Modern eCommerce is nothing like it was at its dawn. It’s not enough to have the best product to get sales. You have to go to a great extent to at least get discovered by potential customers.
Website speed is one of the things that can either boost or reduce your chances. That’s why it’s crucial to improve loading speed, especially on such a massive platform like Magento.
Let’s get straight to the point – you’ll need Magento 2 extensions to improve your speed since default features are hardly enough.
So in today’s guide, you’ll learn how to optimize Magento loading speed using one of Magefan’s speed optimization extensions.
Why Magento 2 Page Speed Optimization Matters?
Before you invest in any speed optimization tools you have to clearly understand why speed is so important.
So, we’ll start with a few reasons.
Better SEO and ranking positions
Google and other search engines have pointed out multiple times that website loading speed is one of the most important ranking factors.
If your website is not fast enough and people leave right after entering it, why should Google push it to the top results? Seems like a valid point.
The faster your website renders the better experience your customers have. And since that’s what Google’s after it will rank you higher in search.
Except for multiple guides, Google also offers its own speed testing tool to help you access and improve your speed – PageSpeed Insights. You can start there before doing the Magento speed optimization.
Improved user experience
As we’ve already mentioned, Google is all about user experience. You should be too.
Even if you get people coming to your website, you have to make sure they don’t leave. And they will if the page doesn’t render in about 3 seconds.
Just keep in mind that by improving website speed you improve all customer journey steps. Navigation, browning and checkout should be fast and flawless if you want to get conversions.
Competitive advantage
Competition in eCommerce is fierce these days. People come up with new sales strategies, improve their marketing efforts, and invest in ads and other approaches. All that just to get you out of their way.
But trust me, a big number of them ignore the basics like speed optimization and its impact on their organic ranking.
Thus, Magento 2 speed optimization gives you competitive leverage. You can outrun your competition while improving user experience. It’s a win-win.
How to Optimize Website Speed in Magento?
There are default speed optimization features in Magento. True. But they are the most effective in the default Magento setup. As you start adding more code, extensions and design to your store, they are not enough.
That’s when you resort to tools like Google Page Speed Optimizer for Magento by Magefan. And for a reason, since tools like this have all you need to speed up your store.
Let’s see what you’ll achieve.
Optimize Images
Since images are probably the biggest chunk of data on your store you should start there.
The JPEG and PNG formats have been effective a while ago. But not today when there are multiple other formats available.
This Google Page Speed Optimizer helps you to convert all your website images to WebP format. Or upload already converted images to Magento.
It reduced the size of the images with minimal quality change. As a result, your images load faster and are more optimized for Google requirements.
But that’s not all you can do.
Use lazy loading
When someone visits your homepage or product pages, all images on that page load at once, even if they are not visible right away. It is necessary? Definitely not, since it only delays the page rendering.
That’s why you need image lazy loading to display only images within the user’s viewport. The rest of them will be loaded only once users scroll down to them.
While it might seem insignificant, it has a huge impact on the loading speed.
Implement cache warming
If Magento didn’t cache the copy of a page the first time it loads, things wouldn’t look good for your customers. Why? The system would have to generate that page content every time someone visited it. And it takes a while, especially if that page has a lot of elements.
Now add thousands of pages you have. The delay in loading would be destructive. Unless you use the cache warmer, of course.
It makes sure that the “fresh” copy of the page is always loaded from the cache. But the best part is, it already warms the cache up for the most popular pages. You can only improve the algorithms by creating the warm-up combinations.
Optimize JS, CSS and HTML Files
Finally, the JS, CSS and HTML files that build your website. While you and your visitors don’t seethem they are responsible for the design and proper functioning of your store.
Unfortunately, not all of them are critical or properly optimized. But the system doesn’t know that. It loads all of them anyway causing significant delays.
Magefan’s speed optimization extension fixes this problem with a set of features. You can:
- Minify JS, CSS and HTML files to get rid of unnecessary comments, blank spaces, block delimiters and other elements within these files..
- Enable JS bundling to reduce the number of requests to the system and the loading time it takes to return the request.
- Move all non-critical CSS and JS files to the bottom of the page and prioritize the loading.
Sounds, like too much? Well, it’s not, since all the options are already pre-set. You don’t have to be a developer to improve Magento speed.
Is Speed Optimization in Magento Worth It?
At this point, you might have some doubts about the complexity and the scale of the speed optimization process in Magento. But not about whether you need it now. You do.
Search engines rely on it to determine whether your website is user-friendly and what position in search to put you on. If the speed is not satisfactory you won’t get close to the top of SERP, even if you write the best content.
Keep that in mind when creating a speed optimization strategy for your Magento store. And don’t let your doubts hold you back from relying on speed optimization tools to simplify the process.