Magento is a free and open-source e-commerce framework that makes it easy for companies to start and maintain their own e-commerce website or online shopping portal. It is replete with a lot of interesting features and has scope for detailed customization, which makes it a popular and cost-effective open source ecommerce application for online businesses. Building a Magento based e-commerce site is a process that takes meticulous planning and proper execution, and even after you have built and successfully started marketing your site, there are maintenance and upkeep factors that you must not lose sight of.
Users who make purchases online often consider their usage experience a major influence in deciding whether to do business with a particular e-commerce site. Creating descriptive product listings, employing a simple interface with easy navigation and an intuitive checkout process can help customers enjoy their purchasing experience. Apart from these measures, there are many ways in which you can further speed up the core framework of Magento for better user experience. Here are some of those –
- Caches: Caching is a process in which frequently accessed parts of a program or a file system are temporary stored in memory, so as to reduce access time and improve performance and speed. Magento has a built-in cache system that is easy to enable and effective. Use the “system” section of the administrator panel and navigate to “cache management”. Select and enable all the different cache types to instantly speed up your Magento store.
- File handling: Magento needs to access a lot of hosted files during its operation, and it is easier to access one single file rather than multiple files. It therefore makes sense to merge similar file types which Magento accesses regularly into one single file to allow for faster access. Magento has the option for merging CSS or Cascading Style Sheet files. Enable this option for faster operation. It also has the ability to combine and compress different JavaScript files into one file. These options make it using a Magento website a significantly faster experience.
- Magento Database optimization: A database is another element in the Magento system which takes a lot of time to access and write to. However, there are different ways of optimizing database access that can significantly but effectively reduce access time and boost overall speed. One such way is re-indexing. Look up “index management” under the “system” menu and use this option to re-index either entire databases or specific parts as per your convenience. Also, MySQL databases need to be periodically optimized to allow for optimum use of hosting space, and therefore, better access times.
- Graphics handling: A good Magento based website is bound to have as many product images as there are products, and more in ideal cases. Images are usually large files which take time to load. Faster operation can be achieved by compressing or rescaling image files using photo editor applications to as to reduce their size and decrease load times.
- Log system: If you don’t explicitly need to keep logs on all back-end activities, disabling the internal logging system of Magento is a known way of speeding up your website.
