Site Speed for Magento Site

EcomLkwd

We have our site all ready for test users but the site speed is painfully slow. Our developers are a bit stymied about what to do. Is anyone a site speed expert or know of anyone good that can evaluate our site and tell us what's going wrong?

Thanks!

Felip3

Hi Rachel.

Before you spend money hiring a Magento Expert (the good ones aren't cheap) you can try do the follow:

Move your site for a Magento optimize server. I use and recommend Simple Helix. (they will even move your site for free).
Use cloud flare pro as your CDN, they have very nice options that will optimize your website code in the fly. https://www.cloudflare.com/features-optimizer
Install the GT Metrix Magento Extension. (they have a very nice feature to optimize all the images in your site).

Those steps should be enough to bring your load time to 2-3 seconds, I did myself in many magento sites with speed issues however if after that you still having problem you might need hire a magento expert.

Felipe

BlueprintMarketing

Hi Rachel,

I will offer you the same thing as Jeff.

Not that I'm trying to take anything away from what he said in fact it sounds like Jeff knows what he's talking about.

Jeff would you agree with me the amount of CSS calls alone are really the result of a bad coding job?

tzickell@blueprintmarketing.com

However, I've take a look at your server from an outside viewpoint I'd be happy to look at it from the inside.

It sounds like Jeff knows what he's talking about as well.

He also understands magneto which is extremely important

here is a great how to after you get Google Page speed on a Nginx server

http://www.feedthebot.com/pagespeed/

use a RUM speed test

https://www.pingdom.com/signup/

$9 a month

https://www.neustar.biz/enterprise/web-performance

Not cheep but 30 days free use it

All the best,

Thomas

BlueprintMarketing

Hi Rachel,

I after looking at your server set up believe that using Apache instead of Nginx is not A Wise thing to do if you want to have a faster site considering how much more efficient Nginx is compared to your current set up I believe that you are losing out by not using newer technology is very well known. Nginx delivers better performance and uses 1/8th of the ram your server is therefore not go to be as fast using Apache and Will cost you a great deal more. In addition when if you were to get a large amount of people on your server at the same time that's when ram can make the difference between people connecting or not. It's simply a matter of efficiency and this one was not built the most efficient way

The other thing I'm talking about is simple things like combining your CSS into no more than one or three files.

You're devs should know how to do this it is standard practice if you want a site to have A good load speed.

The other thing that concerns me is using Pingdom to check load speed time is all well and good however they also offer a free base Service that all out you too check your websites be using RUM real user measurement that is what you're people coming to your site Will actually experience. It is a much better method not that I'm putting down using going testing services they should be combined together. Neustar along with Pingdom our great places to start

The text of things that need to be done are simple here A fantastic place to look however because your developers have been working to try to solve this issue I woud want somebody that understands speed to do the work.

In playing Google PageSpeed is nothing new people have been using the service for quite a long time. It will fix what a few of the issues

But do not forget that the larger issues are simple things like your stylesheet and CSS

Look at what you're developers first think is going to be fast 12 external CSS files?

No it will not be fast

http://www.feedthebot.com/pagespeed/combine-external-css.html

External CSS files
Too many CSS files. Solution? combine them into one.
12 external CSS files found:

Inline CSS
no inline CSS found.

**CSS attributes in HTML elements **
example:

or

etc.
13 in element CSS found

CSS @ imports
@ import not detected - good

171 total links found on this page

130 unique links
120 unique internal links
5 unique external links
23 links not counted (href='#' or 'mailto:' etc.)

Of those links..
63 are image links

Requests

CSS files: 12
Too many CSS files.

Scripts: 18
You may have too many scripts.

Images: 107

iframes: 1

Total Requests: 138

Services

jQueryThe amount of requests is very high. I would recommend switching DNS to DynECT and your content delivery network to edgecast there faster then AWSAnd offered Google page's being in there product with the ability to catch dynamic and staticcontent.They are an excellent choice.I can tell you that finding a way to host that will manage Nginx along with correctly installing Google Page speed then offering the Best tools for the job and have the speed & security for PCI compliance FreHost is the only company I have known that does this. I would point your guys in the direction of Google Page speed which they should be using already & tips fromhttp://www.feedthebot.com/tools/spider/test.phpHowever if you want the job to be done correctly I would take my recommendation and at least contact http://www.gregreindel.com/contact/ he knows this stuff very well.Sincerely,Thomas

customerparadigm.com

Rachel -

Our company is a Magento Silver Solutions partner, and we have many Magento Certified Developers on our team.

