How To Optimize Your Magento E-commerce Website To Increase Buying And Conversion Rate?

The role that an official website plays for any business to succeed can not be neglected. A website not only introduces the idea, vision and goals of a company but also ensures authenticity. There are a lot more than the reasons mentioned above behind the trend of taking a business online is booming. Cab services, grocery delivery, food delivery are just a few examples, and so are e-commerce websites.

E-commerce or electronic commerce is the platform of buying and selling goods and services on an online network. It allows the merchant to target a wide range of audiences for selling the products. However, you need to know about the platform on which these e-commerce websites are based before you invest in the development of your own e-commerce website. 

The e-commerce business is based on the Magento platform, that is an open-source PHP program. Hire a Magento 2 developer can be a good idea for expanding your retail store.

What Is Magento? 

Introduced in 2008, Magento is an open-source technology built especially for the merchants operating online. It provides the e-retailers with total control over the e-commerce platform including managing the shopping carts, user interface, design and content etc. 

Being a secure and flexible platform for e-commerce, Magento is considered as the best for the development of your e-commerce store. Since its launch, Magento has continuously been under rigorous scrutiny and improvised regularly with the Magento 2 its latest update out in the market.

Some apparent reasons make the Magento 2 in demand over the previous version. Let us discuss a few of them.

Magento 2 and its advantages

With more than 200,000 retailers using Magento 2 for their e-commerce business, it is the latest version or update over the Magento available currently in the market. According to the experts, 1 out of every 4 retailers or say e-retailers are using it for sourcing their website.

Magento 2 provides a variety of tools and features that makes it a complete solution to cater to all your business needs. 

New functions in Magento 2-

• Magento 2 is based on a platform that supports easy upgrades and maintenance.

• It features built-in integrated financial services like Authorize.net, Braintree, PayPal that ensures secure payment facilities.

• Magento 2 allows the merchant to take backups or print them with the help of accessible commands.

There are a lot more reasons for the Magento website development to be a good investment.

Features of Magento 2

The features that make the Magento 2 developers and merchants favorite are mentioned below-

• Magento allows all the information on the page to be cached that enhances the performance and minimizes the load on the server.

• It allows multiple admins to create and edit products in the inventory eliminating the chances of data conflicts.

• Magento 2 allows importing of the customer and product data from the older version without any hassle.

• You must be curious to know the power of Magento and how it can help you in the marketing and trading of the goods and services of your company. 

Ways to optimize Magento e-commerce website

To boost up the commerce of your e-retail business, you must adapt to the latest changes introduced in the market. Using obsolete techniques might hamper the way you do your business resulting in achieving a low sales figure. Below are some tips to help you with Magento website optimization–

• Latest version: Make sure that you are updated with the newest version of Magento that includes recent patches and upgraded with performance improvements.

• Design: Attractive, eye-catching design can work in your favors. You can make the e-store look like a million-dollar by investing in its design and layout.

• Flat Catalog: Flat Catalog is a feature in the System Configuration that results in performance improvements. With the help of the Flat Catalog, the merchant can easily merge the product and customer information in one table hence speeding the navigation process. Flat Catalog is especially recommended for the e-stores having more than 1000 products.

To enable it, follow the steps-

System -> Configuration -> Catalog

• Cache: Database operations can be reduced that helps in faster page request by enabling caching. There are many types of caching that helps enhance the speed of the e-retail platform. There are third-party modules as well as in-built cache mechanism that has Follow these steps to enable cache-

System -> Cache Management

Let us discuss some type of caching-

Browser caching– You can cautiously (to avoid malfunctioning) add snippets to the .ht extension file to enhance the performance.

Gzip compression– It is used to compress a store’s web pages and sheets before uploading to the server and hence your e-retail store.

Page caching– Page caching is one of the most effective ways to remove load off the server. This utilizes the cache of the pages already accessed before hence making the estore run smooth.

PHP accelerator– Using PHP accelerators can further enhance the performance of the Magento store.

• Compress Images: Compressing image files with the help of a photo editor will help in freeing up some space resulting in performance enhancement.

• Avoid too many extensions: Using third-party or community extensions can slow up the speed hence incorporating minimum usage of these extensions is advised. The more extensions are used, the slower your store gets. Therefore, it is recommended to use only the mandatory extensions to minimize the HTTP’s sent through your system.

• Compiler: Using a Magento compiler can further enhance the e-retail experience. It is reported that with the help of Magento compilation, merchants can boost up the speed of navigation through the pages by up to 50%.

• MySQL database: You can opt for manually updating the indexes in case the Magento fails to auto-update. This will result in an enhanced speed of the e-commerce website.

• Hosting provider: Opting managed cloud hosting instead of shared cloud hosting is always a good idea to provide a smooth user experience. The servers of the shared hosting providers are always overcrowded and lead to slow navigation.

• Javascript and CSS: Enhance the speed of page loading time by merging the javascript and CSS file into a single file. The merging can be quickly done by the user with the help of the built-in feature provided in the Magento.

• Clearing Logs: You can reduce the data that Magento stores up to 14 days or as minimum as you can. By default, the Magento tends to hold up the information for up to 180 days which can slow down the speed.

Cost to develop e-commerce website based on Magento 2 

If you want to take your retail business to the next level, introducing it online can be an ideal choice. E-commerce provides you with the flexibility to address a large chunk of customers at the same time. Using Magento 2 as the platform for the development of the website will enhance the way you handle your e-commerce website. It is a more advanced and stable version over its previous version that is Magento.

What makes Magento 2 popular amongst the merchants is the high level of optimization that it offers to the users. Also, the type of architecture makes it easy to upgrade with advancement.

The cost incurred in the development of the website may vary with the features and the developer. However, an estimated price can range from $20,000 to $100000 and above. 

Let us breakdown the structure of price inculcated as per the requirement of your business-

• Basic Site: Basic site can cost you anywhere from $20,000 to $45,000. If your business is a startup or small-scale, the price tag will give you the required website catering the needs.

• Customer Site: If you are a medium scale e-retailer and have a pre-existing website, upgrading it or optimization may require some specialized work. Depending on the changes as are necessary for your old website, you may need to spend up to $100000.

• Enterprise Site: If you have a large scale business venture and require a full-fledged website with all the features of Magento 2, the price may exceed $100000 tag.

Conclusion

The article tells you about the basics of a Magento store and how it can help you expand your e-commerce store business. In this era where everything is getting digitized, and so is the retailing business, investing in e-commerce to take your business to the next level can be beneficial. The process of Magento website development requires expert supervision. Finding a developer may become a tedious task in this overcrowded market. 

After development optimization of your Magento website is as crucial as the development phase. The development phase will give you a product that enables you to start your e-retail business; however, you need to ensure the frequent improvisation of the already built website. All the essential tips for improving the user experience is provided in the article.

A Magento 2 development company like BR Softech company that houses more than 250 IT developers can help you in developing an optimal platform for you to initiate your e-commerce business.