Improve Magento performance

In the world of e-commerce, the speed and efficiency of a website are essential. A slow site can drive customers away and reduce your conversion rate, while a fast site improves user experience and increases sales. Magento, with its transition from version 1 to 2, introduced significant improvements in terms of performance. However, this does not mean that there are no further optimizations possible. Every second gained in loading time can translate into a tangible competitive advantage.

Understanding Magento 2

Magento 2 represented a significant turning point in the landscape of e-commerce platforms, bringing with it significant improvements compared to its predecessor, Magento 1.

Among these, the 39% increase in orders processed per hour stands out, a 66% decrease in the time needed to add a product to the cart and a 51% decrease in checkout time. These advancements are largely attributable to Magento 2's refined architecture and the integration of cutting-edge technologies, such as Varnish, Redis, and Nginx, as well as the implementation of full-page caching systems.

One particularly notable aspect of Magento 2 is the native support for Varnish Cache. Unlike Magento 1, where implementing Varnish often required the addition of third-party plugins and more complex server-side configuration, Magento 2 incorporated Varnish as an out-of-the-box caching solution. This paradigm shift has greatly simplified the integration of Varnish into the Magento ecosystem.

In the previous version, Magento, Varnish was considered an external improvement and not always easy to integrate. Developers and system administrators often had to rely on complementary plugins to effectively connect Varnish with Magento. This process could vary in complexity and often required specific customization to fit the needs of each individual e-commerce site.

With the advent of Magento 2, however, Varnish became natively supported. This means that Magento 2 comes with a Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) specifically designed for Magento, eliminating the need for third-party accessory plugins. This VCL is optimized to work efficiently with the Magento 2 framework, ensuring smooth integration and optimal performance.

Varnish's native integration into Magento 2 has brought several benefits, including simpler and more straightforward configuration, greater caching efficiency, and reduced server response time. This had a direct impact on site speed and user experience, resulting in improvements in customer satisfaction and conversions.

Step 1: Enable Flat Tables for Categories and Products

Enabling flat tables in Magento 2 is one of the most effective strategies for optimizing the performance of an e-commerce site. This seemingly simple step can have a significant impact on site response time and user experience.

Understanding Flat Tables

In Magento, product and category information is stored using the EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) model. While this model offers flexibility in data management, it can become inefficient, especially with a large number of attributes and products. This is because to retrieve all the necessary information about a product, Magento must perform multiple joins between different tables, slowing down SQL queries.

Flat tables, on the other hand, simplify this process. Instead of dispersing data across multiple tables, as happens with the EAV model, flat tables consolidate all the attributes of a product or category into a single table. This significantly reduces the number of joins needed during queries, speeding up data retrieval and, consequently, page load time.

Implementation of Flat Tables in Magento 2

To enable flat tables in Magento 2, you need to access the site's administration panel (backend). Once authenticated, you must navigate to the configuration section of the catalog. Here, under the 'Storefront' item, you will find the option to enable the flat catalog for categories and products. By setting these options to 'Yes', Magento will start using flat tables to manage and retrieve product and category data.

It is important to note that after you enable flat tables, you need to re-index your data to ensure that the flat tables are updated with all the latest information. Magento has an indexing system that can be managed via the administration panel or via CLI (Command Line Interface).

Advantages of Using Flat Tables

1. Performance Improvement: Using flat tables significantly reduces the time it takes to execute database queries, which results in faster loading of product and category pages.
2. Scalability: With an increasing number of products and attributes, the EAV model can become a performance bottleneck. Using flat tables helps maintain optimal performance even with a large product catalog.
3. Query simplification: The queries needed to retrieve product data become simpler and more direct, making developers' work easier and reducing the likelihood of errors.

Considerations

While flat tables offer significant performance benefits, it is important to evaluate their implementation based on the specific needs of your e-commerce site. In some cases, particularly with small product catalogs or with a limited number of custom attributes, the performance improvement may not be particularly noticeable. Additionally, flat tables may require more disk space, which is something to consider when managing server resources.

