Don’t let these Magento issues undermine your online business

“We don’t have many repeat visitors because the website works so slowly.“ “We wanted to offer advanced features, but our custom extensions only sabotaged the store operation.” Entrepreneurs blame Magento, and we can see their point. Malfunctions in a Magento store have a direct negative impact on the business resulting in fewer visitors, small conversion and little profit.

Whether addressed by an expert Magento support team or store’s staff members, Magento issues need to be fixed promptly not to interfere with business development. Let’s clear up what can get in the way to ecommerce success. 

Magento extension conflicts

The possibility to customize Magento to meet changing business needs is one of the key advantages of the platform. Custom extensions can instantly add required features. At the same time, they can have an opposite effect resulting in losing a piece of functionality or even fatal errors.   

The question may arise: how many Magento extensions are too many? In fact, the quality, not the quantity, of extensions is critical. Even one poorly coded extension can cause the store’s malfunctioning. Still, the more extensions are installed, the larger the scope for conflicts is.

There are rules to follow to minimize the risk of an extension conflict:

• Make sure the desired functionality doesn’t go out-of-the-box in Magento and an extension is a must for the store.
• Install an extension in a testing environment before deploying it in a functional store.
• Entrust extension installation to competent Magento developers who will review the code.
• Check for conflicts once an extension is installed to prevent troubleshooting at a later stage.

Magento speed issues

“Is Magento 2 usually so terribly slow?” This question is so frequent in Magento forums that we can’t ignore this issue. Online shoppers expect ecommerce pages to load in 3 seconds and less, which is achievable and possible to further improve in Magento 2.

The truth is that Magento isn’t slow by default. Its operation speeds down due to improper configuration. While each case should be addressed separately, there is a number of optimization tips. To increase a page load speed, one can:

• Reconsider the hardware. A dedicated server or a VPS (virtual private server) are always preferable to shared hosting that can’t handle Magento power.
• Use Varnish and Full Page Caching to significantly speed up a website.
• Enable flat catalog. While typically Magento stores catalog data in multiple tables making MySQL queries long and complex, a flat catalog creates new tables on the fly and therefore reduces query complexity. As a result, catalogs with around 500K+ SKUs can be indexed quickly.
• Merge CSS and JavaScript files to make web pages lighter.
• Enable caching to decrease the number of database operations required for each page request.
• Optimize images. Large images can slow down the page load time.
• Optimize the website for mobile. This can cost a huge amount of traffic as the mobile digital media time in the US now makes up 51% compared to the desktop with 42%.

As Benjamin Franklin once said: “He that can have patience can have what he will.” That is definitely not about ecommerce customers. A small delay in page load translates into a potential customer leaving for a competitor.

An intention to speed up Magento performance is natural for business owners. But doing that randomly, one risks creating more issues than solving them. Expert Magento support services include checking an online store for speed-slowing factors and efficiently addressing them.

Magento security issues

Along with advantages, the open source nature of Magento prepares the ground for security breaches. We talk specifically about this critical issue in our comprehensive Magento security guide, and now let's briefly detail the importance of security monitoring.

Hackers target Magento ecommerce websites to gain access to customers’ personal and payment information. A compromised website negatively affects both the customer and the merchant. Customers will suffer from financial loss and identity theft. Most likely, they will not only keep away from the online store, but also will sue it. Thus, having ignored security issues, a merchant may face lawsuits, penalties, revoked privileges from financial institutions and other prerequisites of a ruined reputation. 

Usually, affected stores appear not fully up to date with security patches. Security testing and vulnerability scanning should become regular practices in Magento store maintenance. 

Magento issues shouldn’t be a reason for business failure

Stumbling upon Magento issues doesn’t mean that the platform fails to meet ecommerce needs. Entrepreneurs have all chances to prevent the issues or solve the emerged ones promptly. Let’s enumerate fundamental requirements for a flawless Magento store operation:

• Proper customization
• Ongoing Magento maintenance
• Regular security testing
• Expert Magento support in case of malfunctions

Being aware of the critical Magento issues described in the article, store owners will be able to prevent them. This way, they will decrease chances of losing their customers and making their competitors gloat.