Magento 2.2.8 Performance Improvement

[maratheprash]

Hi Community, 
We are using Magento CE 2.2.8 for one of our project and now we are working on performance improvement of our website. Our overall performance which is showing in - https://gtmetrix.com/ - is as follows. 
Fully Loaded Time For Homepage - 6.2 Sec
Average Fully Loaded Time Is - 6.8 Sec. 

We have checked that our TTFB (Time To First Byte) is almost - 0.3S (As per magento profiler)
We need page load time in gtmetrix at least up to 3 sec or less than 4 sec.  

My question is how we can we improve our site performance ? 
Is Gtmetrix (https://gtmetrix.com/) is right tool to check the performance of website ? Is there any another tool to check that ? 
We have not implemented varnish yet. because few people says varnish is good. few says it is not ! Do we need to implement varnish ?
Finally what are the steps to check the site performance and how can we improve it ? 

Thanks in advanced!

[Vimal Kumar]

Hi @maratheprash,

GTMatrix is a good tool to check website performance.

But you also check on Google Page Insights. It is also a very good tool.
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

[jay_baher]

Hello!

Here are the steps to optimize your website performance:

• minimization of JavaScript and CSS files;
• usage of Full Page Cache technology;
• optimization of your website database;
• minification of code;
• use Google PageSpeed Module to optimize images + in the menu, and the categories (to make them lightweight);
• server optimization - the goal is to reduce server response time;

Here you may learn more about the ways on how to improve Magento 2 website performance, read the guide.

And now let's go to Varnish technology:

1. Varnish works by handling requests before they make it to your backend. It basically stays "in front" of the web server and, whenever possible, caches requested web pages in memory.
2. When the user requests to cached content that is handled by Varnish, this request doesn't bother web server or database input/output - > response time is reduced at minimum.
3. If the page is not cached, Varnish will make a request to your back-end in order to generate the page when ready your visitor will see the page. It also a fast process.

More than 4.7M websites use Varnish technology. It significantly optimizes your website performance.

[maria_skula]

Hi,
Sometimes these are images that slow down your website, especially if they are unoptimized PNG or JPG images. They are kind of outdated and take some time to load. 

WebP format that is smaller in size start to be used by a lot of stores. You can try this tool (https://magefan.com/magento-2-webp-optimized-images) to automatically convert images on your website into WebP format and see if it makes a difference for you. 

[ibtisamdev8aef]

Usually, the normal practice is to optimize your site, like implementing Full Page Cache (FPC) to store fully rendered pages, reducing server load, and speeding up page loading times. And, compress and optimize images to reduce their file size without compromising quality it will surely help in improving website loading speed. Also, a good Managed Magento hosting can have a huge impact on your site performance. Choosing it will surely enhance your site performance and reliability.