Magento is a superb eCommerce development platform owned by Adobe that allows you to create advanced online stores with amazing features.
Due to the complexity of the sites you can produce, page loading times can suffer so it’s important to know how to optimize your content to give end users the best possible experience. Below we use our Magento SEO consulting knowledge to show you seven simple optimization tricks that you can implement in less than an hour!
1. Make Sure You are Using the Latest Magento Version
- Most eCommerce web development platforms have regular updates which can introduce new features and fix bugs and Magento is no different.
- You should always stay up to date with the latest model of Magento as you could be using an old version that has issues that affect site performance.
- The update option is easily found in your admin panel or the main navigation bar. Please make a backup of your site before installing any update on the off chance that something goes wrong and corrupts your files.
2. Clear Magento Data Logs
A potential drawback to Magento is that it stores a wealth of data including frequently read pages and best-selling websites. While this can be beneficial and help you follow current trends, as the data is stored for 180 days it inadvertently slows the performance of your databases and server.
Luckily there is a simple option you can find in Stores > Configuration > Advanced > System > Log. Once you have navigated to this just click the “Log Cleaning” option and save and this will periodically clear the Magento logs.
3. Remove any Unused Extensions
Over time your Magento website may gather a collection of extensions and not all of them are used. Even if they are not used directly, the server will still have to load the extension and its relevant HTML and CSS code which can put an unnecessary strain on performance.
Every so often we advise auditing your extensions and removing any unused ones. You can disable an extension by clicking on Stores > Configurations > Advanced. Here you should see a list of the different extensions or modules and you can tick the disable option next to each one and then click save config.
4. Optimize Website Images
A website without images can look pretty bland and they are important for aesthetics and user experience. If not optimized however, images cause huge issues with site loading times and negatively impact the performance of your Magento store.
There are several different ways to optimize images for web use and a simple one is the website Tinypng. This site uses a type of smart compression to reduce image file sizes without a huge deterioration in quality.
5. Merge CSS and JavaScript
If your website uses both CSS and JavaScript whenever someone has to load these snippets two requests have to be made to the server and this can slow page loading speeds.
To combat this Magento allows you to merge CSS and JavaScript into one file which means there is only one server request.
To do this go to Systems > Advanced > Developer. There should be two options “CSS Settings” and “JavaScript Settings” just change the “Merge XXX files” option for both to “yes” and save.
6. Use a Lightweight Theme
If you don’t have the knowledge or time to create a Magento site from scratch there are hundreds of paid and free themes you can use instead. These provide fully-fledged site templates and layouts and make your job much easier as all you have to do is create the pages and enter content!
Some themes are not optimized however and can cause your site loading times to suffer. Before purchasing a theme it’s a great idea to test it using Google PageSpeed Insights.
This is a simple tool where you enter a website URL and it analyses loading times and outlines any errors. You can then see how the theme performs and if you think it offers fast enough speeds.
