A working online shop whose back-end systems also needed putting in order.

Customers can browse products, add them to the basket and place orders, and the shop seems to have every feature it needs. Behind the scenes, though, there can be technical, privacy and SEO issues that aren’t noticeable in day-to-day use. That’s exactly what the review of HERZ Hungária’s WordPress and WooCommerce shop uncovered.

The goal wasn’t to build a new website. The existing system had to be reviewed, its gaps identified, and the necessary settings put in place so that they provide a solid long-term foundation for the company’s online operations.

Scope: website audit, privacy and cookie consent settings, Google Consent Mode v2, GA4, Google Tag Manager, Search Console, SEO and technical performance improvements.

Main goal: to sort out the shop’s technical and measurement foundations, support privacy-compliant operation and give search engines a clearer site structure.

HERZ Hungária already had a working website and WooCommerce system. So rather than building from scratch, the job was to work inside an existing system.

That is often more complex than building a new site: every change has to take into account the plugins already in use, earlier settings and the shop’s uninterrupted operation.

The first step was therefore a detailed audit. The aim was not only to fix visible errors, but to uncover the hidden gaps that could cause problems later.

A key principle of the project was that the different improvements shouldn’t be made independently of each other.

Cookie consent directly affects analytics. Tracking scripts can affect performance. And technical SEO is closely tied to site structure and loading speed.

So the tasks had to be planned in an order that ensured each setting also worked properly with the others.

The goal wasn’t simply to display a cookie banner. Consent management had to support visitors’ choices at a technical level too.

This meant reviewing cookies and related services by function, and distinguishing the technologies essential to running the site from analytics and marketing tools. Technologies that require consent must behave according to the visitor’s choice.

Google Consent Mode v2

Google Consent Mode v2 lets Google’s measurement and advertising technologies receive signals that match the consent state, including the states for analytics and advertising storage.

The key points are the default consent state, updating it after the user’s choice, and verifying that the right tags behave correctly.

Consent Mode does not replace GDPR-compliant consent management, nor does it mean automatic legal compliance. Technical and privacy requirements have to be considered together.

Aligning privacy documents with how the site actually works

The review also covered the privacy policy and the cookie policy. The processing described in these documents must match the services actually used on the site. A generic document isn’t enough if it doesn’t reflect how the business really operates.

For a WooCommerce shop, measuring page views alone isn’t enough. To understand visitor behaviour, the key steps of the purchase journey must be tracked too.

GA4 shows where users come from, which products they’re interested in, and at which points of the purchase journey they drop off more often. That’s valuable input for planning future campaigns and shop improvements.

These e-commerce events were the focus of the project:

Together, these events give a far more detailed picture of how the shop performs than simple traffic statistics.

Google Tag Manager: central tag management

With Google Tag Manager, tracking tags can be managed more consistently, and future tracking and marketing integrations are easier to verify and maintain.

The setup had to account for correct event parameters, avoiding duplicate tracking and working together with consent management. The goal wasn’t to collect as much data as possible, but to make the data interpretable and useful for the business.

The project also included checking the Search Console setup and submitting the sitemap. Search Console shows, among other things:

• Which search queries the site appears for.
• Which pages receive organic clicks.
• What indexing problems Google reports.
• How the site performs in impressions and clicks.
• Which technical errors may need further investigation.

Submitting a sitemap helps search engines discover relevant URLs, but doesn’t guarantee they’ll be indexed. Search Console data also provides an important starting point for future SEO work.

SEO isn’t a single setting. In an online shop, product pages, category pages, internal navigation, technical foundations and content together determine how easily search engines can understand the site.

Titles and meta descriptions

The title is one of the most important HTML elements signalling a page’s topic, and the meta description gives a short summary. The goal was for these not just to exist technically, but to accurately reflect each page’s content.

Heading structure

H1, H2 and H3 headings must follow a logical hierarchy while making it clear to users what each section contains.

Product pages

For a shop selling technical products, accurate, clear and well-structured product information is especially important. The aim was product pages that don’t just display catalogue data, but help visitors find their way.

Internal linking and URLs

Relationships between products and categories need to be logical. The review also covered canonical URLs and broken or removed links.

Structured data (Schema.org)

Structured data describing product name, price and availability helps Google understand product pages and, under certain conditions, can enable rich results. That alone, however, is not guaranteed.

A slow online shop not only hurts the user experience, it can also make purchasing harder.

Images

Correct sizing, modern image formats and sensible lazy loading, without slowing down the key content at the top of the screen.

Caching

Caching reduces repeated resource use, but in WooCommerce the basket, checkout and user session pages must be handled separately so caching never shows incorrect or another user’s data.

Plugins and scripts

Every installed plugin needs a specific job. The aim wasn’t simply fewer plugins, but less unnecessary load, fewer overlapping functions and lower compatibility risks.

Core Web Vitals

LCP measures how fast the largest visible element loads, INP how responsive the page is to interactions, and CLS unexpected layout shifts. Watching a PageSpeed score isn’t enough: the real goal is a faster, more stable and more comfortable experience.

The project’s results can be assessed from two angles. First, the technical delivery: which systems were built, which errors were fixed, and which tasks could be closed and verified. Second, business impact: did speed, organic traffic, the purchase journey or online sales change?

Numerical results require comparing the state before and after optimisation. These are the metrics we track:

The impact of SEO is best assessed over a longer period, as technical changes don’t necessarily bring an immediate increase in organic traffic. I’ll publish the exact before-and-after results here as soon as the data is available.

• More appropriate and verifiable consent management.
• The key events of the purchase journey can be analysed in detail.
• The site is easier for search engines to understand, in both content and technical terms.
• The conditions for faster, more stable operation.

Together, these lay the foundation for a shop that isn’t just usable for customers, but also better supports the company’s marketing and business decisions.

Often the problems aren’t in the design, but in the back-end systems. Incomplete analytics, faulty consent management or a broken SEO structure aren’t visible at first glance, yet they affect how the site works, how effective marketing is and what future development is possible.

That’s why, for an existing shop, it’s often best to start with a detailed technical audit. A good audit shows what really needs fixing, what’s most urgent, and which improvements bring business value.

The goal isn’t to build a new system at all costs, but to get the most out of the existing one, without unjustified development or unnecessary costs.