Magento can be a powerhouse of an eCommerce system (that's probably why it has a 26% marketshare in the Alex 1 million sites that are eCommerce).

But it does require a lot of memory to run properly, and the hosting does need to be fine-tuned.

It does look like you are using a CDN for your site, and in a speed test, the site is loading quickly in 1.98 seconds (see screenshot).

I'd be happy to run our Magento Code Audit tool on the site, if you want to contact me directly: jeff -at- customerparadigm .com, and it will let you know core file modifications, extensions that are running, and server specs. We normally charge for this, but because it's the holidays, I'm happy to do this at no charge

speedtest-test.plasticplace.com.jpg

BlueprintMarketing

I just checked your hosting, and it appears you're using liquid web they are a good hosting company. However, I do not know what level of server you're on do you?

Magento takes an extremely large amount of power to Post it correctly for instance when I host Magento

Websites I stick to a formula 4 cores with 4 Gb of RAM at the minimum and I use a security centric however extremely fast hosting provider http://www.FireHost.com

Because of PCI compliance using FireHost and it's managed Nginx architecture and the company's willingness to help you with this type of issue it is an easy choice for me for Magento sites.

http://builtwith.com/test.plasticplace.com

Hosting: LiquidWeb host the domain test.plasticplace.com
**WHOIS: **Click Here
IP Address: 209.59.143.3

via: http://www.whoishostingthis.com/test.plasticplace.com#ixzz2oJdhuCr1

Let's I will look at your code

!-- Optimized using GTspeed -->

Well GTspeed

Does not really exceed peoples expectations in the review of it shows here.

By using Nginx instead of Apache you will save an incredible amount of memory you can get away with using A fraction of the memory needed to power an Apache based server. The other issue that I don't dislike but should be being used with Nginx or simply replaced by Nginx entirely is varnish it is a Great reverse proxy server however there's no need to use it when an Nginx

Web server can do all the same things much more efficiently I don't think the hosting was a priority in this case .

However I don't know what your server specs are in considering your running

Is very memory hungry Web server on top of not combining your CSS or stylesheets shows me that GT speed is really not a Great tool.

You can get an incredible results by using Google page speed along with Nginx

By implementing Google page speed through a 100% managed hosting environment you will be able to get rid of the issues the way instead of just minimizing them as GT Speed has.

If your developers are not concerned about site speed and this is a mystery to them I honestly would suggest speaking to developer that can fix this easily I can give you a recommendation

http://www.gregreindel.com

You can also reach him via this site it is still under construction however I know the contact the contact form works.

http://www.authoritydev.com

I know that this person can help you as I have worked with in the past and he is a wizard your page to eat considering the size of this site should be under two seconds it is not hard to do and is very essential that it is done correctly with an e-commerce site

Respectflly,

Thomas Zickell

EcomLkwd

I've seen the "waterfalls" before, but our developers say they have done everything to optimize the site speed already. Is there something that they are missing?

EcomLkwd

Hi Thomas,

We are using LiquidWeb for hosting and Amazon for the cdn. Our developers claim that they are doing everything they can.

Additionally, why is the site poorly built? Are you referring to the way it's been set up for site speed?

Thanks,

Rachel

BlueprintMarketing

Yes I actually believe that the site has been fairly poorly built. No one has really done anything to speed up the site including the basics it seems like you slept the content delivery network on there is a Band-Aid which is an excellent start however if I may ask what type of CDN are using? Meaning what brand

what hosting company are you using?

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/dvSZEH/http://test.plasticplace.com

http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftest.plasticplace.com&tab=mobile

your site is not using compression when it sure is lacking so many things that are described in the links above I will be more than happy to investigate the site a lot more further on my desktop I will reply please look at the problems above and give me the hosting company's name along with the CDN company sincerely Thomas

WhiteboardCreations

Hi Rachel,

Check out this website http://tools.pingdom.com and enter in your test URL. Your developers will quickly be able to see what is being served up and what files are taking the most time to load. You can do this for any URL in the new site as well if things are running slow. Hope this was helpful.

Patrick

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.