Why You Need an eCommerce Website Audit Before Implementing Maintenance?

In the e-commerce landscape, Magento reigns as a top choice for businesses seeking a robust online platform. Regular maintenance is vital for optimal performance, security, and user experience. Before undertaking maintenance, a thorough eCommerce website audit is essential. It serves as a diagnostic tool, uncovering strengths, and weaknesses, and guiding effective maintenance strategies.

"If you don’t have a clear audit or a clear idea of what those components are, you can’t make that decision. So for the full-site audit, I would recommend anybody do that. It will give you absolute faith in knowing where your site is, what stage it's in, or how good the quality is before you do anything else."

Gary Forster (Founder, UK Bathroom Store Ltd )

This blog explores why a website audit is crucial, providing knowledge to enhance performance, identify risks, and maximize potential. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or e-commerce enthusiast, join us on this enlightening journey to unlock Magento’s power through a website audit.

What is a eCommerce Website Audit?

A full-site audit is an essential step in the website maintenance process that allows you to thoroughly analyze and evaluate your website’s performance, functionality, and overall user experience. By conducting a comprehensive audit, you can identify any existing issues, potential risks, and areas for improvement. This helps you gain a clear understanding of your website’s current state and sets the foundation for a successful maintenance project such as: Upgrade or Optimization website,…

Why is a Full-Site Audit Necessary?

During a full-site audit, various aspects of your website are examined, including its code structure, performance, security, and more. By thoroughly assessing these areas, you can uncover any underlying issues that may be affecting your website’s performance, user engagement, and conversion rates.

Moreover, making a full-site audit before implementing website maintenance provides you with various benefits, such as:

Key Components of an eCommerce Website Audit

1. Usability Audit (UX Audit)

This involves testing the website to ensure all its functions work correctly and that pages are loading correctly. It is easy for users to navigate, search, find, and click buttons. We go page by page, even on frontend and backend pages, and leave proper ideas of how to improve the customer experience.

The search results suggest that a UX audit can be conducted using various methods, such as:

• Heuristic Analysis: Using Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics as a guide to evaluate the website’s usability and user experience.
• Competitive Analysis: Comparing the website to competitors to identify common pitfalls and opportunities for improvement.
• User Journey Mapping: Analyzing user flows and interactions to identify pain points and areas for improvement.
• PURE Reviews: Perform user experience reviews with a small group of participants to gather feedback and insights.
• Heuristic Evaluation: Conducting a detailed evaluation of the website’s usability and user experience, focusing on specific aspects like accessibility, navigation, and visual design

2. Code core Audit

The purpose of a core integrity review is to check whether your Magento website is edited/hacked or not. You must be aware that the Magento core, once modified loses its integrity and may sometimes become irreparable, causing severe security and performance issues. Because it’s risky, it should only happen in the case of temporary adjustments during development. In other situations, you should build an extension for additional features without interfering with the Magento core.

3. 3rd-party Module Audit

We will audit the third-party modules based on the Magento coding standard, check module versions and check if any modules need upgrading. Audit the self-customized modules based on the Magento coding standard and ensure they are well-compatible with your store.

During a 3rd-party module audit, the following aspects are typically examined:

• Functionality: Assessing whether the third-party modules are functioning correctly and as intended without causing any conflicts or errors on the website.
• Security: Checking the security measures implemented by third-party modules to ensure they do not pose any vulnerabilities that could compromise the website’s security.
• Performance: Evaluating the impact of third-party modules on the website’s loading speed and overall performance to identify any bottlenecks or issues affecting user experience.
• Compatibility: Verifying that the third-party modules are compatible with the website’s existing infrastructure, including other plugins, themes, and custom code.
• Compliance: Ensuring that third-party modules adhere to relevant regulations and guidelines, especially concerning data privacy and user consent.

4. Detect JS Console errors & redundant files

We will detect JS errors from the browser console. Point out redundant files from the main code folder that should be removed to optimize Magento performance.

Detecting JavaScript console errors and redundant files in a website audit is crucial for ensuring optimal performance and user experience. JavaScript errors can impact the functionality of a website, leading to issues like broken functions and interruptions in page execution. By identifying and addressing these errors, website owners can enhance the site’s reliability, usability, and overall performance.?

Additionally, detecting redundant files helps streamline the website’s codebase, improve loading times, and ensure a more efficient user experience. Conducting a thorough audit to detect and resolve these issues is essential for maintaining a high-quality website that meets both user expectations and search engine standards

5. Custom Code Validation

This involves reviewing any custom code and ensuring it works correctly with the website. During a website audit, custom code validation can involve several steps, such as:

• Identifying custom code: The first step is to locate and identify all custom code used on the website, including custom scripts, plugins, and integrations.
• Code review: A thorough code review is conducted to assess the code’s functionality, security, and adherence to best practices. This review may involve manual inspection or the use of automated tools to analyze the code for potential issues.
• Error detection: Any errors or issues in the custom code are identified and documented. These may include syntax errors, logic errors, or security vulnerabilities.
• Corrective actions: Based on the findings of the code review, corrective actions are taken to address any issues identified. This may involve refactoring the code, updating dependencies, or implementing additional security measures.
• Testing: The corrected code is then tested to ensure that it functions as intended and does not introduce any new issues.

