Description

The performance of a Magento 1 store can be enhanced by many factors, such as image optimization, HTML, JavaScript and CSS minification, reduction of the number of plugins and JavaScript libraries used and so on.

The image optimization for Magento 1 can be challenging task due to the platform’s lack of support for modern images formats, such as AVIFF and WEBP. While using a CDN can be an effective solution, it may require additional costs for the client. There is also a plugin created to transform images to WEBP in Magento 1, known as Yireo WEBP. The problem is that the plugin transforms the image the second time client enters the website, preventing PageSpeed from recognizing the images in the WEBP format.

To circumvent these problems, the optimization process focused on existing images in formats as PNG and JPG, resulting in a significant reduction on images sizes, with an average of 80% of economy when compared to the original archives, showing that the method used was succeeded.

Magento 1 is a legacy system, many of its JavaScript libraries are old and outdated, these can have security exploits and also prejudice the store performance. However, it is important to not edit these essential libraries, avoiding errors and conflicts that may occur. The strategy used is to reduce the number of libraries loaded in each page. For example, jQuery is called from Magento core and also from innumerous plugins, so a manual work is made to remove this callings.

After the application of these and other techniques, the store had an improvement from 61 to 91 on the PageSpeed score, on desktop.