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When it comes to providing optimal customer experiences online, there’s a lot to consider. For e-commerce stores, one of the most crucial considerations on top of the typical business considerations inherent to any customer-facing business is ensuring optimal performance on online store pages and websites. When it comes to Magento 2 stores, the system underpinning the performance of the shop is often the database that a Magento store relies on.
This is typically MySQL, and optimizing the performance of your database (Magento 2) is crucial to performance. This can, in turn, drive customer experiences and, ultimately, customer success. So, for ecommerce brands, what does Magento 2 database optimization typically entail? And why is Magento 2 clean-up so important? We’ll explore more in-depth. Let’s dive in.
Regular Maintenance
Importantly, the success of nearly any complex system can rely on simple, consistent maintenance. When it comes to Magento databases, this can involve several processes, such as:
Cleaning Logs
Magento 2 keeps extensive logs, which can be necessary for data retention policies and laws, but over time, logs that have been kept for longer than necessary can create a burden on the system, leading to suboptimal performance. As such, periodically cleaning logs while ensuring that you’re retaining data sufficient to remain legally and internally compliant can help you keep the database running efficiently.
Check indexing
Indexing helps databases quickly find the information you’re looking for when you make a query through the database management system. However, it’s critical to periodically check to make sure that the database is properly and efficiently indexed for performance and efficiency.
Backups
Even when we do everything right, and we’re as careful as can be, failures and unexpected events can happen. When it comes to databases, the loss or corruption of vital data can be a serious risk. In order to mitigate this risk and avoid downtime due to data corruption, ensure that you regularly perform backups.
Updates
Updates are crucial for performance and security — take steps to ensure that new security patches and performance updates are applied as soon as possible in order to keep your database running properly and securely.
Repair Database
Occasionally, a database, including Magento 2 databases, can be subject to issues such as corrupted tables. In these cases, some database repair may be warranted. Depending on the nature and severity of data corruption, next steps can vary. In some cases, for example, it may make sense to restore an entire table from a stored backup — which is one of the reasons why regular backups are an important part of database management.
Optimization Steps
There are several steps that ecommerce brands can take to improve the performance of their Magento 2 databases through optimization. Some of these include:
Query Optimization
Magento 2 MySQL optimization can be critical. For example, optimizing the way your database management system makes queries can have a profound impact on efficiency and, in turn, performance. Database management system tools, such as MySQL’s Slow Query Log can help you identify slower-than-normal queries and optimize them accordingly. This might involve rewriting inefficient queries, and it also may involve taking steps such as adding additional indexing to tables in order to speed up the rate at which data can be retrieved from them.
Caching
Magento 2 supports various caching mechanisms that can help you improve load times and the speed of your database. By caching data that’s accessed frequently, you can often reduce the number of queries that need to be made directly to the database. This can typically enable the database to handle user requests more effectively and faster. In turn, a faster database can lead to a faster user experience for customers, including improved load times.
Utilize Flat Catalogs
Magento 2 enables the use of flat cataloging, which, rather than using an Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) model as Magento typically does, relies on a single table for each entity, which can significantly improve performance in some cases, especially if your store has a vast range of product offerings or product categories for the database to keep track of. However, while this can be helpful for stores with extensive catalogs, it may be of less use to those with a smaller range of offerings to begin with.
Server Optimization
Optimizing the server on which you host your store for efficient use with Magento 2 can be vital. This can involve a few steps, such as ensuring you’re using a compatible version of PHP, which can enable you to take full advantage of PHP’s latest performance improvements, enabling static content caching, which can optimize load times on the client side, and employing a content delivery network, which can reduce the overall load on the server.
Front-end optimization
Optimizing the web-facing components of your store through steps such as enabling browser caching, utilizing Content Delivery Networks (CDN), minimizing the use of third-party extensions, and enabling full-page caching through Magento can significantly improve customers’ user experiences on your store’s site by improving the loading time of pages, making the site more responsive, and making navigation easier. This can be important not only for creating more positive user experiences in your store, but for SEO as well — since search engines often use page loading times as a metric upon which search rankings can hinge.
The Bottom Line
When it comes to offering an ideal customer experience, a bit of optimization can go a long way. For e-commerce brands that rely on Magento 2’s e-commerce platform, database optimization can be a significant part of offering a smooth user experience to customers who visit the store.
While database optimization and management can be crucial to the optimization of an e-commerce site, there are, fortunately, a number of steps that you can take to optimize your Magento 2 database. These might include cleaning logs, indexing efficiently, creating regular backups, updating the database regularly, and making occasional repairs. Some optimization steps might also include optimizing queries, utilizing caching, utilizing flat catalogs, and optimizing both front-end experiences and the hosting servers.
Remember, if you’re looking for ways to improve your Magento database performance, we offer Magento Optimization services that can help you harness the power of your Magento database.
To learn more or get started, don’t hesitate to contact us today.
