At some point, every e-commerce manager asks himself how to improve the performance of his Magento site. Whether it’s to optimize the site to generate more sales, understand why sales are declining or why the number of new customers is stagnating, or how to boost visibility on the Internet. Site performance encompasses a whole range of realities. Because to optimize all or part of an e-commerce site, you first need to identify its weaknesses, a site performance audit is essential.
The criteria and indicators to be implemented depend on your final objective, since there are hundreds of parameters that can be analyzed. So, unless you’re an expert on the subject, it may be necessary to call in an agency or service provider with expertise in web performance auditing. We explain everything you need to know about e-commerce auditing, to help you make the right choices.
Before looking at how to have your online store’s web performance audited, it’s worth asking why you should do it. What’s the objective?
The advantage of clearly defining an objective is that it will enable you to determine your real needs and consequently clarify your requirements, especially if you’re having your audit carried out by a specialized agency.
An e-commerce audit is a precise snapshot of your online sales activity at a given moment, a sort of health check. The solution used to carry out a webperf audit varies according to the objective(s) being pursued. The main motivations of e-tailers are :
- optimizing the site to boost sales ;
- increase qualified traffic ;
- improve their conversion rate;
- optimize their SEO ranking.
A webperf audit allows us to analyze a set of operating criteria which directly impact the user experience, and which may partly explain their e-commerce behavior (why visitors come back or not, why putting items in the shopping cart results in an order or not, etc.). The criteria analyzed can be :
- page and content loading speed (photos, videos, images, etc.), given that more than half of all website visitors leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load;
- ease of navigation on e-commerce sites, because for 66% of Internet users, finding what they’re looking for is an essential criterion;
- the adaptability of e-commerce to the mobile format, as a significant proportion of users make their online purchases primarily via their cell phone (cell phones will account for over 64% of global traffic by 2021).
Auditing the performance of an online sales site is one thing, but what are we actually talking about?
Performance analysis is based on a set of indicators, which in most cases focus on the customer experience when browsing the e-commerce site, such as :
- bounce rate ;
- add-to-cart rate
- cart abandonment rate
- conversion rate;
- page loading time ;
- average page consultation time;
- number of page views…
Optimizing webperf, or loading speed, can improve all these indicators, as fast pages boost user engagement and conversion rates. The webperf audit is therefore the starting point for determining how to improve the performance of your Magento site.
In addition, user path analysis not only helps to understand how users use an e-commerce site, but also to detect and correct any malfunctions encountered.
How can I audit the performance of my Magento e-commerce site?
Depending on your objectives, you may wish to audit your site yourself (using the tools integrated into the CMS or web tools), or by your technical or marketing team. Or, for more detailed measurements, you may prefer to call on the services of an agency or experts specialized in site optimization.
A partial or global analysis of Magento e-commerce web performance is based on several audit criteria.
Analyze user path data
Google Analytics is a free, comprehensive tool for analyzing the performance of all types of websites, at every stage of the user journey. This solution is also ideal for online stores, as it takes into account their specific functionalities.
With Google Analytics, you can segment data by visitor or customer profile (P2P, B2B, etc.), test by device type (PC, mobile, tablet, etc.), model traffic flows, analyze acquisition channels…
Last but not least, a more detailed analysis of the user journey can be carried out using the heatmap. This is a visual representation of the visitor’s browsing path, including clicks made on the page, whether connected via mobile, PC or tablet.
Heatmap analysis (using paid tools such as Hotjar, Crazyegg or Beampulse) enables you to identify the most clicked links or the content that attracts the most (or least) attention from visitors.
Once collected and analyzed, this data can be used to optimize the interface and performance of a Magento site.
Analyze Magento e-commerce speed on PC and mobile
Website speed, or the time it takes for pages to load, is another essential criterion in the user experience. Unless you offer a rare and sought-after service or product, a site that’s too slow to load will drive away visitors, who are increasingly impatient, especially on mobile.
What’s more, the speed of e-commerce also has an impact on the visibility of the e-commerce site, particularly its SEO ranking on Google. Slower sites risk being penalized in relation to their competitors, because loading speed is part of Google’s search engine algorithm criteria – Google being one of the most widely used search engines in the world. It’s also important to point out that, since 2018, the firm has been basing its SEO referencing of sites on analysis of their speed in mobile versions, and no longer on Desktop.
Several site speed analysis tools, in free or paid versions to benefit from more performance indicators, are now available to the general public and are commonly used by agencies and SEO experts. The main ones are :
- PageSpeed Insights ;
- Lighthouse;
- GTmetrix ;
- WebPageTest
- Pingdom…
Analyze the SEO quality of a Magento e-commerce site
No matter how beautiful, complete and powerful an e-commerce site may be, sales won’t take off if it isn’t visible on the Internet. And today, with the growing number of online sites, a site’s visibility must be based on a real, well-honed strategy. That’s why regular SEO audits and optimization are essential to maintain a high ranking on search engines.
Good SEO is based on 3 fundamentals:
- code quality for web page indexing (Title, meta, H1, H2 tags, etc.);
- the quality of page content, especially the use of keywords and internal links;
- the quality and quantity of netlinking: the more external links pointing to your e-commerce site, the better.
Lighthouse and Semrush are two powerful tools used for SEO site audits.
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