Solving sparse linear systems is a problem that arises in many scientific applications, and sparse direct solvers are a time consuming and key kernel for those applications and for more advanced solvers such as hybrid direct-iterative solvers. For those reasons, optimizing their performance on modern architectures is critical. However, memory requirements and time-to-solution limit the use of direct methods for very large matrices. For other approaches, such as iterative methods, general black-box preconditioners that can ensure fast convergence for a wide range of problems are still missing. In the first part of this thesis, we present two approaches using a Block Low-Rank (BLR) compression technique to reduce the memory footprint and/or the time-to-solution of a supernodal sparse direct solver. This flat, non-hierarchical, compression method allows to take advantage of the low-rank property of the blocks appearing during the factorization of sparse linear systems. The proposed solver can be used either as a direct solver at a lower precision or as a very robust preconditioner. The first approach, called Minimal-Memory, illustrates the maximum memory gain that can be obtained with the BLR compression method, while the second approach, called Just-In-Time, mainly focuses on reducing the computational complexity and thus the time-to-solution. In the second part, we present a reordering strategy that increases the block granularity to better take advantage of the locality for multicores and provide larger tasks to GPUs. This strategy relies on the block-symbolic factorization to refine the ordering produced by tools such as Metis or Scotch, but it does not impact the number of operations required to solve the problem. From this approach, we propose in the third part of this manuscript a new low-rank clustering technique that is designed to cluster unknowns within a separator to obtain the BLR partition, and demonstrate its assets with respect to widely used clustering strategies. Both reordering and clustering where designed for the flat BLR representation but are also a first step to move to hierarchical formats. We investigate in the last part of this thesis a modified nested dissection strategy that aligns separators with respect to their father to obtain more regular data structure.