Top 8 tips to speed up your Magento website
Loading speed is a hard-to-ignore asset of every website/blog. Reason being that a good speed not only affects the search engine ranking of your website but also guarantees the delivery of a perfect user experience(UX) to the visitors. If lately, you’ve been witnessing a reduced speed for your Magento website, then this is a post which will make you familiar with eight simple tips that will aid you in ensuring a faster loading Magento site. So, let’s get straight to these tips!
1. Turn the Compilation Feature ‘On’:
As a new feature introduced in Magento version 1.4x.x and all above versions, the Compilation feature will compile the files and scope into easy-to-access HTML blocks. This would mean a remarkable enhancement in your site’s speed and performance by a whopping 50%. Just remember, if you’re planning to moderate your code, install extensions or updates, then the compilation needs to be disabled.
2. Reduce the Integration of Third-Party Tools or Extensions:
Despite being a powerful and completely flexible e-commerce platform itself, Magento allows you to integrate a wide range of third-party tools or extensions for extending the functionality of your website. However, it is recommended to limit the count of these integrations because the same can affect your site’s loading time. Get rid of all the unnecessary integrations that are of no use to you.
3. Cut down all the Additional Content Placed on Different Web Pages:
As an owner of a Magento website, it is important for you to filter all the web pages, thereby discarding all the unnecessary content from the same. Whether it’s an image file, simple text, content tags, CSS, JavaScript or Advertisements; remove everything that is no longer required on your website.
4. Overfilling the Cache is a Complete ‘No’:
Clearing the cache is indeed one of the best methods of increasing the speed of your Magento website. Cache is basically the place where all the logs and activities are being stored and hidden for simple access at a later point of time. Keeping all the unnecessary data within the web page will increase the count of bytes, thereby reducing the site’s speed. Hence, you can either opt for automated caching system or choose to clear the cache manually.
5. Delete all the Unused ‘active’ Extensions:
It is advised to remove all the active, unused extensions so as to ensure that the same doesn’t exist even in the database. You can go ahead with uninstalling a Magento extensions by simply logging into the Magento administration panel, clicking on “Magento Connect Manager’, further clicking on the drop down menu available besides the specific extension name and choosing the option “Uninstall”. Finally, you need to click on “Commit Changes” to ensure the complete removal of the chosen extension(s).
6. Ensure to Avoid or Minimize Redirects:
On your Magento e-commerce website, it is utmost beneficial to avoid or minimize the redirects so as to improve the speed of your web portal. Since redirects occupy a lot of space on the web server, their elimination would ensure that your web pages load within a fraction of second.
7. Maintain the Themes and Templates Appropriately:
While themes and templates serve as vital tools for effective beautification of an e-commerce website, failure to maintain them can lead to a considerable reduction in the site’s loading speed. Therefore, you must opt for web page backgrounds with an optimized size, thereby ensuring that the data count is reduced and web page loads faster.
8. Merge the JavaScript and CSS files:
The concept of combining and minifying the JavaScript and CSS files would mean that the customers’ web browsers would be expected to make few connections to your web server. This would directly mean the downloading of less data each time the Magento e-commerce website is being visited. So, in order to merge the JavaScript and CSS files, all you need to do is simply go to the Magento administration panel and navigate to System-> Configuration-> Advanced-> Developer and set the value of field: “Merge Files” available for “JavaScript Settings” and “CSS Settings” to “Yes”. Finally, click on “Save Config” button in order to save all the changes made to your Magento website.
Conclusion:
Following all the above mentioned tips seriously would indeed enable you to increase the speed of your Magento website by an impressive level. That would also mean a consistent website speed across multiple devices and platform- a viable means of leaving a positive impact on the customers.
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