Helpful Magento TTFB Optimization Tips And Trick
February 14, 2022 | Author: Alex ClarkTTFB stands for the time for the first byte. It is a metric on your Magento platform that reflects how much time does your site takes to provide a relevant response to users.
In other terms, it is the server response time on your Magento site to load the website in a particular set of times. In general, your site’s loading speed must be in milliseconds, and in case, it’s more than that then it’s a big question on your customer experience. The solution lies with Magento TTFB optimization by performing several ways. But before that, you need to find the bottlenecks behind the slow loading speed and hampering the UX of your site.
So, here in this blog, you will get to know the ways for Magento TTFB optimization and the reasons for slow speed.
List of Contents
- What is Magento TTFB?
- Relation Between TTFB and Core Web Vitals
- How to Measure Magento TTFB?
- What Makes Your Magento TTFB Slow Down?
- Tips to Reduce Magento Server Response Time
Let’s broaden your scope of knowledge on the same.
What is Magento TTFB?
Whenever a user opens up a website, three major tasks together happen at the same time. A request is sent to the server, the request is generated and processed, and finally, the response is fetched to the user. This whole spectrum of three-layer activities on the website offers the first byte of content to a respective user. And, it should be really fast to enhance the user experience.
According to Google, the idea response time should be 200 milliseconds i.e., 0.2 seconds. In case, your website crosses the mark of 600 milliseconds, then it is a red flag for you and it’s time to optimize the TTFB of your Magento platform. Remember the fact that even a second delay in server response time can grow the bounce rate by 32%.
Relation Between TTFB and Core Web Vitals
Does TTFB affect the website score? This you will get to know in this section.
Having a short server response time of the Magento site directly affects the Core Web Vitals that include insights like FCP and LCP. These are the indicators used by Google to measure the UX performance of your platform. Both factors influence the interaction, engagement, and visual stability levels.
Let’s have a look at Core Web Vitals:
* First Contentful Paint (FCP): It is the time taken by a webpage to load the selected page and showcase the relevant information to a user.
* Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): It is the time that webpage takes to showcase the largest content that could be image, logo, video, or any other visual.
Both the metrics are responsible for lowering the server response time to an optimum extent. They have a direct connection with TTFB and matter the performance of Magento 2.4.3 or any other version.
How to Measure Magento TTFB?
There are various ways to measure Magento Store TTFB.
* Make use of several Lab options like Webpagetest or Gtmetrix to assess the server response time.
* Make use of GooglePageInsights to gather the data in real-time.
* Use Field options like Chrome User Experience Report or the Google Search Console.
* Even browsers display TTFB.
* Magento developers can assist in measuring TTFB. They can do this with the help of profilers as a precise tool to know the processing speed and showcase how much time does each operation takes.
What Makes Your Magento TTFB Slow Down?
There could be several reasons responsible for having a slow response time to your Magento platform. One of the most common issues are as follows:
* Unoptimized Web Server: It could be due to disabled compression, poor configuration, or non-optimal server location.
* Unoptimized Code: Slow server response time could due to heavy PHP logic, irrelevant code, absence of caching, slow or excessive MySQL queries, etc.
* No Backend Caching: Sometimes, no caching at the backend results in slow server response time. The store cannot cache requests, code logs, and more.
* Unoptimized Database: It could be due to poor caching configuration, absence of indexes, etc.
Tips to Reduce Magento Server Response Time
There are several techniques you can follow to rectify and speed up Magento server response time.
1. PHP Optimization
* Rethink slow PHP code chunks to execute faster and reduce the response time and several operations.
* Turn off the modules that are no longer in use to speed up the website’s response.
* Carefully use a PHP module like Xdebug Profiler that could slow down your platform.
* Use the latest PHP version and configure to speed up.
2. Web Server Optimization
* Enable HTTP/2 to handle all the requests parallelly. It allows developers to prioritize queries.
* Configure browser caching to keep the static content enabled for a longer period for users.
* Enable Gzip compression to archive content before transferring it to users.
3. Caching Solutions
* Enable the full page cache.
* Block caching the header and footer.
* Enable caching of static content for images, CSS files, and JS.
Concluding Thoughts
Magento TTFB optimization is a relevant task to perform and speed up the server response time to enhance user experience. Follow a strategic way to optimize TTFB using the above-mentioned tips & tricks. Further, gather more information on store optimization and Magento 2 development from the pioneer experts at AgentoSupport.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How Fast Should Magento TTFB Be?
TTFB should be under 100ms. Although, GooglePageSpeed Insights have recommended TTFB to be under 200ms. In case, your platform has a server response time of 300-500ms, then it comes under standard position.
Q. Why TTFB is So High?
Sometimes your Magento platform takes too much time to load. It could be due to PHP, web server, or caching-related issues. As a result, visitors might abandon your site.
Q. What Determines TTFB on Magento Platform?
The TTFB is determined when a user begins receiving the response from the Magento platform. It deals with the user receiving the first byte of the website in a particular time frame.
