It can be difficult to know if your Magento installation is performing as it should. Magento is a powerful and flexible e-commerce platform, but it can also be tricky to master at times. In an era of constant change, it’s even more important to monitor and maintain your installation to stay up to date with the latest and greatest features.
To help keep your Magento store running smoothly, you may want to consider hiring a technical audit company to perform a regular audit of your website. These companies perform customer services audits, website audits, and Magento audits in addition to other types of technical audits.
What is a Technical Audit?
A technical audit is a specialized audit that looks into the aspects of your website that relate to the operation and functionality of your entire application.
This can help you save time and money by avoiding costly mistakes and identifying areas of need for improvement.
Why Hire a Magento Technical Audit
A good way to begin planning a technical audit is to understand your wants and needs. What are you trying to accomplish with your e-commerce site? What are your specific needs? The best place to start looking into your wants and needs is with a Magento technical audit.
Types of Magento Technical Audits
After you’ve identified what type of audit you want, you’ll need to decide on the specific audit process. The 3 main types of technical audits are as follows:
– Vulnerability and audit – The most common type of audit, this type of audit looks into the security of your entire application.
– Risk assessment – Risk assessment is the process of quantifying the level of risk posed by various areas of your application. This may include looking at the functionality of your application and determining where there is a higher chance of failure. Risk assessments are not only about looking at your vulnerabilities, but also your strengths and weaknesses. By understanding where your application is at risk, you can better decide where your focus needs to be.
– Functional review – Functional review looks into the operation and feasibility of your product. This again is not only about looking at your vulnerabilities, but also your ability to meet demand and fulfill orders.
What to Expect from a Magento Technical Audit
A good way to get a general idea of what to expect from a Magento technical audit is to look at what is happening in the industry.
Typically, a vendor management audit will cover all of your products, including custom code, extensions, and themes. It will also cover the entire application architecture and the performance of your server.
A site audit, by contrast, will only look at your website. If your site is a part of your e-commerce solution, then you’ve likely got it covered by a hosting company.
What is a Magento Audit?
A Magento audit is a more in-depth review of your website’s systems to identify any issues with the platform itself. A Magento audit may look at features like your checkout process, the way your products are tracking in your store, and the way you collect and keep your customers’ data. When you conduct a Magento audit, you’ll usually get a report that contains recommendations for improvements as well as an overall assessment of the platform’s performance.
Magento and the Ovi Directory
The Ovi Directory is a database of over 100,000 e-commerce websites that is maintained by Shopify. The database is used by shopping cart providers like Ecommerce.com and PinPoint to help them find high-quality sites to add to their software.
When you use a shopping cart service like Ecommerce.com, it uses the data in the Ovi Directory to help you optimize your site. Because of this, you may see a familiar name popping up in connection with your website.
Different Types of Technical Audit
There are many types of technical audits you can conduct. A typical technical audit looks at how your site is operating, but it can also look at how your data is flowing between your various systems.
You can conduct a non-technical audit to check how your site is navigating or looking, but a technical audit is very detailed with regard to the way your data is flowing. It will look at features like your webhooks, your checkout process, and the overall performance of your server.
You can also do a hybrid audit which mixes a non-technical review with a technical audit to find any potential issues with your infrastructure.
Summing up
Regardless of what type of technical audit you choose to do, it’s important to understand the different types and how they relate to one another. These audits will help you identify any issues with your site that may be causing customers’ problems.
In addition to identifying issues with your site, a technical audit can also be used as a form of preventative maintenance. Regularly performing technical audits will help you identify any potential problems before they cause problems for your customers.
Conclusion
A technical audit can help you identify areas of weakness in your website that may not be as evident to the naked eye as they are to a tech-savvy customer support representative.
When hiring a Magento technical audit, consider the following:
What type of technical audit do you need?
How often should you do this type of audit?
Where do you want to conduct the audit?
As always, stay educated, stay up to date, and most importantly, stay safe.