Step 2: Merge and Minify CSS and JS Files

When optimizing a Magento 2-based e-commerce site, effective management of CSS and JavaScript files is crucial. This step goes beyond simply organizing the code; It has a direct impact on page loading speed and, consequently, on the overall user experience.

The Importance of Union and Minification

1. File Merging: Each CSS or JavaScript file requested by a web page results in a separate HTTP request to the server. With many files, the number of HTTP requests can increase significantly, slowing down page loading. Merging these files into a single file (or a few files) reduces the number of HTTP requests, thus speeding up loading time.
2. File Minification: Minification removes all unnecessary characters from CSS and JavaScript files, such as spaces, comments, and newline characters. This process reduces file sizes, resulting in faster transmission time from the server to the user's browser.

Implementation in Magento 2

Magento 2 offers built-in tools to facilitate both merging and minification of CSS and JavaScript files. These features can be easily managed through the Magento backend.

1. Activating Production Mode: Before proceeding with these optimizations, it is advisable to set Magento 2 in production mode. This mode optimizes the environment for performance, unlike developer mode, which is geared towards debugging. Production mode can be activated via the Magento Command Line Interface (CLI).
2. Configuring Merge and Minification Settings:
   • In the Magento backend, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Advanced > Developer.
   • Below section JavaScript Settings, activate the option Merge JavaScript Files e Minify JavaScript Files.
   • Below section CSS Settings, activate the option Merge CSS Files e Minify CSS Files.

After enabling these settings, it is important to clear your Magento cache to ensure the changes take effect.

Advantages of Union and Minification

• Improved Loading Time: By reducing the number of HTTP requests and file size, web pages load faster, improving user experience and customer satisfaction.
• Resource Optimization: By minimizing the size of files and the number of requests, the use of server bandwidth is also reduced, thus optimizing available resources.
• Improved SEO: Search engines, like Google, favor websites with faster loading times. Therefore, these optimizations can help improve your site's ranking in search results.

Considerations

While merging and minification are best practices, it is important to test your site after applying these changes. In rare cases, merging JavaScript files can cause conflicts or compatibility issues. Therefore, careful verification and functional testing are essential to ensure that the site functions properly after these optimizations.

Merging and minifying CSS and JavaScript files in Magento 2 are critical steps in optimizing site performance. By implementing these techniques correctly, you can significantly improve page loading speed, offering a smoother user experience and potentially increasing conversions and customer loyalty.

Step 3: Enable a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Implementing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is an essential step in improving the performance of a Magento 2 e-commerce site, especially when serving a global audience. A CDN optimizes content distribution, significantly reducing load times for users located in different parts of the world.

What is a CDN and Why is it Important

A CDN is a network of geographically distributed servers that work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content. It stores cached copies of static website files, such as CSS, JavaScript, images, and videos, in multiple data centers around the world. When a user accesses the site, content is served from the closest CDN server, reducing latency and improving loading times.

Implementing a CDN in Magento 2

1. Choosing a CDN Provider: There are various renowned CDN providers to choose from, such as CloudFlare, Amazon CloudFront, Akamai and others. Each of these providers offers different features and pricing plans, so it's important to select the one best suited to the specific needs of your e-commerce site.
2. Configure the CDN in the Magento Backend:
   • Navigate to Stores > Configuration > General > Web.
   • Here, under the settings of Base URLs e Base URLs (Secure), you can configure URLs for i Static View Files e User Media Files to target the CDN domain.
3. File Synchronization: After configuring the URLs, you need to synchronize the site's static and media files with the CDN. This process may vary depending on the CDN provider you choose.

Advantages of Using a CDN

• Improved Loading Speed: Reducing the physical distance between the user and website content results in faster loading times.
• Scalability and Reliability: A CDN can handle high traffic spikes, ensuring your site remains operational and fast even during periods of high demand.
• Improved Security: Many CDN vendors offer additional security features, such as DDoS attack mitigation and data protection.

