Magento Store Owners: Top 13 Challenges

Magento is the people’s favorite choice when it comes to creating an E-commerce website. Starting an E-commerce website with Magento is not a complication because it has simple installation process as well as global configuration. More and more business owners, merchants, and retailers are getting attracted towards Magento to develop a highly-interactive online store, because of its large collection of themes, extensions, as well as many built-in eCommerce functionalities. Things may get tough for advanced configuration.

You may face several problems when you start operating your Magento E-commerce site, such as website crashes, 404 Not Found error, extension conflicts, compatibility issues, etc. All these challenges may hamper your business as well as create unnecessary chaos for you. 13 typical challenges faced by Magento store Owners are explained here (with their solutions). Let’s skim through the challenges now.

Magento: Configuring  with a new domain

Beginners generally face issues while configuring their Magento web store with a new domain. But it is possible to solve this problem using simple ways.

Solution:

A. Edit Magento store database

• Start navigating from your cPanel to phpMyAdmin. Choose the Magento database, identify the table core_config_data, and click. After this, edit two fields of the table by clicking on the Browse tab: web/unsecured/base_url
• To tweak your old domain name with the new one, click on the pen icon and then click on the Go button to save the changes. 

B. Delete Magento Cache

• Many issues can be fixed in Magento by clearing the cache. 
• For that, delete the cache folder in Magento root directory /var/cache. Visit the Magento admin System > Cache Management and remove the cache.

Products not being Visible on the Store

This is one of the most common challenges faced by the sellers which has relation to certain products not being displayed in the online store. This problem exists especially for the product-heavy sites where products disappear in their designated categories but are displayed when the exact URL is entered. 

Solution:

• Check, if the products are in stock or not, restock them as early as possible. 
• Make sure to consider the setting of the inventory configuration to display the out of stock products.
• Products should be enabled and visible, along with indexes and caches not being outdated.
• List the products in relevant categories, while products are being uploaded manually.
• Associated products must be added in the stock as soon as possible.

Problems in Admin Panel Login After Installation

Magento sends a message regarding the completion of its installation process as you provide the correct admin username and password when you install Magento. After installation, entering an invalid username or password leads to problems with admin panel login of the store as it shows the message of “Invalid Username or Password”. 

If you still can’t log in after multiple tries, then this may be because you are not able to store cookies. The point to remember is that the localhost and “127.0.0.1” are not actual domains. These are not real domains, and mostly all the browsers allow only real domains to collect the cookies. This is the reason for failed login attempts to the admin panel without providing any clue.

Solution:

• Ensure to use correct admin username and password.
• The Magento pp/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract/Varien.php file needs to be edited. 
• Save the changes and try to login the admin panel once again. 
• Resetting Magento admin password, for that go to cPanel > phpMyAdmin>Select your Magento database> find the admin_user table.
• Now change the old password to a new one and add the password in MD5 function.

503 Error: Service Temporarily Unavailable

This error occurs when you install Magento extensions. There may be two possible reasons for this. 

A. Problem with the server of the site:

Solution:

• Call the hosting company and get the issue fixed.

B. E-commerce store may be put in maintenance mode:

Solution:

• Access the Magento root installation and by using the FTP manager or File Manager, delete the maintenance. flag document. 
• Then no maintenance mode message will be displayed.
• Delete cache and sessions, if the problem persists.  

Code behaves inappropriately despite using no third party extensions on the e-store

Sometimes, it may be noticed that the Magento code behaves strangely, even if there is no third-party extension used on the e-commerce store.

Solution:

• Have a look at the Magento system modifications and check for the changes in the core file code.  
• Compare the Magento files and similar files of the default Magento, using a standard Unix diff command. 
• If any difference between them is discovered, then this problem can be solved.

Slow Speed of E-store

This is another factor that affects the working of Magento E-stores. Most Magento users overlook this factor and keep on losing their potential customers as well as conversion rates. This platform is designed for extensibility and most of its features are isolated for facilitating future improvements. What compromises the speed of the website is a massive number of files. Optimize the speed for better performance and to generate quality leads.

Solution:

• Enable its Compilation function. It will also enhance the performance by 25% to 50% on page loads.
• To enable Compilation function, go to admin area > System >Tools > Compilation > click on Run Compilation Process.
• Seek professional Magento support services to resolve speed-related issues.
• Take all possible steps i.e. installing cache, updating the version, discarding the redundant extensions, and much more. 
• Choose the right hosting partner.

