Does your web store’s performance drop because of low page visit numbers, or do you come across a website crashing or not functioning on holidays like Black Friday or Christmas? Maybe it’s time you perform a Magento audit to fix these issues accordingly.
Breakdowns of this nature are common, and so is low maintenance of the website. Your sales may be greatly affected by these breakdowns, great opportunities get missed, and all this hinders your marketing plans as well as efforts, increasing your bounce rates in the process.
In case you experience any of these, chances are that your online store has skipped the Magento audit session much longer than it should have or, quite frankly, wanted to.
A Magento audit is vital to mitigate the performance and security risks for your eCommerce store. Conducting a Magento audit is crucial to pinpoint the trouble spots and loopholes that would do serious harm to your web store.
What is a Magento site audit, and does it carry importance for your online store? Should you put in the resources into doing an audit on a scheduled basis? Conducting Magento 2 audits keeps your store safe and in competition during situations when online traffic spikes at high rates.
What is a Magento Audit?
A Magento audit assesses and evaluates all aspects that impact website performance, security, and health. The owner of a store receives a detailed report which helps them in identifying and subsequently fixing the issues that the store faces. In the absence of this, an eCommerce business will have difficulty implementing its digital strategy effectively, as this audit is a critical component of it.
Site audit becomes salient if your site suddenly drops in traffic or is slow. A website is like a car; it needs maintenance when it has been in use for a while. Failing to do so will only worsen its condition with time. Conduct regular Magento audits to stay on top of things with your website and fix issues before they become problems.
Gaps in performance and unaddressed security issues can be detrimental to your eCommerce business, which is why Magento 2 audits are invaluable. And because Magento is an inherently complicated platform, an effective website audit can only be carried out by a well-skilled person.
The time it takes to complete an audit increases with the complexity of the site; smaller sites with under 100 pages will take 1-2 days, while large web stores can take several weeks to identify and optimize the problem areas.
While self-auditing is possible, a Magento site audit specialist is the recommended option.
A very important Magento audit can identify and address certain key issues covered elsewhere on the website, as well as illustrate areas for improvement.
What is confusing is that many companies do not know why and do not pay attention to this issue, but it is very important for the digital transformation of enterprises. This article is trying to spread awareness and clarify the importance of Magento audit to help improve your website.
Why Your Webstore Needs A Site Audit?
1. Site Security
An eCommerce store is a center point for hundreds of transactions each day and storing customer’s payment data. For this reason, merchants have to make certain that the sensitive information of their clients is kept secure. Security breaches may affect your brand image and may result in loss of clients and reduction in sales.
However, when looking into these issues, what are the compromises that have led to these security breaches, and how can a Magento audit assist you in avoiding these breaches?
Magento 2’s architecture is built on extensions, or modules, which makes it highly customizable and flexible at the same time. Still, this capability of customizing can be a disadvantage; something which you may want to consider.
The ability to alter the code combined with using third-party plugins and extensions can create security loopholes in your store which may make your website more vulnerable to hackers and fraudsters. A Magento audit helps to identify these modifications on extensions and the changes made to payment methods to block these attacks.
Your store’s security can also be impacted by human mistakes and threats posed by outdated software, third-party extensions, and code modifications.
You can inadvertently assign sensitive product-related permissions to some non-accredited users. Conducting periodic audits of your Magento user accounts enables you to review and restrict such permissions by blocking unauthorized users.
Such identity threats can be dealt with and mitigated through a Magento 2 audit, which preserves your brand time and image and mitigates numerous lawsuits and setbacks regarding customer data leaks. More clients will sign up as well as existing customers who have trust in an eCommerce store will come back.
2. Site Performance
Performance plays a crucial role in an eCommerce store, and an online store is no exception to this. Customers expect higher performance from eCommerce websites than traditional ones, which increases the average bounce rate.
The reason for this is that most potential clients are impatient waiting more than 2 or 3 seconds for the store to load. Not only do slower websites increase bounce rates, but they also affect sales. Most people tend to leave before seeing your product page.
Performance problems are often caused by the frontend like excessive and poorly managed JavaScripts and CSS stylesheets. High site latency could also stem from large images, overused extensions, plugins, themes, or server issues.