Additional Considerations

While a CDN offers numerous benefits, it is important to keep in mind that setting up and managing a CDN requires some attention. For example, it is crucial to ensure that cached content is up to date and that synchronization between the main site and the CDN works smoothly. Additionally, a CDN setup should be thoroughly tested to ensure there are no compatibility issues or service interruptions.

Enabling a CDN in Magento 2 is a crucial step in improving site performance globally. By leveraging trusted providers like CloudFlare or Amazon CloudFront, you can ensure that users around the world enjoy a fast and smooth browsing experience, thus increasing customer satisfaction and potentially sales.

Step 4: Enable Full Page Cache (FPC)

Enabling Full Page Cache (FPC) in Magento 2 is a crucial element for optimizing the performance of an e-commerce site. FPC works by storing the entire generated HTML page, so that it can be reused for subsequent requests, thus significantly reducing the load on the server and improving response times.

What is Full Page Cache

Full Page Cache is a technology that saves a complete copy of a web page after its first generation. When the same page is requested again, Magento can serve this cached version instead of completely regenerating it, which results in less use of server resources and faster loading for the user.

Implementation of Full Page Cache in Magento 2

1. Activation of FPC:
   • Login to the Magento 2 admin panel.
   • Navigate to System > Cache Management.
   • Here, you can enable Full Page Cache. Magento 2 offers two options for cache management by default: 'Built-in Cache' and 'Varnish Cache'.
2. Cache Configuration:
   • If you choose to use the built-in cache, no further configuration is required.
   • If you opt for Varnish, which is generally more performant, you need to configure Varnish on the server and apply the Magento-specific Varnish configuration.

Advantages of Full Page Cache

• Improved Loading Times: With FPC, pages load faster because most of the data is fetched from the cache instead of being regenerated each time.
• Reduction of Load on the Server: Reducing the need to generate each page for each request reduces the load on the server, allowing you to handle a greater number of concurrent users without degrading performance.
• Improved User Experience: A site that loads quickly improves the user experience, encouraging more interactions and potentially increasing conversions and sales.

Additional Considerations

• Cache Management: It is important to manage the cache correctly to ensure that the information displayed to users is up to date. This includes clearing the cache when significant changes are made to the site.
• Site customization: In some cases, the use of FPC can complicate customizing the user experience. It's important to find the right balance between performance and customization.
• Performance Monitoring: After enabling FPC, it is useful to monitor site performance to assess the impact of caching and make any adjustments.

In conclusion, Full Page Cache is an indispensable tool in the optimization arsenal of a Magento 2 site. It offers an immediate improvement in page loading times and a reduction in server load, thus contributing to better scalability and reliability of the site e-commerce.

Step 5: Optimizing Images in Magento

Image optimization is a crucial aspect of managing a Magento 2 e-commerce site. Images, essential for showcasing products, can significantly influence the overall size of web pages. By reducing the file size of images without compromising their visual quality, you can speed up page load times and improve user experience.

The Importance of Image Optimization

1. Reducing File Size: Unoptimized images can be surprisingly large in file size, which slows down page load times.
2. Improved Site Loading Speed: By reducing the file size of your images, you reduce the time it takes to download and view images on your site.
3. Improved SEO Performance: Search engines favor websites that load quickly, so optimizing your images can help improve your rankings in search results.

Tools and Techniques for Image Optimization

• Using Compression Tools: Tools like TinyPNG are excellent for compressing images while maintaining good visual quality. These tools can be used manually or integrated with Magento for automatic image optimization during upload.
• Adoption of New Image Formats: Using newer, more efficient image formats, such as WebP or AVIF, can further reduce file sizes compared to traditional formats such as JPEG or PNG. These formats offer excellent compression and image quality, often at a fraction of the file size of older formats.
• Resizing Images: Making sure your images are the right size and resolution for use on your site can significantly reduce file size. Images larger than necessary can be resized without impacting visual quality for the end user.