Installed extension not displayed on the frontend

If a custom Magento theme is used, the problem of getting the extensions displayed on the front-end is faced. This may be a case of file location. Extension developers don’t know which theme you are using, for this reason, they install it in default/default/ or base/default.

Solution:

• Ensure the right locations files of the extension’s .phtml, .css, and .xml.
• Relocate the files to the corresponding location in the theme, if they are in the base and default directories.
• After this, delete the cache as well as check for the extension’s output on the frontend.

Irritating Magento admin notifications

As your E-store grows and your E-commerce business expands, numerous Magento notifications irritate you and can also disturb your regular eCommerce activities.

Solution:

• To fix this, disable notifications by going Backend – Configuration – Advanced – Advanced and disable Mage_AdminNotification.

Upgrade Challenges

There are frequent Magento updates that lack proper planning as well as documentation which makes this upgrading a hassle for merchants. Many merchants encounter performance issues and breakdowns while updating to the latest versions. 

Solution:

• Have a well-chalked out strategy right from the beginning. This is the best approach to resolving Magento upgrade-related challenges.
• Use best practices to develop the site. 
• The upgrade should always be handled by experts.

Rapid logging out from Magento

Since Magento cookie has a limited lifetime, this problem is faced. Cookie life needs to be extended. For this, go through Backend – Configuration – Web – Session Cookie Management – Cookie Lifetime.

Magento emails termed as spam

Email marketing as an effective tool used by SEO professionals to communicate with their customers as well as increase their conversion rate. As you see your business emails getting labeled as SPAM in the subscriber’s email, you may lose your cool. This also results in promotional efforts not yielding results. On the Internet, 90% of all emails available are spam. But through email marketing, marketers want to increase their sales at any cost. 

To stop the incoming of unnecessary emails and receive only meaningful content, people as well as business organizations use filters or buy company services. This also deals with Email filtration. So check if your emails are legitimate or not.

Solution:

• Avoid sending unnecessary newsletters to the subscribers and send personalized emails only.
• The content should be simple, straightforward and precise.
• Make sure to strictly follow CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. It doesn’t let your emails being termed as spam.
• Activate Email Authentication to stops the spam email generation from your email address.
• Also, consider third-party Email services.

Activating single coupon for several shopping carts

One Coupon cannot be activated for several shopping carts because Magento doesn’t allow to complete this action by default. 

Solution:

It can easily be changed by using the following database:

DROP INDEX `UNQ_SALESRULE_COUPON_CODE` ON `salesrule_coupon`  

Open /app/code/core/Mage/SalesRule/Model/Resource/Coupon.php, locate 43-46 as well as write them as mentioned below:

/*$this->addUniqueField(array( 

‘field’ => ‘code’,

‘title’ => Mage::helper(‘salesrule’)->__(‘Coupon with the same code’)

)); */  

Google doesn’t show site pages in search results

E-commerce is a volatile field with the emergence of new trends time-to-time. E-store not being shown in the Google search results is a matter of concern, especially for the sellers. Several reasons for the E-commerce site not performing can be content being duplicate, slow loading speed, lack of blogging, weak social media presence, Email marketing etc. Due to these reasons, the site may not be visible to the potential customers, therefore, the seller will not be able to sell their products ultimately leading to loss of reputation.

Solution:

The most relevant pages are preferred by Google for its users. Following these solutions will help your site being in Google’s top 10.

• The e-commerce site should be simple, light, faster as well as updated, reflecting the latest trend in the business.
• The primary solution should be the Implementation of the best SEO practices to help Google find the web pages from your site. 
• No mediocre content should be used. The site/blog/social media pages should be updated regularly with meaningful and useful content. This will attract visitors as well as drive sales. 

Endnote

As online merchants, as well as retailers, constantly face many problems as they set up an E-store. That’s the reason why running a Magento E-commerce website is a hard nut to crack. Some stores flourish on the internet while others end up being unnoticeable organizations in the crowd of numerous E-commerce websites. Above-mentioned challenges come in the way of each and every Magento site owner. Solving them are essential for running Magento E-stores easily as well as smoothly. To overcome these hurdles and go a long way, you can avail the services of experts. Connect with us for a smooth as well as the seamless running of your E-business.