A Magento audit will provide a technical breakdown of the problems and recommend the changes needed for better responsiveness of your website.
It also helps you identify performance gaps so that you can work on them to enhance your store’s performance. Identifying, analyzing, and working on these issues ensures your customers get a better user experience which increases sign up and retention rates. A Magento site audit helps you focus on important aspects like speed optimization for better user satisfaction.
Going through a Magento 2 audit allows you to appreciate the myriad of performance and security constraints that might challenge your store. Let’s not forget, routine Magento audits are vital for the consistent performance of your site and for averting future lags.
3. Site Health
The health of the site demonstrates how well your website is working. Just as check-ups are an important activity for one’s body, checking the health of your website serves as a way of cutting down on varying problems that might have long-term effects on the functioning of the store. A comprehensive Magento audit allows you to catch issues with your website before they are a problem down the road.
On the surface, Magento developers tend to provide the best functional results, but some of them are infamous for providing subpar coding practices and destroying the backend of your store. This is common in a complex Magento store, since developers often alter the underlying structure of Magento to change its functionalities, alongside the use of poorly designed third-party plugins.
It’s virtually infeasible for a business owner to keep track of all these modifications in real-time, which is why A Magento site audit is crucial. With a Magento site audit, you can determine whether or not good coding practices are used on your site. In addition, it enables you to ascertain if your service providers ensure that your website is in good shape. This helps you alter or redesign your code so that it adheres to good coding standards such as indentation, scalability, portability, and many others.
With Magento 2 audits, you will also be able to gauge the adequacy and effectiveness of the changes made to the Magento store, assuring that there are no gaps present.
If you make adjustments based on the findings from a Magento audit, you can avert complications from escalating further and can mitigate concern at the very beginning, which in turn, allows your store to continue to operate efficiently.
4. Adherence to Standards and Compliance Policies of the Industry
The Industry Standards and Regulations Compliance makes it apparent why someone may consider a Magento audit for an online store an extremely necessary, if not crucial, reason.
eCommerce is more than just a legal issue; it is equally a matter of customer confidence. There are standards like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) within the EU or PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) that need compliance at country levels. These regulations govern the protection and use of sensitive personal information, such as credit cards and other details. Failure to comply would certainly expose a company to massive fines, lawsuits, and damages to the company.
A Magento site audit is an essential tool that helps to uncover weaknesses and checks if your store meets these compliance standards. For instance, it may establish whether your store complies with customer data regulations or if encryption is configured properly and secure payment methods are in place.
Also, a Magento 2 audit helps ensure that proper business operations are followed like those with the WCAG standards and SEO norms that are useful in serving the user better.
In the long run, if you engage in regular Magento audits, you will make attempts to close compliance gaps, improve trust and confidence, and showcase responsible conduct of business.
Such users do not have to worry that a store is non-compliant. A compliant store is not just safe; it is a more attractive proposition for its users who value their privacy and security. So, do not hesitate – get in touch with a provider offering site and Magento 2 audit services and set an appointment for a thorough site audit. Your store has to be safe, compliant, and primed for business expansion.
What are the different types of audits?
1. Magento SEO Audit
In an online store, website visibility and ranking are of great importance as they guarantee that the store is running optimally at all times. Making sure that your eCommerce store ranks high involves a thorough evaluation of SEO strategies and visibility performance, which ensures that the right SEO techniques are applied. This is possible with newer approaches to Magento audit.
Just like any other SEO audit, site audits for Magento involve On-page SEO, Technical SEO, and Link building audits.
- On-page SEO audit: Auditors assess website content and keywords to trace pages with the highest and lowest-ranking keywords. This enables the creation of more refined meta descriptions for the pages.
- Technical SEO audit: This audit evaluates the indexability and crawlability of the website, the speed of loading pages, and other such parameters. The audit provides an in-depth analysis of the website pages indicating the aggressive and underperforming pages.
- Link building: The audit attributes all incoming links to the website, carefully evaluating them in terms of their number and quality. Additionally, the content of the website is also evaluated.
Tools like Moz or SEMrush are ideal for implementing site audit strategies for Magento.
