Magento is globally known to provide the best e-commerce services and it falls second to WooCommerce in the global share market. This is the platform entrepreneurs run to when wanting to build an e-commerce store. This, however, does not make it immune to flaws. Any website that uses code for development is susceptible to errors and technical issues. In Magento development, these errors are not roadblocks but can cause a lot of delay leading to frustrations and poor user experience. This is enough reason to make brands shift to other e-commerce service providers for a better experience. Here are some of the challenges that you may come across on your Magento platform and how you can tackle them.
- Slow Default Magento Configurations
Magento e-commerce platform can slow down your site when left on its own. However, this does not happen to Magento sites only, but other e-commerce sites as well. All is not lost as there are plenty of solutions available to improve the website’s performance. All you need to do is to optimize certain parameters on your online store. Magento is only as slow as the store owner. To improve its performance, here are a few things you can tweak.
- Hosting environment
- Templates
- Magento configuration
By default, Magento’s slowness is justified. Out-of-the-box, the system is built in such a way that each featured work in isolation from the others. This prevents changes from affecting the entire platform when one feature is extended, leading to numerous files that need to be processed for each visitor at a time. This is Magento’s greatest strength that also causes a downside.
Another way to rectify your website page loading speed is to get a good host. Ensure that the host has exclusive support for Magento, can handle massive traffic, and offers great service generally. You should also test your Magento implementation before and after any optimization. Use the Magento Speed Test that provides enough insight into the state of your website. After that, you can run your website through WebsiteOptimization.com to analyze what is slowing down your website.
- Magento Documentation Is Virtually Non-Existent
As an open-source platform, Magento doesn’t have any code documentation and the sold manual is also useless. This is not a Magento development problem but rather a common issue with all open source platforms. It is difficult to have your staff run the Magento store you won’t have any documentation to train them. You will have to run webinars or offer a one on one training. You have to use complex terminologies and the development part will need a professional development company.
- The Upgrade Path of Magento Isn’t That Good
To enhance Magento’s performance they usually update their website regularly. This sounds like a good gesture but it often breeds new technical issues. It’s quite hectic moving from one version of Magento to another and this problem won’t end any time soon. You may find a few things broken down after an upgrade which is a common occurrence especially if the development process didn’t adhere to Magento development best practices. Therefore, you need to follow Magento’s development best practices when building your store since there are no other ways to counter these upgrades hangovers. It’s also advisable to ensure that the upgrades take place in a different development environment with a Magento developer insight.
- Theming and Development Are Very Complex and Expensive
When you want to launch an online store, it is wise to check out several e-commerce platforms, comparing what they offer to see which one has the best solution for your store. Reason being that Magento development is time-consuming when using themes like OSCommerce, ZenCart, or CRE Loaded. Magento has problems when it comes to its theming system. Fortunately, this will be short-lived since Magento is a modern platform with advanced running standards. To counter this issue you need to have a credible and trustworthy tech partner by your side for the implementation and customization of your eCommerce store. Magento experts know exactly how to tackle different issues while maintaining Magento’s best development practices.
- Extension Conflicts Can Hurt Businesses
The previous versions of Magento experienced conflicts of extensions but they overcame that problem with Magento 2. The problem wasn’t eliminated, and there are still extension conflicts. The structural built of Magento 2 minimizes this problem by making it hard for modules to conflict with one another. Some of the enhancements made by Magento 2 that eliminate this issue include change of class architecture from the ground up. This resulted in a smaller more targeted class that doesn’t overlap easily with other class extensions. There are also new plugins available for reducing extension conflicts. One of them is the Dependency Injection System that allows extension developers to make small changes, instead of system-wide. This minimizes the risk of conflicts. When they happen, results can be devastating to your store and wrong information about maybe shipping rates or product prices. The following solutions can help developers tackle the problem:
- Use the module configuration in Magento
- Remove code in the config.xml module
- Remove the bad code in the conflict file
The best way to deal with these issues is to employ a Magento development expert who will know the right button to push to make things better. Dealing with the problem yourself may lead to greater problems.
Final Thoughts
Magento e-commerce platform offers the best solutions in building effective stores and these issues should not deter you from choosing it as an online store builder. These issues are common with most e-commerce platforms. Fortunately, there are solutions to tackle all these issues safely without damaging your store. The best way to deal with these issues is to avoid them in the first place by hiring Magento development services and experts who will adhere to Magento’s best practices. Follow these simple guidelines and most of these issues will fade away and you can enjoy running your online store.