Magento Store Launch is only the start of your eCommerce Success. Even after you have launched your site, you will need to continue to maintain your site (Magento maintenance) to ensure that it remains secure, stable, fast, and compatible with new technology. As a robust e-commerce platform, Magento provides a lot of flexibility for merchants with respect to product listings, checkout processes, integration capabilities, extensions, and customer experience. As an e-commerce owner using Magento, you have a lot of freedom when designing and operating your online business. However, you are also responsible for maintaining your online store. There are a lot of different reasons why an online shop might slow down. Examples of these include: software updates; third party modules; custom code; updates to the hosting environment; updates to payment gateway system; and security updates. In order to provide your customers with a consistent shopping experience that meets their expectations, and to avoid many of the potential problems that could have been avoided by keeping your e-commerce site up-to-date, it is recommended that you perform regular updates to your e-commerce site.

Magento Stores Change Even When The Business Does Not

The technical environment of an eCommerce website is always changing, sometimes over a period of weeks or months, and customers may not know.

Magento issues patches and platform updates. Extensions developers release new versions of their modules. APIs of payment providers change. Software updates go to the hosting environments. Browsers are constantly changing, as are the integrations with ERP, CRM, shipping, analytics and marketing platforms.

A store that was working great a few months ago can eventually have compatibility issues without any obvious change to the storefront.

That’s the whole point of regular monitoring. Developers are able to learn about deprecated extensions, strange errors, compatibility problems or performance degradation before they become big problems.

Never Ignore Security Updates

One of the biggest reasons to keep the Magento website uniform is security.

A web-store manages important data like customer information, account information, order information, payment related process. This makes eCommerce sites attractive to attackers and the failure to patch known vulnerabilities can lead to unnecessary risk:

Magento security patches: These should be evaluated carefully and applied. When updating a live website developers should think about custom modules, third-party extensions, themes, integrations, and the current Magento version.

An update can cause conflicts unexpectedly – if it’s not well tested. But delaying important security updates for too long can put the store at risk.

If you have a structured maintenance process, you can test updates in a staging environment before pushing them to production.

Performance Needs Constant Attention

Page speed impacts the shopping experience directly.

As an online store grows, so does its database. New products are added, extensions grow, marketing scripts pile up and image libraries swell. These changes can gradually impact website performance.

Some common areas to look for are:

• Response time from server

• Cache settings

• Database Speed

• JavaScript execution

• Image optimization

• Third-party scripts

• Indexing Procedures

• Cron jobs

• Extension’s performance

There is not always one reason why a store is slow. Sometimes a series of little technical glitches add up to a big delay.

So if you are monitoring performance regularly, you can detect these issues early, rather than waiting for customers to report slow pages or problems with checking out.

Extensions May Be a Source of Problems

Magento stores widely use extensions to add more functionality to it. These may include features for payments, shipping, search, navigation, product feeds, promotions, analytics, customer service or other features.

Extensions are great, but they need upkeep.

Updates to the platform can cause a module that works with one version of Magento to behave differently. Two extensions may also conflict especially if both change similar checkout, catalog or customer functionality.

Merchants must identify which extensions are necessary for their operations, and they also should maintain an accurate list of each extension's version number and other associated extensions that are required for proper operation.

Before making a decision about whether or not to include a new module into your store, ask yourself if the features required can be met using either standard Magento functionality or a relatively small amount of custom coding. Including extra extensions that you don't require will increase the complexity of your site and make maintaining it much more difficult down the road.

Special Mention for Checkout Reliability

Checkout is one of the most sensitive part of an eCommerce store.

Technical issues, such as a problem with a payment processor, delivery method, discount rules, tax calculations, shipping addresses, or JavaScript elements, may stop a customer from placing their order. Merchants may be unaware of these types of issues during checkout. Most customers will leave your site instead of complaining.

Routine testing should therefore include the entire buying journey:

As a customer, browse products, add items to your shopping cart, enter the correct promo code, select how you would like the product delivered, finish the checkout process, confirm the order and verify the order was successfully completed within the Magento Admin panel. In addition, tests should also be conducted on mobile devices because a successful checkout experience on a computer browser does not guarantee a similar positive experience on smaller screen sizes.

Monitoring Helps Catch Problems Before Customers Do

Proactive monitoring is one of the most valuable components of Magento maintenance.

Instead of waiting for customers or employees to tell you that there’s a problem, you can search for warning signs like recurring server errors, failed cron jobs, strange resource usage, indexing failures or integration issues, by using monitoring tools and technical reviews.

The log files are useful for Magento logs technical information that can help developers in troubleshooting errors.

But gathering logs is not sufficient. Someone has to look at meaningful errors, recognize trends, and decide if something needs to be done.

If you don’t have an in-house Magento development team, working with specialists providing Magento support and maintenance services can give you access to ongoing troubleshooting, updates, monitoring, and technical assistance without having to hire a full-time development department.

Backups: Not Only Creating Them, But Testing

While most organizations understand that backups are crucial, very few of them test if they will be able to restore the data from their backups.

Magento's backup process typically includes several components: Database, Media Files, Application Code, Configurations, and Other Key Assets.

The frequency of backups should be in proportion to the frequency of store changes. A small catalog store may have different backup needs than an eCommerce site that processes a lot of orders a day.

Backups need to be isolated from the production environment as well. If the live site and its only backup are both located in the same vulnerable location, then a major infrastructure problem could affect both.

Periodic restoration testing is also useful in verifying that the backup process is working as designed.

Maintenance Supports Future Growth

Good maintenance isn’t just defensive. It can make development of future Magento easier.

When code is organized, extensions are documented, old components are removed, and technical issues are regularly taken care of, developers are able to add new features with less uncertainty.

In contrast, a store with years of undocumented customization can become harder and harder to change.

This is especially true for companies planning large eCommerce developments such as:

• Customization at checkout

• ERP/CRM integrations

• Headless commerce

• Marketplace features

• International growth

• New ways to pay

• B2B features

• Progressive Web Applications

• Significant Magento upgrades

Companies like Laconica work in Magento environments, where ongoing maintenance and development overlap as improvements in one area can have an impact on several connected components.

A Functional Maintenance Program

How often maintenance is needed will depend on the size and complexity of the store, but there are a number of activities that should be performed regularly.

Developers should review security patches, check for application and server errors, validate backups, check for extension updates, test critical integrations, review website performance and perform test orders on a regular basis.

Major updates are first rolled out to a staging environment.

The production website is not the testing ground for major code changes. Workflows staging enables developers to identify issues without impacting real customers.

Documentation is useful in that. Keeping a record of customizations, integrations, extensions, deployment processes and past technical issues can help to speed up the troubleshooting process.

Final Thoughts

Magento can handle complex, highly customized eCommerce operations. But the platform works better when it’s actively maintained.

Waiting until an issue arises will cause more interruptions to your site than taking care of small problems by conducting ongoing technical maintenance on your site.

The maintenance aspect of your ecommerce business should be incorporated into the overall eCommerce development plan rather than viewed as a one time technical expense.

A properly maintained Magento store is more protected from security risks, can be easily updated with new functionality, and has the potential for future expansion.