Implementation within Magento 2

1. Configuration for the Use of Efficient Formats: You can configure Magento 2 to use efficient image formats like WebP or AVIF. This may require the use of third-party extensions or customizations.
2. Integration with Automatic Optimization Tools: Integrating optimization tools like TinyPNG directly into the image upload process in Magento can automate the optimization process, ensuring that all images uploaded to your site are optimized.

Considerations

Image optimization is an essential part of managing a Magento 2 site, especially for an e-commerce site where product images are key. By implementing an effective image optimization strategy, Magento 2 site owners can significantly improve page load times and overall user experience, as well as benefit in terms of SEO and site performance.

Step 6: Enable Compression

Enabling file compression is a critical step in optimizing the performance of a Magento 2 e-commerce site. Compression reduces the size of data transmitted between the server and the user's browser, improving loading times of pages and reducing bandwidth usage.

Understanding File Compression

1. GZIP compression: Traditionally, GZIP has been the standard for file compression on the web. It works by reducing the size of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files before they are transmitted to the user's browser.
2. Brotli compression: Brotli is a newer compression format developed by Google. Compared to GZIP, Brotli offers better compression, which means smaller files and faster loading times. Browser compatibility for Brotli is now quite broad, making it a viable and advantageous option.
3. Zstandard (zstd): Zstandard is an emerging compression method that offers an excellent balance between compression and decompression speeds and compression rates. While it is not yet as widely adopted as GZIP or Brotli, it represents a promising future direction for compression on the web.

Implementation of Compression in Magento 2

• Enabling on Web Server: Most modern web servers, such as Apache and Nginx, support both GZIP and Brotli compression. This can be enabled by editing the server configuration files.
  • For Apache, you can use the module mod_deflate for GZIP or mod_brotli for Brotli compression.
  • For Nginx, compression can be enabled by adding specific directives in the configuration file.
• Compression Configuration:
  • Define the file types to compress (e.g., text/html, text/css, application/javascript).
  • For GZIP, configure parameters as gzip on, gzip_types, and gzip_comp_level.
  • For Brotli, configure similar parameters, such as brotli on, brotli_types, and brotli_comp_level.
• Test the Compression: After you've set up compression, it's important to test your site to make sure compression is turned on and working properly. Online tools like Google PageSpeed ​​Insights or GTmetrix can help verify the effectiveness of the compression.

Final considerations

Enabling file compression is an essential strategy for improving the performance of a Magento 2 site. While GZIP remains a popular choice, Brotli compression offers significant efficiency benefits. Furthermore, keeping an eye on emerging technologies like Zstandard can place your site in an advantageous position to take advantage of future developments in the field of data compression. By implementing these techniques, Magento site owners can ensure a faster and smoother user experience, reducing loading times and improving customer satisfaction.

Step 7: Reduce Server Response Time

Reducing server response time, often measured as Time To First Byte (TTFB), is crucial to improving user experience and SEO efficiency on a Magento 2 ecommerce site. Using technologies such as Varnish can play a vital role in this context.

The Role of Varnish in Reducing TTFB

1. What is Varnish: Varnish is a powerful reverse proxy cache that stores copies of web pages. By acting as an intermediary between the server and users, it can serve cached web pages much faster than the server would fetch them each time.
2. Reduction of Load on the Server: With Varnish, most user requests can be fulfilled without having to interact directly with Magento, which reduces the load on the server and consequently the TTFB.
3. Varnish setup for Magento 2: Setting up Varnish for Magento 2 involves installing and configuring Varnish on your web server, followed by importing the Magento-specific Varnish configuration (VCL). This process can be complex, but the Magento documentation provides detailed guidelines to make implementation easier.