6. Theme Audit

Magento themes can be heavy if you install an old theme that isn’t supported anymore. We will audit the third-party theme based on the Magento coding standard and check if the theme needs upgrading. Audit the self-customized theme based on Magento coding standard. Advice general solutions to fix reported coding issues and point out rooms for improvements.

This process typically includes assessing the following aspects:

• Design Consistency: Checking if the design elements across the website are consistent, visually appealing, and reflect the brand identity effectively.
• Responsiveness: Verifying that the theme is responsive and displays correctly on various devices and screen sizes to provide a seamless user experience.
• Navigation: Evaluating the navigation structure to ensure it is intuitive, user-friendly, and allows visitors to easily find information on the website.
• Accessibility: Assessing if the theme complies with accessibility standards to cater to users with disabilities and provide an inclusive browsing experience.
• Loading Speed: Analyzing the theme’s impact on website loading speed to optimize performance and reduce bounce rates.
• SEO Compatibility: Checking if the theme is optimized for search engines by examining factors like meta tags, headings, and structured data markup.

7. Speed Audit

Assessing how fast the web pages load, and identifying areas where the loading speed can be improved. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix can be used to analyze your site’s performance and identify areas for improvement. By fixing these issues, you can provide a faster, smoother user experience, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and sales.

8. Security & Server Audit

Checking the website’s security systems and protocols to ensure it is safe from hackers, malware, and other security threats. Evaluation of the website’s hosting server, and identifying any issues that may affect website performance.

To complete all of the above sections, a Magento expert can spend about 30-40 working hours on a site. So that you don’t have to spend all that time auditing, you should pay for a paid full-site audit report. This will help you save time, have an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the website situation, clearly understand the structure fee, allocate an appropriate budget to more important parts, and avoid costly mid-project changes.

You can view a sample report of our Professional Full-site Audit here

What Makes the BSS Commerce Website Audit Different From?

1. The most complete and professional output

You will receive a very detailed website audit plan that is customized to your needs. The plan includes issues and solutions of various aspects of the website that you can optimize to enhance comprehensive website performance such as: Usability, Code core integrity, 3rd-party module, Theme, Speed, Security,…

2. BSS Commerce Full-site Audit workflow

After receiving your requirement, we would respond to your request within 2 hours on working days (GMT+7):

• Confirm your problems and understand your expectations:

An exclusive 1-1 meeting involving our seasoned development experts and valued customers. This pivotal phase kickstarts the Full-site Audit process, ensuring a unified vision and crystal-clear understanding of your website’s problems and objectives.

• Collect access:?

Our team collects all necessary access (SSH, Admin access, Frontend URL, Theme code package, Third-party module code) and keeps all your information secured by signing NDA.

• Transparent Quotation and Timeline Estimation:

Following the in-depth Full-site Audit Report, we present you with a workable quotation and timeline estimation.

• Collects all necessary access:

After having your agreement, our team will collect all necessary access (SSH, Admin access, Frontend URL, Theme code package, Third-party module code) and keep all your information secured by signing NDA.

• Implementing a comprehensive analysis on your website:

A meticulously crafted Full-site Audit Report, meticulously designed by our 11+ years of experienced eCommerce development experts. This report is tailored to understand your eCommerce website’s status and offer an array of actionable solutions, including:

+ Code integrity & validation

+ Meticulous JS error detection

+ In-depth review of third-party modules

+ Rigorous assessment of page speed

+ Stringent security checks,?

+ And comprehensive usability testing.

• Immersive audit report explanation and discuss to fix issues:

Engage in an enlightening 1-1 meeting where our Project Manager, Development team, and esteemed customers converge to unveil the intricacies of the Full-site Audit Report and actionable recommendations. This session ensures a profound understanding of our solution and the best part is you can implement website maintenance yourself if you have the internal team or knowledge about website development.

After explaining you the full result and be ready to resolve any questions. If you need our support to fix reported coding issues, we can consider/prepare our resource to discuss with you further.

Successful cases with BSS Commerce Full-site Audit Service

1. UK Bathroom Store

The project’s flow began with a comprehensive site audit, laying the foundation for subsequent steps. The site audit was followed by a meticulous process of refactoring and upgrading the Magento version to 2.4.5.?Thanks to the audit report, the customer and BSS Commerce quickly agreed on a comprehensive solution, shortening implementation time and saving a thousand dollars for our customers.

2. Case24

The site of Case24 is quite challenging. After auditing, we found out that the core code, the old theme code, and the customization code were directly worked on and customized, which did not meet the coding standard of Magento. So, we had to take more time to refactor the code to bring the site code into integrity status.

Although we took more time for the project (about 6 months), we helped our customers avoid costly mid-project changes and site code status risks. They also save thousands of dollars in fixing source code to meet the standards of Magento.

Want to receive our Full-site Audit Report with Advanced Solution?

In conclusion, A Full-site Audit is essential, especially before implementing Magento website maintenance to prepare for site stabilization and optimization. It’s a valuable investment to achieve your online goals and grow your business.

Contact us now to get started with a eCommerce Full-site Audit before implementing your Magento maintenance needs.

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