What do customers look for in an eCommerce store? One thing's for sure – it's not just the product.

Nowadays, people are used to hassle-free online shopping. They expect a frictionless shopping experience with ample payment options, speedy delivery and easy returns.

But there's something more fundamental at play. If you're shopping on Amazon, eBay or another online giant's store, any loading issues will be yours, not theirs. In other words, their websites are optimised to such an extent that problems of bloat and lag just don't apply.

One reason that running an eCommerce store is hard is that you're held to those same standards. But just as you don't have an endless turnover of employees, seemingly unlimited ad spend and a global infrastructure of warehouses and lockers – you probably also lack a crack team of web developers.

The occasional bug or glitch is inevitable, but if you want to make sure your customers click "place order" and don't abandon their cart, it's in your interests to keep these issues to an absolute minimum.

Magento is a powerful eCommerce platform, but it won't automatically offer you prime (or Prime) levels of performance.

Luckily for you, there are some things you can do to optimise Magento's performance and let your webstore shine.

1. Keep on top of updates

Which version of Magento are you using? If the answer is "Magento 1", then close this tab (after bookmarking it first) and upgrade. You won't regret it.

First off, Magento 2 is faster than its predecessor – not least because it supports the latest PHP. Not only that, it offers you meta tag functions that can enhance your SEO efforts and push you up the search engine rankings.

If you persist in using Magento's first incarnation, you're like flypaper for bugs. And you're on your own – technical support ended in 2020, so you'll have to rely on your own expertise to fix any issues that arise.

Don't put it off – make sure you're using the latest version of Magento to boost your webstore's performance.

2. Pick a high-performance web host

Let's compare your webstore to a traditional brick-and-mortar bookshop. If Magento is the shelves and the till rolled into one, your web host is the building. Using a bad web host is like housing your stock in a leaking shed.

A little dramatic? Well, perhaps. But no amount of Magento optimisation will make a ha'penny's difference if it's reliant on a sluggish provider. Minimise downtime and poor customer experience by shopping around for the web host you deserve.

3. Optimise your images

Good-quality, reliable images are crucial to a successful online store. They're also performance chompers. HTTP Archive claims that 75% of a webpage's weight comes from images – so, naturally, they can put the brakes on loading speed.

It's therefore vital that you optimise your images without sacrificing the quality that customers have come to expect. After all, who's going to buy a product based on a stretched or blurry thumbnail?

And the more you grow, the more cluttered with baggy images your store will become. One easy way to streamline your images is through compression – but there are many more tools at your disposal.

Don't let cumbersome images weigh down your website. Slow loading times will only cause buyers to close your tab and take their custom elsewhere.

4. Invest in a CDN

A CDN – or content delivery network – is a network of servers that work together to speed up the transfer of content. What do we mean by content? We're talking HTML pages, Javascript and CSS files, images and videos – all those things that need to be speedily transferred for optimum website performance.

Faster speed is one of the biggest selling points of any CDN, but they also address some other pain points for website owners. They minimise the possibility of downtime as well as offering security benefits – most powerfully in protecting you against DDoS attacks. And finally, they cut down on bandwidth costs.

There's a range of CDNs available at different price points, so a bit of homework is required. But if you want a faster website, a CDN is a wise investment.

5. Turn on caching

When you visit a website, your browser stores or "caches" bits of the page on your hard drive. These cached files are those parts of the website that don't change from visit to visit. This means the next time you visit, the page will load more quickly.

Magento's built-in cache isn't as nimble as Varnish Caching, an HTTP accelerator that makes your page more responsive and less heavy on bandwidth.

You can easily make this change from your Magento admin panel – so don't delay.

These are five of the most effective steps you can take to optimise your Magento webstore. But there are more…

Quickfire tips

Here are some other performance-boosting tips for you to investigate:

• Go for lightweight themes and extensions.
• Make sure your hardware is up to scratch.
• Conduct a website performance audit.
• Disable any features that you're not using.
• Give your database logs a spring clean.
• Follow Magento's own performance best practices.
• Enable flat catalogues to optimise your store's data.

Each of these steps will bring you that little bit closer to hosting a webstore that matches both your own vision and your customer's expectations.

The bottom line

Compared to some of its competitors, Magento requires a bit more coding know-how and elbow grease. It doesn't automatically give you a webstore at the peak of its powers but requires maintenance and attention.

There are, however, some simple steps you can take to make sure that your webstore is driving full speed ahead. Doing so will maximise your chances of closing sales and turning casual buyers into long-term customers.

Thanks for reading! We hope we've pointed you in the right direction to take your webstore to the next level. We're a 3PL based in the southwest of England that offers Magento fulfilment integration right out of the box. Interested? Then please don't hesitate to get in touch.