The ten biggest weak spots of online shops

The platform specialists at Shopmacher know the code behind commerce. In their audit review, they name ten typical weak spots that hold back growth, and show how retailers can fix them.

A modern shop system is not a static construct, it is a living ecosystem. But many technical weaknesses stay invisible in day-to-day operations, until they cost revenue. In their shop audits, Shopmacher, specialists for platform architectures, keep running into ten blind spots in online shops that every online retailer should check regularly.

Many online shops are not one system, but a web of shop software, ERP, PIM, CRM, CMS, payment gateways and marketing tools. These tools were often added as needed, not according to a plan. The result: confusing interfaces, duplicate data maintenance and error-prone synchronization.

Recommendation: map and assess the entire system landscape regularly. Which tools are really needed? Where does data run through several stations unnecessarily? A strategic integration architecture creates transparency, reduces complexity, and saves a lot of effort in the long run.

When product information, editorial content and commerce functions are created in separate systems, inconsistencies creep in, from faulty filters to contradictory prices.

Recommendation: define a shared semantic data model, consolidate content ownership, and align technical and editorial structures with each other.

Many shops still contain code from their early days, with improvised workarounds, never-documented custom developments, and libraries that are no longer maintained. This legacy makes updates risky, blocks new features, and makes onboarding new developers harder.

Recommendation: make technical debt visible and reduce it systematically. That means refactoring code regularly, removing unnecessary components, and documenting critical areas. This creates a codebase that not only runs, but stays extensible.

Even strong brands underestimate how heavily campaigns, seasonal peaks or internationalization load the hosting. Missing scaling strategies then lead to slow load times, outages or high costs.

Recommendation: arrange load tests with your hosting partner, scale resources dynamically, and use monitoring solutions for early detection of bottlenecks.

Even with enough hardware, performance often lags behind expectations. In those cases the cause is not the servers, but complex rendering processes, unoptimized assets or unclear caching strategies.

Recommendation: make page-speed measurements a routine, analyze rendering cascades, and implement thoughtful caching for content and images.

Updates that go live on a whim, manual rollback processes and missing tests: many shops work operationally, but not robustly. Errors then quickly reach the customer.

Recommendation: establish automated deployment processes (CI/CD) with a rollback function, complemented by staging environments for risk-free testing.

Does the checkout really work reliably? Are all payment methods displayed correctly? Without sufficient test coverage, these questions stay unanswered, until support gets in touch.

Recommendation: establish test strategies for all business-critical areas, from automated regression tests to regular exploratory checks by the team.

Many shops rely on occasional penetration tests or framework defaults. But attackers keep evolving, and protection mechanisms have to keep up.

Recommendation: anchor security as a continuous process. Review and secure authentication, role models, API access and input validation regularly.

Even though it is legally required, digital accessibility leads a niche existence in many companies. Yet it does not affect only a fringe group, it affects millions of potential users.

Recommendation: consider accessibility from the design process onward, check it with WCAG checklists or browser tools, and ideally evaluate it with the people it affects.

Online retail is getting more complex, technically and in terms of regulation. Focusing only on the frontend means overlooking central risk factors and potential. "Many shops work in day-to-day business, but not under the hood", says Shopmacher CEO André Roitzsch. "Anyone who wants lasting success has to lead technology just as strategically as brand, assortment or pricing."

Shopmacher has developed its proven Health Check into a comprehensive shop audit together with TÜV Trust IT, a subsidiary of TÜV Austria. The assessment model covers more than 60 technical review dimensions across backend, frontend and security. In security in particular, the audit sends a clear signal: the checks here are carried out directly by TÜV auditors.

This gives companies not just a neutral status report, but solid recommendations for technical further development, independent of the shop system in use.

"A technical audit is not know-it-all finger-wagging", Roitzsch emphasizes. "It is an opportunity to regain clarity on the basis of standards developed together with TÜV, and to work specifically on the shop's future viability."