Magento is one of the most broadly used platforms in the ecommerce industry for online retailers. In fact, 16 percent of the 100,000 most successful ecommerce websites currently use Magento, and that number increases to 22 percent if you include the Magento’s Cloud Edition. Many internet retailers choose Magento because it’s a robust platform that offers a high level of functionality and customization. Additionally, it is easily scalable, allowing sellers to maintain the same platform as their businesses grow.  Every online business owner strives to satisfy customers and continually increase sales and revenue while facing challenges along the way. One of the most fixable challenges ecommerce retailers face is page load time. Research has proven that customers don’t want to wait more than two seconds for a page to load, and that they will often abandon the site if it takes more than three. With statistics like that, it’s important for ecommerce sites to optimize their page load times.  Because Magento is a substantial ecommerce content management system (CMS), it can load slowly from time to time, particularly when the store is not optimized. Fortunately, there are some remedies that you can employ to help speed up your page load time. The following are five fixes that will optimize your Magneto store’s speed.  

#1 – Enable Flat Catalog

Flattening your catalog will reduce your page load times, getting your pages to your potential customers quicker. Magento files the attributes that apply to products and categories in separate database tables, according to their data type. This entity attribute value (EAV) model allows them to be extremely protractible, but it also causes Magento to have to search through various tables for scattered information. This can cause your website to slow down.  When you flatten your catalog, you are telling Magento to store all your category and product data in one table, for quicker retrieval.  

#2 – Utilize Caching

Effectively managing your Magento’s cache will help speed up your site. Magento does have a management system that helps site owners organize cache and improve their stores’ performance. Cache entries are stored in that file system. As your site is viewed by visitors, the time that it takes to read and write the file system takes more and more time, slowing down load time. Browser and page caching, as well as gzip compression, will help your pages load faster. However, be aware that you will need to disable caching when you are editing the core or template files of your Magento site.  

#3 – Disable Unused Extensions and Modules

Be sure that you clean up any extensions and modules that you are not using, as they can cause ineffective bloat. Review extensions and determine the ones that you are actually using and disable the rest. Doing so means that you are using fewer resources for the operation of your store and it will make your site run faster. But, be careful that you don’t disable any modules that you need.  

#4 – Merging CSS and JavaScript Files

As you add extensions and customize your Magento store, the number of CSS and JavaScript files increase, and as that number grows, your page load time will slow down. Merging all of those files will result in the browser only needing one HTTP request to retrieve the data; it saves bandwidth allowing pages to load quicker.  

#5 – Optimize Your Images

Images are one of the biggest factors of load times. When you optimize images, which likely adorn every one of your pages, you ensure that your site will have the best possible performance. There are a number of ways that you can optimize your photos, including:

 
• Compress – Magento will compress your images by a default of 75 percent automatically. Sometimes, that is effective, but other times you may be able to use more compression. There are several tools that you can use for a compression solution (one such app is It).
 
• Assign Measurements – Utilizing HTML height and width tags to specify correct sizing helps optimize your images.
 
• Don’t Scale – Rather than scaling down a large image in code to fit the size you actually want, change the size of the image itself. This keeps your site from having to load files that are larger than they need to be.

Speeding Up Your Magento Store

Reducing the load time of your Magento pages can have a huge effect on your bottom line. While some of the tips mentioned above may seem very technical, they can easily be performed by a web developer if you are not well-versed in coding. Adding to your customers’ favorable experiences on your website will definitely make it worth the expense of hiring someone to help.  

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