Magento 2 audit identifies Magento-focused problems that may restrain your site from reaching its full potential. Performing a Magento audit guarantees that your store is optimized for SEO and will rank higher in search results.
2. Magento Code Audit
A Magento Code audit is one of the most important types of audit that assesses how your Magento eCommerce store performs online. You start with a Magento code audit which is the comprehensive examination of your website’s source code. This approach allows for the spotting of platform bugs, security flaws, code infringements, and other elements that can adversely affect the user experience.
Your website performance is heavily reliant upon the code base functionality and structure. Therefore, it becomes imperative to regularly conduct code audits.
With regards to your store of choice, protecting its sensitive data should be a priority above anything else. A code audit excels in making certain that your systems remain secure with no breaches and undesired data retrieval. Take a look at our advanced Magento code audit services to make your website effortlessly secure and well-optimized for performance.
Additionally, a code audit can identify how well proprietary code and external integrations work within the framework of the online store’s Magento components. This assessment contributes to the seamless expansion of your store with impending modifications and enhances code compatibility across different browsers, devices, and screen resolutions.
Finally, we conclude that code audits help identify security issues, performance issues, non-compliance, code irregularities, bugs, and inadequate documentation of the code.
Each Magento code audit can be performed using well-known tools such as PHP_CodeSniffer, PHPStan, PHPMD, and Magento Coding Standard.
3. Magento Performance Audit
Let’s take a step-by-step look at what a Magento audit truly involves. First, what does it entail? This audit involves checking the eCommerce site of your Magento store in great depth. Magento Audits are usually designed to address performance issues on a great level.
To set goals for the audit, it is critical to grasp the eCommerce performance of your Magento store. The first thing auditors do is carry out a comprehensive examination of the website. This approach enables the assessment of both the frontend and backend source codes.
Similarly, you will be able to address additional bugs, security problems, platform inefficiencies, code violations, and other issues within the code base that could adversely impact user experience.
This in turn means that regular code audits are extremely important since the repository structure of both your frontend and backend code bases affects every single website feature. It is prudent to review your code on a regular basis just so that your website is working the way it is supposed to.
Because of the nature of the information contained in your website, security should always come first. Code audits stand out due to this ability.
They will protect your website against security issues such as data breaches and unauthorized access. Check out our exceptional Magento site audit services so that you can be sure that your site is protected with the most reliable and optimized code.
Moreover, a code audit can determine whether custom code and third-party integrations are compatible with other modules of Magento in your online store. This helps simplify the scaling of your store with new upgrades and ensures that the code is responsive to various browsers, devices, and screen sizes.
To summarize, a code audit can detect problems such as cybersecurity loopholes, performance, and other discrepancies with the code, as well as documentation issues.
Popular tools like PHP_CodeSniffer, PHPStan, PHPMD, and Magento Coding Standard can be leveraged for Magento 2 audit strategy and other best practices of Magento auditing.
4. Magento Security Audit
Regular security audits are a necessity to discover any potential threats or vulnerabilities in your website. It allows you to assess the technical soundness of your website’s infrastructure, codebase, and so forth.
Because your site holds sensitive information, doing routine Magento audits goes a long way in protecting your online Magento store from security loopholes, hacking, and other malicious activities.
The Magento site audit site entails going through the website codebase, custom code, and third-party extensions. This aids in discovering insecure coding patterns and the presence of backdoors that are hidden and other vulnerabilities that can be used by attackers.
The audit process helps you check the controls that limit access to information on the website. This is achieved by checking roles and permission to ensure that only the right people have access to confidential information that is on your site.
As such, this verification procedure accounts for security measures needed to prevent payment fraud and information leakage while using the relevant payment systems on your web page. In addition, it also makes sure that your site’s payment gateways are functioning accurately.
Besides, this audit checks if the appropriate security upgrades for your Magento installation have been applied or are overdue, which were made available by Magento for particular customization.
Other possible problems identified in a Magento 2 audit may include poor configuration settings and passwords, unprotected ports, and even possible DDoS attacks.
