PrestaShop Speed Fixes That Actually Boost Sales
PrestaShop gives you more control over speed than almost any other platform. These are the fixes we do first on a slow store, in the order they pay off.
We have been working with PrestaShop since the 1.4 days, and one thing has stayed true through every version: it gives you more control over speed than almost any other platform. You have the server, the database and the code. Unlike a hosted platform, there is very little you cannot fix.
The flip side is that nobody fixes it for you. Here is the order we go in when a slow PrestaShop store lands on our desk. If you want the longer, step-by-step version, that is a separate guide.
1. Caching, because it is usually switched off
It still surprises us how many live stores run with the default performance settings. Go to Advanced Parameters → Performance and switch on CCC (combine, compress and cache) for CSS, JavaScript and HTML. If your hosting offers APCu or Redis, pick that instead of the file system cache. Then clear the cache. People forget that last step and conclude nothing changed.
On a store that had none of this, the difference is visible to the naked eye.
2. Images
Product photos are usually half to two-thirds of everything a page downloads. Resize them to the size they are displayed at, compress them, and serve WebP. PrestaShop has had lazy loading built in since 1.7.7, so check it is on. A CDN in front of the images helps buyers who are far from your server, which for most of our clients means the US and western Europe.
3. Modules
This is the PrestaShop-specific one. Every module can hook into every page, and a badly written one can add hundreds of database queries you never see. Sixty active modules is not unusual on stores we audit. Half of them are doing nothing except slowing things down.
Turn on the profiler in debug mode, load a category page, and look at which modules cost the most. Uninstall what you do not need. Do not just disable it. A disabled module still sits in the database.
4. The database
Connections logs, guest carts, statistics tables, page-view logs. On an older store these can be the biggest tables in the database by far, and they are read by nothing useful. Clean them, optimise the tables, and put the cleanup on a cron job so it stays clean.
5. Hosting
If you are paying less than a modest restaurant meal per month for hosting, the server is the ceiling and nothing above will get you past it. A small VPS with PHP 8.2 or newer, OPcache on, and Redis for the object cache is enough for most stores. More on what we run and why on our PrestaShop page.
6. The theme
The last one, because it is the most work. Multipurpose themes load code for layouts you will never use. Remove unused fonts, switch off features you do not need, and defer the scripts that are not needed for the first paint.
What it adds up to
Done properly, a PrestaShop store that opened in five or six seconds will open in under two. We recently did exactly that for a Slovenian store: Google's mobile score went from 44 to 99. The numbers are on our results page, and what a jump like that can be worth in orders is worked out there too.
If you would rather hand it over, Store Rescue is a fixed-price, thirty-working-day job with a speed guarantee. Or book a call and put your store's address in the form. We will look before we talk.