How to rescue your Magento 2 ecommerce project
Selecting the right platform for your ecommerce website alone is not a guarantee of success. Working with experienced developers who have specialist knowledge of your chosen platform and have an agile and collaborative approach is key to building successful ecommerce projects. For example, your business may lack adequate technical and security support, meaning you’re at risk of underperforming, destabilising and falling behind your competitors.
Magento 2 is a powerful platform for retailers, enabling businesses to deliver a streamlined customer journey and effective omnichannel experiences. However, we’ve seen brands struggle, and it’s often down to inadequate support from developers, a lack of visibility and incorrect configuration.
Space 48’s Technical Director, Tony Brown, offers his expert advice on how to rescue your Magento 2 ecommerce project:
Take a step back and stabilise your ecommerce store
You should proceed with caution when looking to fix a broken (or faltering) ecommerce project. If you start trying to pull things apart too soon, you can cause a Jenga effect; destabilising your ecommerce website and bringing everything crashing down. Seek to stabilise things before making too many changes and work closely with your ecommerce agency. For example, you can make things worse with upgrades, as this can cause problems if there are previous hacks and issues residing on your website.
It’s crucial to have visibility of all issues, so we recommend implementing a proper monitoring process. Put a plan in place and subscribe to relevant alerts and flags, which should trigger to let you know when performance levels are above and below certain thresholds.
Work with a collaborative and agile agency
If you’ve worked with developers lacking the required knowledge and expertise on Magento 2, you may have run into problems. To resurrect your ecommerce website and Magento 2 development projects, you need to work with a development agency with the right level of experience, strategic nous and agile approach to get your business back on track. Here are some of the main benefits of working with an agile and experienced agency and the criteria of your desired developers:
- Access to different disciplines within the team
- Knowledge of common issues
- A collaborative team ethic
- Awareness of growth strategies
- Well-evolved working process
- Strives for continuous improvement
Many businesses make the mistake of looking for shortcuts and cut-price solutions for their ecommerce website development, but quick-fixes are often costlier in the long run.
For more insights into selecting suitable ecommerce developers, check out our handy blog on the key questions to ask of your development agency.
Carry out an extensive site audit of your Magento 2 ecommerce store
Before implementing significant changes and making major strategic decisions about the approach to rescuing your Magento 2 ecommerce store, you need to carry out an extensive website audit. Below we’ve summarised the key elements of an effective site audit:
- Involve senior technical leads
- Reserve the appropriate time considering the size and complexity of the site
- Review of custom and third-party code
- Establish integrity of core code
- Investigate the structure of both frontend and backend code
- Assess security and performance (patches, configuration, etc)
- Q&A between developers and merchants
- Review the infrastructure in place
Next steps and onboarding
After the auditing process has been completed, the next step – if both parties are ready to proceed – is to go through onboarding with your new development agency selected to take over your existing Magento 2 project.
There should be a transparent and well-defined onboarding process, establishing responsibilities and actions coming out of the audit and analysis. Initial priorities should be outlined, with merchants carrying out their set tasks first before the chosen developers begin their work. Tasks should be set out as red, amber and green priorities, so the most urgent stability issues get fixed first before any diving into commercial strategies and deeper development.
Space 48 is an ecommerce consultancy specialising in developing Magento and Magento 2 websites. Our development leads have a wealth of knowledge and expertise in ecommerce strategy and have created award-winning websites for major brands. To learn more about getting the best out of Magento 2’s key features and functionality, download our free CEO’s Guide to Magento 2.
