Online store audit

Appearance and aesthetics of the store

It is checked whether the graphic design is attractive and whether it is in line with the expectations of the target customer group. It is also evaluated whether the navigation is intuitive and whether users can easily find the information they need, register, log in or complete the purchase process. User Experience translates into later conversions.

Offer attractiveness

It assesses whether the products and services offered in the store are of interest to customers. Among other things, the competitiveness of prices, variety of assortment and possible promotions are analyzed.

Customer service

It examines how effectively and professionally the store serves customers. The response time to customer inquiries, the quality of responses and the availability of various communication channels, including contact forms and chat bots, are checked.

Content on the website

It assesses whether the content on the site is properly edited and provides customers with the information they need about products and services. It also checks whether the content is optimized for search engines (SEO).

SEO

It examines how the store appears in search results, that is, whether it is properly optimized for search engine positioning. Keywords, meta tags, link structure, etc. are analyzed.

Marketing activities

The effectiveness of ongoing marketing activities, such as online ads, email campaigns, social media presence, etc., is checked.

The condition of the company compared to the competition

The effectiveness of ongoing marketing activities, such as online ads, email campaigns, social media presence, etc., is checked.

Technical audit

A technical audit is a part of a website audit without which it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions. In this part of the audit we do not consider marketing, business strategy, etc. Here, the most important thing for us is to analyze: the technology used, the rationale for its use, scalability, data and infrastructure security, and to assess how time-consuming it will be to add new functionality to an existing service.

Technical issues related to the frontend and backend of an online store are crucial to its proper functioning. Here is a brief overview of these two aspects:

Frontend

The frontend refers to the part of the online store that users have direct contact with. The frontend includes the user interface, or what the customer sees on the store's website. A few important technical issues related to the frontend are:

• HTML/CSS: The correctness of HTML and CSS code is important for the structure and appearance of the site. It is important that the code is standards-compliant and well-optimized.

• Javascript: Code quality analysis includes checking whether the code is readable, understandable and complies with naming conventions and good programming practices. Whether the code complies with current programming standards such as ECMAScript, whether best practices such as modularity, unit testing are followed. Whether the application is resistant to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. It is also important to evaluate the possibility of extending functionality.

• Responsiveness: the website design should be responsive, that is, it should adapt to different devices and screen sizes. This allows users to comfortably use the store on different devices, such as computers, smartphones and tablets.

• Page loading speed: Page loading time is important to the user experience. Optimizing images, minimizing CSS and JavaScript files and other techniques can speed up page loading.

Backend

The backend refers to the part of the store that runs on the server side. It's where data is processed, order management, payments and other business operations take place. Some important technical issues related to the backend are:

• Hosting server: Choosing the right hosting is important for the performance and availability of the store. A well-configured server can ensure the stability and speed of the store.

• Database: An online store often uses a database to store information about products, customers, orders, etc. An efficient and well-optimized database is important for fast access to data.

• Security: Ensuring adequate security for the store is extremely important. Data encryption, protection against attacks, privilege management and regular updates are essential to protect customer data.

• Integrations: The store's backend may require integrations with various systems, such as online payments, warehouse systems, delivery services, etc. It is important that these integrations work smoothly and are well implemented.

Having both the frontend and backend of an online store working well is crucial to providing users with a positive shopping experience, as well as to effectively manage store operations.

Browser compatibility

Tests were conducted on different browsers and versions to verify that the store is properly displayed and works properly on popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. Possible differences in the store's appearance and behavior between browsers were identified, and solutions were proposed to ensure consistency and full compatibility.

Context is important in the analysis - how the inputs of new users are distributed by specific browsers. We can then recommend not only solutions but their priority.

Errors and warnings in browser code

Analyzed the store's JavaScript, CSS and HTML code to identify errors and warnings reported by browsers. The focus was on finding and fixing scripting errors, CSS compatibility issues and inconsistencies with HTML recommendations. The problems we found could signal critical issues with the site or improper work on analytics data collection. Optimizations and fixes were suggested to remove these errors and warnings.

