Is your Magento 2 store loading under 3 seconds? If ‘No’, the following information will be of help. Magento is a powerhouse with scalability, customizability and integration capabilities that any eCommerce business would love to leverage. These capabilities come packed with equally strong challenges in terms of performance. So, make performance optimization a key phase of your Magento 2 store development. This blog brings you the best practices and optimization tips which can better your eCommerce store’s performance.

Load ‘Above-the-Fold’ contents first

‘Above-the-Fold’ is the content which users get to see first. It is the first part of the page after which a user scrolls to see the remaining contents. This can be done by following the techniques given below:

Refrain JS from loading upfront

Contents in a web page must be given priority over the JS code. When a web page’s above-the-fold contents loads, the JS code also loads simultaneously adding more time to the load time. Refraining JS from loading upfront means deferring the parsing of JavaScript code. This can be done by moving JavaScript code to the bottom of the page and can be achieved with the help of third-party extensions like Defer JS loading.

Make page size as small as possible

A heavy page laden with too many elements can slow down the page loading speed. Though it is encouraging that a majority of shoppers prefer mobile over desktops, connectivity strength is something not great all the time. So here is how you can do this:

Gzip Compression

Gzip helps in decreasing the page to nearly one-fourth of its actual size. With Gzip, you’ll be able to compress external scripts like CSS, Javascript, font. Ask your hosting support team to get this done. Perform a check using Google PageSpeed Insights tool to find whether Gzip is on for your store.

Use CSS/JS minification

Magento 2, by default, has the provision to perform CSS/JS minification which can contribute towards reducing page weight.

So, you can do it this way:

In the Magento 2 backend panel, go to Stores > Configuration > Advanced > Developer and enable minification.Note: For Magento versions 2.2+, this menu is visible on in Developer mode.Magento has three running modes namely, default, developer and production. The Production mode is the fastest one and minification works only in this mode.First, find out the current mode by running the following commandhp bin/magento deploy:mode:showTo set your app in production mode and to enable minification, run the command given below in the SSH terminal inside Magento root folder.php bin/magento deploy:mode:set production.