Optimize Your Magento Store With These 7 Easy Steps

While Magento maintains its position as one of the most versatile and popular platforms for Ecommerce, there are multiple other reasons that make it a number 1 choice for many out there.

One of being its open-source nature, unlike the competitors. It is for reasons like these that not just the smaller stores, but even the most established brands like Coca-Cola and Nike leverage it to power up their stores.

Moreover, you’re going to get access to a wide array of features and functionalities whether or not you’re using Magento’s premium version to manage your marketing and sales processes.

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But here’s the catch; with so much functionality onboard, you’re going to face thick competition – which means you need to optimize your store at the max in order to stand out.

Related: Learn How To Build An Ecommerce Website From Scratch – 6 Step Simple Guide For Ecommerce Development

So without any further delays, let’s move down to 7 solid steps you need to conduct for optimizing your Magento store.

Let’s begin.

#1 Stay On Top Of The Security Protocols.

Since security is the first and biggest concern of people conducting online transactions, so it naturally makes sense to start working from the security end. And it is rightfully true because you’re technically storing personal and transactional information such as card numbers and email of your audience, therefore, you need to cast out a sense of security for them.

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Here’s how you can improve the security of your Ecommerce store.

• Update your passwords regularly and try to keep them strong by using combinations of numbers, symbols, uppercase, and lowercase.
• Try to keep the core of your store updated and install updates regularly.
• Scan your Magento store regularly for malware.

Related: How to protect your App Idea Legally

#2 Your Hosting Should Be Up To The Mark

While you’re still a new store, a shared hosting service would sound much enticing; keeping their cheaper prices in mind. But here’s the catch; first, they’re too much of a hassle to handle if you witness a sudden spike, and secondly, you’ll need to update your hosting eventually as your store grows.

Therefore, you need to have a robust hosting service if you want your store to perform well and smoothly for everyone.

A great practice is to opt for a VPS (Virtual Private Server). There are two direct benefits of that; first, you can scale as your store grows. Secondly, since this technology is cloud-based, your data is secured in clustered servers – which means if one server goes down, your site can leverage the other one.

#3 SEO Is The Key

As we’ve mentioned above, you need to optimize like crazy in order to survive the dense Ecommerce competition, and there’s no better way to optimize your Magento store than SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Not to mention that Magento offers a number of SEO-friendly features to help you stand out easily.

In simpler words, SEO would help you bring in more audience through your store’s virtual doors and ultimately more customers by improving page experience and speed (More on that later).

Here’s what you can do to make your Magento store SEO-Friendly.

• Change the title tags that Magento automatically creates (the best thing to do is use your product names or groups) – the same goes for descriptions.
• Use header tags properly, with the correct hierarchy.
• Only use top-level URLs – you can edit this option by turning off the ‘use categories path for product URLs’ option in the SEO section of the stores’ configuration menu.
• Make sure there is no duplicate content, such as generic product descriptions.
• Use ‘nofollow’ links on the pages you don’t want to show up on search engines, such as checkouts, admin, and cart pages.
• Change your homepage title from ‘home’ to something that briefly describes your offering.
• Ensure all product images have a unique tag and a description.

#4 Make Smart Use Of Notifications Feature

Normally store owners do not find Notification’s feature of much use, however, the reality is contrary. Making smart use of the notification feature can significantly boost the conversion rate.

Here’s an example.

Suppose a user has browsed through your listing and bounced off from the store. A little message notification might encourage them to make a purchase.

Just like this example, there are multiple other ways of using notifications to your advantage. For example, sending out an email to the customers who have added products to their carts but have forgotten to complete the checkout process.

Moreover, notifying your consumers about product launches of their interests and discount promotions can significantly boost brand loyalty.

#5 The Loading Times Of Your Store Pages Should Be Swift

Speed is important! And keeping in mind the fact that humans have shorter attention spans if your store pages take any more time than 3 seconds, then your customers are going to abandon them without hesitation.

Therefore, you need to make sure that the store loads swiftly, providing consumers with what they want quickly.

A great way of achieving quicker loading times is by using compressed media. While it sounds cool to spam your product pages with vibrant images, it is a killer of speed.

Luckily, Magento offers you a feature in the Advanced section of your store configuration where you can set up the standard size of your media where it automatically applies your desired settings to the media.

#6 Keep Your Pricing Relevant

One of the most significant aspects that contribute to the purchase decision of your customers is the pricing. Therefore, you need to price your products in a very smart way.

If you’re pricing your products too high, then your customers are most likely to go look for alternatives and never visit your store again.

A great way of pricing if you’re a newer store is to fix the profit margin rate on the cost of products. There are multiple Ecommerce repricing tools available online to help you speed up this process.

You can learn more about Ecommerce pricing strategies in this amazing guide of 8 Ecommerce Pricing Strategies For 2022.

#7 The Checkout Process Should Be Smooth

Since you’re running an Ecommerce store, it is implied that your checkout process should be on point with zero compromises at all.

In the case of Magento, you need to remember this key tip. Here it is.

The fewer steps, the better. The longer checkout process would only annoy your consumers. In contrast, a checkout process with fewer steps on a single page would result in fewer abandoned carts.

Final verdict

Since you’re a store owner, your Magento store is no less than a life asset. Therefore, there should be no compromise towards its quality. You need to make sure that your store is up in the perfect running condition.

By following the steps mentioned above, you can ensure that you’re on top of your Magento store optimization.

If you’ve found this read useful, go through our other Ecommerce guides like ‘What You Need to Know for an Ecommerce Website Redesign in 2022’ and Shopify Website Prices: How Much Does It Cost To Build A Shopify Website? To raise your knowledge on the subject.