How to fix low performance score on Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Steps for Adobe Commerce (Magento)

1. Enable built-in full-page cache: Admin → Stores → Configuration → Advanced → System → Full Page Cache → set to 'Varnish Cache' (recommended) or 'Built-In Cache'.
2. Enable JS and CSS bundling and minification: Admin → Stores → Configuration → Advanced → Developer → JavaScript Settings → Minify JavaScript Files = Yes; CSS Settings → Minify CSS Files = Yes.
3. Configure a CDN for static assets: Admin → Stores → Configuration → General → Web → Base URLs (Secure) — point static and media base URLs to your CDN endpoint (Fastly, Cloudflare, or CloudFront).
4. Optimise images: use a Magento extension such as TinyPNG for Magento or Cloudinary to auto-compress and serve WebP; alternatively pre-compress images before upload via bin/magento catalog:images:resize after optimising source files.
5. Enable Brotli/GZIP at the Nginx/Apache or Varnish layer — this is a server configuration change; work with your hosting provider or DevOps engineer if on managed hosting (e.g., Adobe Commerce Cloud has this available via .magento.env.yaml).
6. Audit and disable unused third-party modules: Admin → System → Web Setup Wizard → Component Manager, or via CLI: bin/magento module:disable Vendor_ModuleName — each enabled module can add JS/CSS to the frontend.
7. Re-test with PageSpeed Insights and monitor via New Relic (included with Adobe Commerce Cloud) for TTFB and server-side bottlenecks.

What is low performance score?

The Lighthouse Performance Score (shown in Google's PageSpeed Insights tool) is a single number from 0–100 that summarises how fast your web page loads and responds for real users — especially on mobile. It is calculated from five timing metrics, with the three Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift) carrying the most weight. A score below 50 is considered "Poor" by Google; a score above 90 is "Good." Think of it as a health-check report card for your page's speed: every point you gain means real customers are waiting less and leaving less.

Google officially uses page experience signals — including Core Web Vitals — as a ranking factor, meaning a very low score can directly suppress your position in search results and reduce organic traffic. Beyond rankings, a slow page destroys conversions: industry data consistently shows that each additional second of load time drops conversion rates by 10–20 %, and mobile shoppers are the most sensitive. A score of 8/100 on mobile means the vast majority of your mobile visitors are likely bouncing before they even see your products, costing you both ad spend and organic sales. Closing this gap is one of the highest-ROI technical improvements an ecommerce store can make.

See the complete Low performance score guide for every platform and the full background.