What is Magento Speed?

Magento speed is an indicator to measure a website's speed and responsiveness, as well as keep visitors actively browsing before deciding to make a purchase.

Magento speed is more than just how fast a website page loads, but also measures the overall user experience such as the responsiveness of the user interface, the time it takes to complete a transaction, and the speed of navigation between pages.

Magento speed aims to improve user experience, speed up the transaction process, and optimize overall website performance.
 

Why Measuring Magento Speed is Important?

Magento is a very important indicator as it can directly affect user experience and digital business success.

For example, if a website's loading process is too long, customers would abandon it within a few seconds.

This becomes especially crucial as the fast loading time will increase conversion rates, turn visitors into customers, and help your website dominate the search results page (SERP).

Moreover, search engines like Google prefer websites with fast load speeds and a positive user experience to be placed at the top of the rankings.

Thus, speeding up your website not only makes for a better customer experience but can also enhance website rankings on search engines and eventually benefit your business.

How to Increase Magento Speed

Now that you understand what Magento speed is, here are some strategies to optimize Magento speed that you may try:

1. Reduce the Server's Initial Response Time

Choose a hosting provider that offers a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to help reduce the physical distance between the server and the user.

By utilizing CDN, data can be delivered faster to users in various areas and improve website access speed.

2. Utilizing Varnish Cache

Utilizing the Varnish cache in Magento is another way to increase website performance. Varnish, as an HTTP accelerator, caches static content including images, CSS, and JavaScript, which reduces requests to the Magento server.

By minimizing page load time, Varnish acts as an efficient reverse proxy to reduce Magento server load and improve site responsiveness significantly.

3. Using Redis

Using Redis to manage session caches on Magento 2 can also be helpful. Redis is an in-memory data store that can store large PHP session files and replace the default cache.

Redis can optimize site performance by handling over 60,000 connections and 50,000 queries per second, reducing page load time, improving content delivery, and maximizing website speed.

4. Improving Magento Database Performance 

To improve Magento database performance, you should monitor resource usage and pay attention to metrics such as table_cache and table_open_cache.

You can use tools like MySQLTuner and New Relic to detect and fix any issues. Magento performance is not often compromised by the database unless PHP resource usage is excessive.

5. Choosing Production Mode

Choosing Production mode in Magento 2 is the right decision to improve website speed. In this mode, static display files are ahead of time and served from the cache, which speeds up page load time.

Production mode is the fastest option among other Magento default modes including default, developer, and maintenance modes. Production Mode allows you to ensure a responsive and fast shopping experience for your audience.

6. Adjust Store Themes and Media

Prioritize the use of lightweight themes to ensure optimal Magento site speed. Also, make sure to convert and resize images before uploading them.

To increase website speed, make sure that your web pages present media images in WebP format.

7. Reduce the Use of Third-Party Extensions

While extensions might improve functionality, overusing them can slow down your website. 

In this case, you can start by optimizing the HTML code, and JavaScript, also combining CSS files.

Also, make sure to choose extensions from the Magento Marketplace that have gone through strict quality checks by Adobe.

8. Avoid Using Flat Catalogs

Using a flat catalog in Magento can lead to a decrease in website performance. This happens because flat catalogs increase the load on the database and cause cron jobs to run longer. If you want to increase Magento site speed, you should avoid using flat catalogs.

To disable flat catalogs for Magento from the backend admin panel, you can take the following steps:

• Go to "Store" > "Settings" > "Configuration" > "Catalog" > "Catalog".
• Expand the "Storefront" section.
• Change the value for "Use Flat Catalog Category" to "No".
• Change the value for "Use Flat Catalog Product" to "No".