Checklist for Monthly Maintenance of Magento e-Commerce Website

If you have an e-commerce site based on Magento and it's functioning optimally, you are reaping the dividends of your effort and initiative. However, you cannot afford to be complacent as a Magento website demands monthly maintenance. There is a list of procedures that you have to follow every month that will help you keep your online store in good shape.
Below, you will find a checklist for the monthly maintenance of your Magento website:

1. Analyze Site Performance
By analyzing site performance, you can unearth potential problems that may have already cropped up or are likely to occur in the future. Through a tool like Google Analytics, you can keep tabs on key parameters like bounce rate, traffic, form submission, etc. You can draw important inferences from the results you get. For instance, if the bounce rate is high, something could be amiss with the content or site speed. Issues that should not be overlooked include abnormal rise in traffic, drop in conversion rate and orders, etc. This very first activity is in a way the prerogative of custom Magneto development experts who you can outsource Magento development services to.

2. Monitor Site Speed
Site speed matters a lot as a really fast website leads to optimal use experience, thereby yielding more revenue. When a site takes little time to open, visitors can browse its pages and navigate through it faster. On the contrary, a slow-loading portal results in cart abandonment and a high bounce rate. By doing a speed test, you can know of the steps that you need to take.

3. Adopt Security Measures
If speed matters for an e-commerce site, so does security. A monthly security check should be a must. By overlooking this step, you can put user data in jeopardy and give other reasons for concern to your business. More importantly, Google values those sites more that are secure, letting them show up earlier in search results.

4. Detect Broken Links
Your Magento website may have broken links that can mar user experience and result in cart abandonment. Detecting these links should be a feature of your maintenance program. Through tools like Bing and Google webmaster, you can both identify and fix error pages, thereby offering a hassle-free experience to visitors.

5. Check Forms
Forms form an integral part of the entire selling & marketing process. So, checking your forms from time to time is another activity that you must perform vis-à-vis the maintenance of your Magento e-commerce website. You must remember that it's through forms that you obtain important user information like name, contact details, etc. A slight slip-up can cause loss of leads.

6. Go Through Order Process
Going through the entire order process and ensuring the user experience is seamless is something that in fact should be done every two weeks rather than on a monthly basis. The things you need to focus on include product navigation, cart, checkout, payment, etc. Testing the order process regularly will be critical to the proper maintenance of Magento e-store.

7. Backup Creation Paramount
Creating a backup of your Magento e-commerce website is paramount as you cannot avert disasters completely in spite of taking the strongest security measures. The backup you create will stand you in good stead if your website is hacked or if it crashes all of a sudden. And you also need to keep checking the backed-up version. Also, storing information offsite as another security measure is advisable as you can turn to it if there is any eventuality.

8. Update Content Timely
While you no doubt have to be genuinely concerned about the technical aspects of your Magento e-commerce site, you also have to see that the content is up-to-date. A new article or blog or a fresh piece of content alone can help you draw more visitors to your site. The other tricks that you can employ include running a contest or a promotional campaign.

If you are impressed by the maintenance tips that we have shared above but fear that you may not be able to follow them properly because of paucity of time, lacking the required skills, and other factors, you can outsource this requirement to India where there is no dearth of companies that excel in custom Magento development. By finding one such company that lets you hire a Magento developer from India and forming a long-term association, you can stop fretting over the monthly maintenance of your Magento-based e-commerce site.