Examples of errors found in the analyzed project:

Uncaught TypeError: $(...).carousel is not a function at (index):155:317282 (anonymous) @ (index):155

www-embed-player.js:902 GET https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/id net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT

Comprehensive frontend and functionality audit

An evaluation of the design and functionality of the online store's front-end was conducted. It was compared to industry benchmarks and checked whether the store offers payment methods that are appropriate for its country, a smooth shopping path and an attractive presentation of the value of products/services.

• Areas that could potentially discourage users from using the site and increase rejection rates were identified, e.g., non-intuitive menus that expand all the way to the footer, hard-to-find site navigation elements.

• Elements of the site were identified, the improvement of which will increase the attractiveness of the site and contribute to the increase of traffic. Changes were proposed to meet the needs and expectations of users, including improving the shopping flow, improving and unifying descriptions of brands / categories / products, unifying the appearance and placement of fixed elements of the site - buttons, navigation elements, signatures.

• The store currently does not have any highlighting (labels) of products in promotion, recommended or most purchased. It was also proposed to implement a solution that translates into increased sales - the introduction of product links - recommended products, similar products, product sets (cross- sell, up-sell, related)

Frontend performance

A front-end performance audit was conducted, using tools such as Google Lighthouse. Page load time, image optimization, resource compression, browser cache usage and aspects affecting performance were examined. Areas were identified that could be optimized to improve the speed and responsiveness of the site.

• Several critical areas were diagnosed:

• Links are not searchable

• Unused JavaScript code

• Unused CSS

• Resources blocking rendering

• Not enough contrast ratio

Performance on mobile devices

A UX study on mobile devices was conducted to evaluate the performance and responsiveness of the store on various smartphones and tablets. Identified areas where there were user-frow issues and suggested fixes to optimize the user experience on mobile devices. As a result of UX testing on mobile devices, it was found that the store had performance and responsiveness issues on various smartphones and tablets. As a result, areas were identified where the user was likely to experience problems navigating the site, finding information and completing transactions. To optimize the user experience on mobile devices, the following improvements were proposed:

1. Improved accessibility: ensuring that the site is readable and adaptable to different screen sizes, and that fonts and buttons are appropriately large and easy to touch.

2. Fast loading: reduce page loading time by minimizing redundant data and optimizing page code.

3. Simplifying navigation: optimize navigation so that users can easily move around the site and quickly find the information and products they need.

4. Improving forms: shortening and simplifying forms so that users can quickly and easily make payments and enter necessary information.

5. Testing on different devices: checking how the store works on different smartphones and tablets to make sure it is responsive and works properly on all popular mobile devices.

Acting on these fixes can improve the store's performance and responsiveness on mobile devices, which will contribute to a better user experience and increase conversion rates.

Backend performance analysis

A performance analysis of the store's back-end was conducted, focusing on server response time, database optimization.

Test results show that the backend can only handle a small number of simultaneous users. With 10 users, all transactions complete successfully, and the average response time is 5.80 seconds, with the longest transaction time of 30.14 seconds, which seems quite slow. The test with 20 concurrent users begins to show some failures (98.90% availability), and the average response time increases to 9.77 seconds. Performance tests under the load generated by 30 simultaneous users yield only 74.29% availability, so the server failed to respond to the user's request in about 1 of 4 cases. It seems that with more requests the server is overloaded and stops responding for a short time, and after a while it returns to its baseline performance.

Back-end vulnerability analysis

A back-end security analysis was conducted to identify potential vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and improper authentication and authorization management.

Security vulnerabilities were identified:

• Portscan shows that services running on the server are easily identifiable

• file transfer is only available via the ftp protocol, which, due to its lack of encryption and reliance on common usernames and passwords for authentication, is considered insecure

• Mysql server usually should not be open to remote connections

• The publicly available phpinfo() script provides information about server configuration details

• Due to misconfiguration of the web server, many locations containing private information are publicly accessible

• Due to improper sanitization, users logged into the administration panel are able to perform sql injection