Our Nashville Web Design company builds and maintains a lot of Magento websites. We can attest that speed was not a focal point when Magento was built. As we’ve discussed before, there are a lot of benefits to improving the speed or the website. And as a e-commerce store, maximizing your sales is critical.

Magento offers a high level of customization and functionality for your e-commerce store. But what happens when this functionality starts to slow your website down? It could cost you customers and, in turn, revenue. At our Nashville web design office, we’ve helped improve customer conversion rates on Magento websites and want to share details to give you some quick wins.

We’ve put together five simple improvements to optimize your site, improve customer experience and increase your sales. When we make these improvements for our customers, our Nashville web design team measures the before and after over a period of time. Based on real data, we’re confident even small changes can give your sales and customer satisfaction a big boost.

Pro tip: before jumping into these improvements, test your site performance with these website speed tests. You will want a before and after measurement to keep track of your improvements.

1. Upgrade to the latest version

A great place to start when you’re looking to speed up your Magento site is to make sure you are using the latest version. This will fix bugs and improve the overall performance. You can find your current version inside the Magento admin at the bottom right of the screen. 

While a Magento upgrade can take some work, they offer helpful instructions on their website that walk you through the steps. Upgrading also has other benefits, like improved site security. Our Nashville web design company is hired more times than our customers care to admit because their website has been hacked.

2. Optimize caching 

Make sure you have enabled caching on your website. This will store information from your site on the customer’s browser so your site doesn’t have as much content to load after the first visit. To get the most of caching, also ensure the site is in production mode. That feature needs to be turned on from the server shell, so if you’re not sure reach out to our Nashville web design company.

While Magento has built-in caching, we recommend using a third-party tool like Redis, Memached or Varnish for best results. If you’re using a Magento-optimized server, these tools will be built in and your hosting company may configure them for you. Just make sure your server is actually optimized for Magento. When in doubt, reach out to our Nashville web design group and we can walk you through it, even on a free consult.

3. Compress images 

The images on your website can account for a huge portion of your site’s load time. According to KeyCDN, on average, 56% of a website’s page weight is images. 

Because of the prominence of images, it’s crucial to compress them if possible. You can do this through a simple photo editor, like Adobe Photoshop or even through the Image Optimizer on Magento. To get really crafty, our Nashville web design team will also use a little hack for this. When you visit a page grader like GT Metrix and run a scan, they will give you a version of the optimized image you can download and replace. There are also extensions like Amasty Page Speed Optimizer that will help.

4. Enable Flat Catalog

Enabling the flat catalog takes your product content from all parts of the database and drops it into one table. Making it easier to retrieve, the server loads the information quicker. This is especially helpful for online stores that have more than 1,000 products. Enabling the flat catalog puts the product information into one table. You can change this in Magento by visiting System > Configuration > Catalog. 

5. Merge CSS and Javascript files

Magento already has a tool for you to combine and compress Javascript and CSS. Doing this will cut down on the number of HTTP requests and help your page load faster. The website has to be in developer mode to retrieve it. Visit the command line on your server to turn it on. If you’re unsure about this type of complexity reach out to our Nashville web design team and we’ll advise, even on a free consult.

When you turn on developer mode, you can access this tool by going to System > Advanced > Developer. Under “Javascript Settings” and “CSS Settings” you will see the option to merge these by selecting “Yes.” Keep in mind this will take your server down for about five minutes.

You can also take this process to the next level and download an extension to minify your Javascript and CSS files. This results in smaller code and reduced files sizes — both benefits when you are looking to cut down on load time. 

6. Gzip Compression 

Enabling gzip is another way to speed up load time for your Magento site. According to GTMetrix, this simple fix can reduce your page size by 70%. Not sure if you have gzip enabled? You can use this tool to find out. 

To enable gzip, you will start from your Apache server. Make sure that mod_deflate is enabled. Then visit your .htaccess file to make the edits. Remember the beginning period will make the file hidden by default, so you may need to enable hidden files inside your code editor. You can learn more on gzip compression here.

Need help putting these steps into practice? 

We know that it can be overwhelming to try and make improvements that ramp up your site performance. If you need help putting these recommendations into practice, our Nashville web design team is here for you. 

To get personalized advice about how to optimize your website, request a free consultation.

We’ve all stared at our screen waiting for a painfully slow website to load. Whether you waited or left the website altogether — your overall experience was likely tainted by the poor load time. 

When it comes to an e-commerce site, a fast website matters (a lot). When your website fails to load quickly: 

• Google may penalize your search ranking
• Your customers are less likely to make a purchase 
• Visitors lose trust in your website

How to check your website speed

There are many free resources online that you can use to test the performance of your website and determine the areas that you can improve. We recommend the following sites: 

PageSpeed Insights 

The first tool we recommend for measuring your website’s performance is Google’s PageSpeed Insights. 

Below the main score, it tells you how long it takes for any text or images to load and then the total load time. As you scroll down the page, you will see suggestions for how to speed up your web page.