How to Optimize Your Magento Store in 2020 (and Beyond) For Great Sales?

Hail Magento!

According to Magento.com, – the most common and trusted e-commerce platform – Magento has held the #1 spot on the ‘Internet Retailer 1000 list’ for four years in a row.

Not just that, the consistency recorded by Magento is conspicuous that the software developers can keep up with the changing needs of the market, effectively and efficiently.

Ease of use, seamless transition between web pages, straightforward understanding of the e-commerce platform, effortless checkout, and payment facilities have made Magento the most preferred platform.

This is a testament as to why nearly 7500 retailers migrated to Magento from other e-commerce platforms in 2019, says BuiltWith.

The advantages of Magento include:

• flexible content management technology,
• easy third-party integrations,
• progressive search engine optimization,
• cogent and extensive platform,
• inherent upsell and cross-sell,
• customizable security permissions,
• versatile shopping cart modules,
• intellectual search options for customers, and
• saving ‘time and money’ feature.

Magento and User Experience

Magento.com has confirmed that in the last two years, certain brands using Magento have seen a whopping 200% increase in growth, and more still have seen a 100% increase.

The numbers are gigantic.

And this means…tireless backend work.

To keep the numbers constant, it requires multitudinous efforts. Regular optimization, continuous monitoring, removing redundancy, increasing page efficiency, etc. are a few of the continual tasks that need to be carried on religiously to keep user experience seamless.

Amidst all the regular checkups and scrutinization, the page load has been quite an issue with Magento. Before we dive into the tips for e-commerce website optimization, let us understand a few common reasons for slow performance, and they are:

• surplus SQL queries in the loop, thus giving way to access restricted data;
• inefficient utilization of memory as a result of loading the same information multiple times and unwanted data utilization;
• broken scripts making it visible for the site visitors;
• calculating array size for every data iteration;
• remote execution of commands making way for intruders to gain control over user’s sensitive data;

5 Essential Tips for Magento Website optimization

More than 250,000 online merchants worldwide use Magento as their e-commerce platform, Magento.com confirms.

And, BuiltWith has discovered that the majority of Magento users are in the United States, with 39,612 e-commerce websites.

With the world so dependent on website performance optimization, it means more money is at stake. Your e-commerce website is the online face of your business. And you want to keep your customers coming back to you again and again. To win the loyalty of your customers, you need to optimize your online store 100%, and the first way to achieve that is by loading the web page in the blink of an eye.

Pay attention to the following tips to keep your Magento store healthy and optimized.

●      Update your Magento version to the latest

Magento needs to be updated every time a new version is dispatched.

New features, bug fixes, and performance improvements are stapled updates of every new version. You must manually check for updates in the admin panel.

Tip: Before you update, ensure to back up any data that you may have. Launch updates in the night time or at times when there is less traffic so you can prevent your customers from experiencing technical glitches.

Informing your customers about updates to your website will save you frowns.

●      Deploy caching

Magento allows a path to diverse forms of caching. Enable caching to refine your website’s speed by using its inherent cache management features that make third-party modules easy to install.

Varnish + APC + Memcache + NGINX are the most opted cache settings for significant results.

To enable caching,

Step #1: Select Systems >> Cache Management.

Step #2: Select ‘Enable’ from the drop-down menu.

Step #3: Click on ‘Select all’ (recommended) or the ones you need.

Step #4: Hit Flush Management Cache.

P.S. Browser caching, Gzip compression, and Page caching are the other available caching methods that you can perform for your Magento Website optimization.

●      Launch Content Delivery Network

To optimize the browser-server connection, you must have a server in the proximity of your website visitor’s location. This term is called Load Balancing. Launching a CDN will help you maintain the load balanced throughout your user’s browsing session.

Having a Content Delivery Network (CDN) will

• provide a high-speed browsing experience for your website users,
• increase the page load speed of your website,
• improve the website’s content delivery speed for your visitors, and,
• decrease bandwidth consumption.

●      Revisit images for website performance optimization

Images, especially high-definition images, play a crucial role in user engagement. It decides the overall beauty and design of the website. And from an e-commerce forefront, images are everything to land your first customer.

On the contrary, using high-definition images means low page loads. You must choose to compress your images before uploading them on your e-commerce website. And the other option is to optimize the images while distributing the content with a CDN.

Tip: Use the ‘Save for Web’ option available exclusively in Adobe Photoshop, which does excellent with image compression.

●      Combine Javascript and CSS files

In a Magento store, you can combine Javascript and CSS files to reduce the number of HTTP requests. One compressed Javascript and CSS file mean one HTTP request to retrieve the content. It will create a significant difference in improving the website’s performance and decreasing bandwidth consumption.

Merging files can be done on Magento’s Admin Panel.

Step #1: Go to Stores > Configuration.

Step #2: Select Developer.

Step #3: Select ‘yes’ under the ‘Javascript Settings’ and ‘CSS Settings’.

Step #4: Click on the ‘ Save Config’ button.

●      Filter Magento logs

Your online store will record the frequently visited and read pages. After six months, the data will be deleted from the action log. The huge amount of data stored for six months will add to the database’s load.

By cleaning your Magento logs now and then, and reducing the storage days will help you improve the website’s performance and quicker page loads.

To enable cleaning Magento logs,

Step #1: Go to Stores > Configuration > Advanced > System > Log.

Step #2: Assign a value in the ‘Save Log’, ‘Enable’ the log cleaning option.

Step #3: Save the changes.

●      Manually index the Data

The process of recouping the data from the database is called Indexing.

Price, discounts, cart amount, etc. keeps changing often, and it needs to be reindexed manually by Magento. Without reindexing, Magento will have to start the calculation process from scratch comparing the old and new prices, and this will deffo lead to slower website performance and cart abandonment.

Re-indexing the data manually will save you from losing a customer.

You can manually index the MySQL queries by using the reindex command on Magento 2 root directory:

Command: php bin/magento indexer:reindex

●      Opt for faster web hosting

Select an independent server for your Magento Website optimization. Avoiding shared servers will save you from the crowd and frequent downtimes.

Having a fast Magento hosting provider will provide you with the best of infrastructure, all-time support, high-speed connection, and higher security standards.

You must understand your needs for the online store before fixing on an individual Magento hosting provider. Do check for host reliability and uptime guarantees.

Wrapping Up:

Website speed is one of the primary features that contribute to e-commerce’s victory. A quick-loading Magento store will keep your customers happy, loyal, and contribute to your overall business success and cash flow.

Magento Website optimization is crucial and it requires regular care. That’s where you could contact Velan Info for support.

The world is dependent on mobile phones and optimizing your Magento store for mobiles is an eternal task. We have specialized Magento developers who can guarantee quicker page loads and slick website operations, for mobiles, desktops, and laptops, so you can focus on new ideas and business revenue.