Optimizing the Shopping Cart: 12 Steps for Magento Users

 he shopping cart is the most important component of your e-commerce business. In order for your business to survive, your customers need to be able to make their way to the “Complete Order” button easily and quickly. Magento enables users to create user-friendly shopping carts, allowing you to maximize ROI. Here are the best practices … Read more

Why is Extendware Full Page Cache Better than Varnish Caching Services?

Full-Page-Cache-(Web)We get the question quite often in our Extendware Support channel, “Why can’t I just use Varnish* caching services instead of the Extendware FPC solution?”

The simple answer is, the Extendware Full Page Cache does not need or use Varnish because Varnish is not well implemented for the Magento platform. In fact, there are two specific reasons that FPC is a much better solution for a Magento store than using the Varnish caching solution.

Reason 1: Few Database Requests and a Higher Cache Hit Rate

One of the reasons that Extendware’s Full Page Cache (FPC) is a better solution than Varnish is that – like Varnish – FPC does not use the database for most requests, so it reduces load on the database.

However, unlike varnish, FPC has a high cache hit rate (percent of requests served by cache) that Varnish can not match, due to the design of FPC and its native use of Magento’s platform.

Not-integrated

 

Since Varnish is a general caching solution – and not built for specifically for Magento – it is not well integrated into the Magento platform. This allows Extendware’s FPC – a Magento customized solution – to outperform Varnish in almost every caching scenario.

Reason 2: Varnish Flushing Limitations

In addition, Varnish has severe limitations with flushing. For example, the whole varnish layer cache needs to be flushed when there are any changes on your store. On the contrary, our FPC can flush selectively and not affect the cache of your entire store for when only one category or page needs to be changed.

As a result of these Magento specific capabilities that come out-of-the-box with Full Page Cache that are unavailable in Varnish, customers using FPB on their Magento stores generally have better overall speed and experience.

These two simple limitations with the Varnish solution make a custom made Magento-specific Full Page Cache solution a no-brainer.

* Varnish is a cache server technology: https://www.varnish-cache.org/

Quick Overview

Full-Page-CacheExtendware’s Full Page Cache reduces your Magento store’s First Byte Time, Increases your web server request rate, reduces database load, and makes your store much more responsive. Extendware’s Caching solution is the best Magento Caching Performance Extension you can buy to speed up your store and easily pays for itself by saving you money rather than buying expensive hardware solutions to increase your Magento store optimization rates.


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Maximize Your Marketing ROI with Irresistible Product Pages

f you’re like most e-commerce business owners who use Magento, you invest in paid advertising to drive targeted traffic to your store. So it’s very important to receive strong ROI (Return on Investment) on your marketing campaigns. Here’s how to optimize every product page to receive great ROI on each dollar you spend on advertising. … Read more

Starting a Store on Magento: Time-Saving Tips

or businesses looking to establish an e-commerce store, Magento is an indispensable tool. As an open-source platform, Magento can be adapted to meet the needs of individual businesses. Big brands and small businesses alike can use Magento to create a profitable and user-friendly online storefront. But while anyone can go to Magento’s website and set … Read more

Increase the Speed of your Administrative Backend with Improved Indexing

hen saving products, categories, and other entities to your Magento store, the Magento platform must update its various indexes, which can cause a huge delay that reduces your productivity. Having a Slow Magento Administrative Backend can be a real waste of your time Not only for you, but also your employees if you have them. … Read more

Imagine 2016 Magento Conference

Imagine 2016 Extendware is excited to say that we got to attend the Imagine 2016 Magento Conference. Now in its 6th year, Imagine 2016 brought together 2,500+ merchants, partners, developers and commerce experts from 45+ countries to network, exchange ideas and build relationships. Speakers such as Earvin “Magic” Johnson of Magic Johnson Enterprises, Mark Lavelle of … Read more