:
- go to System in the backend -> Tools -> Cache Management
- Check the cache, click Flush Magento Cache to clear the cache, or click on Flush Cache storage if you want to flush the cache.
Magento Performance Optimization FAQs
1. How can you improve Magento’s performance?
There are 9 methods to enhance your Magento speed. You can run some tests to find the reasons and suitable solutions from our list.
2. Why is Magento 2 so slow?
There are 5 reasons as we mentioned above. However, the most significant one is the bad customizations and extensions.
3. How do I speed up the Magento backend?
There are 5 most popular ways to improve your backend: Delete unused extensions, delete unused and outdated products, reindex, tune up the database, and clear the cache.
Conclusion
Magento is undeniably one of the most powerful eStore building support platforms globally. However, ignoring Magento performance optimization during your eCommerce website operation can lead to some speed issues.
A Magento website that takes a long time to load will have a high bounce rate and low conversion rate. So, if you pay more attention and use Magento properly, you can enjoy its full benefits.
Above is all information to guide you about Magento performance optimization. We hope it is helpful to you. Thanks for reading!