SEO Advantages and Use of the Crawl Budget

• Improved SEO: A reduced TTFB improves the site's ranking in search engines. Google and other search engines favor websites that load quickly, considering them more responsive and user-friendly.
• Crawl Budget Optimization: Crawl Budget refers to the amount of resources Google dedicates to crawling a site. A faster TTFB means Google can crawl more pages in less time, optimizing the use of Crawl Budget. This is especially beneficial for e-commerce sites with a large number of product pages.

Considerations

While implementing Varnish can be technically complex, the benefits in terms of reducing TTFB and improving overall site performance are significant. Faster server response time not only improves user experience but also contributes to better visibility and ranking on search engines. For e-commerce sites on Magento 2, this can translate into increased product visibility, improved conversions and, ultimately, increased sales. These benefits make the investment in time and resources to properly configure Varnish a highly beneficial option.

Step 8 : Use ElasticSearch to speed up catalog searches.

The implementation of ElasticSearch in Magento 2 is a fundamental step to optimize and speed up searches within the product catalog. ElasticSearch is a powerful and flexible search engine that significantly improves the search experience for e-commerce site users.

What is ElasticSearch

ElasticSearch is a search engine powered by Lucene, designed to provide fast and accurate searches across large amounts of data. It is particularly effective at handling complex searches, filtering and aggregation operations, making it ideal for e-commerce sites with large product catalogs.

ElasticSearch integration in Magento 2

1. Installation and Configuration: ElasticSearch can be installed on the same server as Magento or on a dedicated server to improve performance. Once installed, it can be configured in the Magento backend below Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog Search, where Magento allows you to select ElasticSearch as the search engine for the site.
2. Personalization and Optimization: ElasticSearch offers numerous customization options, such as the ability to define custom analyzers and filters to improve the relevance and accuracy of searches. Additionally, it supports advanced features like autocompletion and query autocorrection.

Advantages of Using ElasticSearch

• Fast and Accurate Searches: With ElasticSearch, searches within the product catalog become significantly faster and the results are more relevant, improving the user experience.
• Scalability: ElasticSearch efficiently manages large volumes of data, ensuring consistent performance even as the product catalog expands.
• Improved User Experience: Advanced search features, such as real-time suggestions and filter-based searches, make it easy for users to find what they're looking for, increasing satisfaction and potentially sales.

Considerations

Using ElasticSearch in Magento 2 is a strategic choice for any e-commerce site that wants to offer its customers a fast, efficient and satisfying search experience. This step not only improves the usability of the site but can also lead to an increase in conversions and user engagement. With its ability to manage large catalogs and offer optimized searches, ElasticSearch proves to be an indispensable component for a successful e-commerce site.

Step 9 : Using REDIS on Magento 2

The integration of REDIS in Magento 2 represents an advanced solution for optimizing cache and session management, crucial for improving the performance and scalability of an e-commerce site. REDIS, an in-memory data structure storage system, is renowned for its speed and efficiency, and is particularly effective in Magento's dynamic, data-rich environment.

What is REDIS

REDIS (Remote Dictionary Server) is an in-memory data store, used as a database, cache and message broker. It offers versatile data structures and supports various features such as replication, asynchronous backups, and transactions. REDIS is known for its exceptional performance, especially in web applications that require fast access to data.

REDIS integration in Magento 2

1. Installation and Configuration: REDIS can be installed on a dedicated server or in a cloud environment. Once installed and configured, it can be integrated with Magento through the env.php in the Magento configuration. Here, you can define REDIS as your cache and/or session management system.
2. Cache and Session Management: By using REDIS for caching and sessions, Magento can more efficiently manage traffic load, improving response times and site scalability. REDIS manages page caches, layout blocks, and user sessions more efficiently than traditional file systems.

Advantages of Using REDIS in Magento 2

• Improved Performance: With REDIS, data access times are significantly reduced, resulting in faster page load times and an overall better user experience.
• Scalability: REDIS is extremely scalable, which is crucial for Magento ecommerce sites, especially during traffic spikes or promotions.
• Data Reliability and Persistence: REDIS offers options for data persistence, ensuring that information is not lost in the event of a system outage.

