Know these before auditing your Magento 2 website

Magento eCommerce site needs a constant audit to ensure consistency in performance and user experience. Here are some tips to audit your Magento 2 website before you kick off development and immediately after you go live.

Magento 2 Website Audit – Pre-development checklist

1. Security policies

Make sure that the site security policy in place which helps protect the site from hackers. Check if the site has the latest security patch installed using MageReport. Depending on the report, you can install the specific patches.

2. Magento 2 implementation audit

It is important for Magento developers in your team to have exposure to all the new features, enhancements and bug fixes offered in Magento 2 version. This helps them utilize the full potential of Magento 2 and enhance the overall performance of the site.

3. Web Security Testing

To fortify your eCommerce store, PCI-compliance is very important. Apart from PCI-compliance, use security tools like BurpSuite to audit your site and take necessary steps if the report shows the site is vulnerable. Cybersecurity and managed security service providers such as Trustwave can scan your site on a periodic basis to reduce security risks and protect data.

4. Using compatible PHP version

While upgrading to Magento 2, it is mandatory to update the PHP version to PHP 7. This will ensure smooth performance and avoids any compatibility issues between the Magento version and PHP version.

5. Avoid 404 pages

SEO is one of the concern areas in maintaining site performance and it is more so, after replatforming your website. If you have recently migrated from Magento 1 to Magento 2, ensure that you follow the best practices in SEO. Check if all your redirect links are working and avoid 404 pages.

6. Adequate backup and test

How often do you backup your eCommerce website? Do you check if the backup operational mode or failover is in place? When the site is attacked, ‘Failover’ is very much needed to recover from the disaster and put the site back to live in the least possible time.

Magento 2 Website Audit – Post-live checklist

1. Update basic information regularly

Basic information of your Magento 2 store, such as contact details, email IDs, names and addresses should be updated as and when changes occur. This helps avoid site users from getting frustrated when they hurriedly look up to your support services.

2. Loading speed

Typically, the site loading speed should be quick. Check if the loading speed matches the expectations. The actual speed depends on various customizations you have done on each site page.

3. Using the PageSpeed tool

Google PageSpeed tool can assess your site pages and provide scores besides recommendations on where you need to improve. Based on the results, you have to customize or modify the page. Ensure you get at least ‘good’ score.

4. Magento Coding Standards

It is highly recommended to follow all Magento coding standards as it reduces the chance of errors. The list of coding standards covers code demarcation, PHP, JavaScript, jQuery widget, DocBlock, LESS and HTML style guide. You can refer to all these coding standard documents in the official page.

5. Site Monitoring

Site monitoring is an integral part of maintaining the user experience. When you monitor thoroughly, you can look for potential problems before they occur and prevent them from causing huge damage. It is essential to implement complete server monitoring and an alert system that quickly notifies errors and issues as and when they occur.

For example, if you monitor an eCommerce site, you need to assess parameters like conversion rate, average order value, page views, average session duration, bounce rate, revenue across channels (organic search/paid/email) and devices (desktop/laptop/mobile), etc.,

6. Check Sitemap configuration

Sitemap configuration is important because the Search Engines use it to properly crawl and index the site. An improper sitemap will cause SEO issues and also disappoint site visitors. Thanks to auto-generation of sitemaps, a feature in Magento 2 that allows you to set ‘auto generate’ either daily or weekly or monthly as per your requirements. Following these tips can help you keep issues at bay before you get into the development phase and after going live. Thanks for reading this blog and we hope you find these tips useful.