The constant concern of every business owner running a Magento shop is how well and where the system is vulnerable. A well performed regular Magento audit will always ensure that such problems are identified and corrected in good time before they affect the performance of the store.
Accurate security audits can be done using instruments such as WPScan, OWASP ZAP, and SecurityHeaders.io.
The Benefits of Magento Website Audit
The security and performance of a website have a direct correlation with the traffic a brand receives and its conversion rate. An audit on Magento provides an opportunity to ensure a welcoming and safe environment for the customers.
The benefits of a Magento website audit include the following:
- Enhanced Performance and Customer Experience: All the website audits measure different indexing parameters including loading speed, responsiveness, and general usability. Focusing on these aspects guarantees that you do not frustrate the users and can gain their trust and satisfaction which also helps one convert more leads. A Magento audit presents an opportunity to see how the performance of the website can be improved.
- Better SEO and Ranking on Search Engines: Marketing has grown to become one of the most important aspects of any online-based business, and as such, website audits often encompass evaluations in SEO, allowing you to capitalize on new marketing trends more proficiently. You can better your ranking from the search engines, which will increase the organic traffic to your site with ease. Regular Magento audit ensures that the SEO methodologies you are using are effective.
- Enhanced security and data protection: You may uncover issues like vulnerabilities and deficient security on your Magento website by conducting an audit. If these matters are tended to in a timely manner, they can aid in securing sensitive customer information, averting breaches, and improving overall compliance with data protection legislation, thus bolstering customer trust. Apart from ensuring compliance, improving security is further enhanced through a Magento audit on third-party extensions and code quality.
- Identification of Technical Issues: A detailed Magento audit of the online site can assist in uncovering the existence of technical issues, broken links, and coding deficiencies. Resolving these issues in a timely manner improves the functioning of your website, thus increasing productivity uptime. The regular Magento 2 audit enables the optimization of all code, which prevents the occurrence of technical problems.
- Cost Savings and Resource Optimization: You can uncover poor resource utilization and excessive use of third-party extensions via audits. Intended use of resources leads to lower operational expenditures and improves the operational efficiency of your website. A Magento audit targets resource circumvention clearly and suggests ways to improve your systems and cut down costs.
- Readiness for Expansion and Website Scalability: With the growth of your business, the demands of your site will change as well. A Magento 2 audit will help you understand your scalability issues and allow you to better your website infrastructure. This will let you smoothly channel traffic and transaction volume increase towards ensuring that proper auditing tools are set so that your store is scalable with business growth. A Magento audit also guarantees proper functionality and security of the store as it expands in the future.
Final Thoughts
Magento audits directly impact the growth of your business, allowing you to focus on what you do best. Regular audits ensure security, performance, and integrity are maintained on your store’s web page.
Omitting an audit can be equivalent to a ticking time bomb. How deep the damage is lies in how frequently the web page was used and what exactly became corrupted. From my experience, a normal pace of at least once a quarter is more valuable for investment.
Website audits act as a necessary evil. They root out and identify threats your store is hatching while saving you from self-inflicted wounds working on fixes. The reasoning is quite simple, spending a little effort constantly saves a business from worrying about fixing issues later.
If boosting your store’s performance and health is your goal, feel free to contact us at HumCommerce Web Solutions for a consultation right away! A web strategy tailored to your business goals is immediately put into place in order to maximize the functionality within a short time frame.
If you liked this article, you can also consider reading:
- Magento Speed Optimization: The Ultimate Guide
- Understanding Magento Caching Methods to Boost Performance
- Checkout Page Optimization: Key Strategies to Improve Conversions
FAQs
- What includes an audit of a Magento site?
This refers to a thorough examination of your Magento shop, which is intended to uncover possible problems that could influence the performance, ranking, usability, and security of your website. This, in turn, allows you to get the maximum value from your website. - Why do I need a Magento site audit?
To find and fix any underlying technical issues that may be affecting the website’s speed and performance, address issues relating to the website’s structure and content for achievable higher SEO, improve user-friendliness, and address security issues. - By whom should an audit of the Magento site be carried out?
A person with an in-depth understanding of development issues relating to Magento, knowledge of SEO and Web Analytics, or a More Focused Agency that provides these specialized services.