Considerations

Using REDIS in a Magento 2 site is a strategic choice for those looking to optimize performance and resource management. By offering fast access to data and improving cache and session efficiency, REDIS is a key component in ensuring that an e-commerce site can effectively handle a high number of visitors and transactions. This advanced technology represents a significant investment in the speed and stability of your Magento site, contributing to a better user experience and greater business success.

Step 10 : Using RabbitMQ on Magento 2

Integrating RabbitMQ into Magento 2 is an important strategy to optimize message queue management and improve overall site performance. RabbitMQ, an open-source messaging system, is known for its reliability, scalability, and ease of integration with e-commerce platforms like Magento.

What is RabbitMQ

RabbitMQ is a message broker that allows you to efficiently manage asynchronous communications between different parts of an application. It works as an intermediary for messages sent from a producer (e.g., Magento) to one or more consumers, managing queuing, delivery, and possible retransmission of messages.

RabbitMQ integration in Magento 2

1. Installation and Configuration: RabbitMQ can be installed on a dedicated server or as a cloud service. After installation, you need to configure it to work with Magento, setting up the necessary queues and consumers within the Magento system.
2. Configuration in Magento 2: In the Magento backend, below Stores > Configuration > Services > RabbitMQ, you can define connection settings for RabbitMQ, including host, port, username and password.

Advantages of Using RabbitMQ in Magento 2

• Performance Improvement: By using RabbitMQ, Magento can handle processes such as sending emails, generating reports and other background operations more efficiently, without impacting the performance of the site's frontend.
• Scalability and Reliability: RabbitMQ improves the scalability of your Magento site, allowing you to handle a large number of simultaneous requests and ensuring that messages are not lost in the event of temporary malfunctions.
• Flexible Queue Management: RabbitMQ provides fine-grained control over message queues, allowing flexible management of priorities and workload.

Considerations

The integration of RabbitMQ into a Magento 2 site is a strategic choice for those sites that require high reliability and efficient management of background operations. This messaging system contributes to a smoother user experience and greater operational efficiency, which are crucial to the success of an e-commerce site in a competitive digital environment.

Step 11 : Some things we cannot reveal.

In our journey of over a decade dedicated to the optimization of Magento e-commerce sites, we have developed a series of unique and highly effective techniques and "tricks of the trade". These strategies, refined over the last five years, have proven to be powerful tools in significantly improving the performance of websites, often exceeding in effectiveness what is used by our competitors, as emerged from the numerous requests for assistance that we have satisfied.

Importantly, while we are excited to share our knowledge and expertise through our blog, there are some aspects of our know-how that we need to keep confidential. This approach is essential not only to preserve the unique value of our service but also to ensure our customers have an exclusive competitive advantage.

We must admit that there are at least five other extremely important focal points, as well as a dozen specific tricks for tuning and configuring systems, which can improve the performance of a Magento site by up to 300%. These professional secrets are the result of years of experience and experimentation, and represent an added value that we reserve exclusively for customers who choose to work with us to obtain superior performance compared to the norm.

We apologize to our blog readers if we cannot disclose these unique practices in detail. Our decision is aimed at protecting our intellectual property and guaranteeing our customers a first-rate service, which goes beyond the standard solutions offered on the market. For those who are looking for exceptional performance and a strong competitive advantage, we are ready to offer our full support and our advanced solutions, customized according to the specific needs of each customer.

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Our experience in the sector allows us to quickly identify and resolve any problems, thus ensuring that your Magento site always remains operational and performing. We are also up to date on the latest trends and innovations in technology, which allows us to offer you cutting-edge solutions and customized optimization strategies.

We invite Magento ecommerce owners to contact us to find out how we can help them optimize the performance of their site. With our certified Magento skills and our extensive experience with cloud technologies and hosting, we are the ideal partner to take your Magento e-commerce to the next level. Working with us means choosing a partner who fully understands your needs and is committed to making your success in the world of e-commerce a reality.