Instead of traditional retail, online stores are much more preferable because of their global outreach and increasing brand recognition. This is all through the power of the internet, helping people thrive on both B2B and B2C fronts.
All online stores are developed by using complex technology integrations that are highly volatile. This necessitates expert-vetted consultancies and using only the best strategies for your e-commerce store design. This is where testing kicks in. It helps developers optimize your application according to business KPIs. Not to forget, pinpointing potential pitfalls that can hurt business succession.
Let’s dissect the testing concept a bit further and understand how it acts as a gateway for a seamless user experience.
What is E-commerce Testing?
Just like normal software, e-commerce testing is directed towards specific web applications to make sure they conform to client requirements. This testing involves identifying potential pitfalls within your system through meticulously designed test cases. The results from these cases enable developers to mitigate bugs and errors. While there are different types of testing methodologies, finding the right fit depends on the client’s requirements.
So what are the benefits of using e-commerce testing? Here’s a quick sneak peek:
- Leverage reliable technologies and a functional back-end system.
- Ensure your website is built with up-to-date technologies.
- Improvements in website assurance and scalability
- Reach ideal performance along with maximum utilization by the end-user
- Leave a lasting impact on end-users with an error-free website.
In retrospect, websites today face the challenge of maintaining their performance and experience at the same time. Faulty or incapable technology integrations can make your website crippled in front of competitors. E-commerce testing acts as an exclusive solution for all such websites that justify shopping cart features. Testers create tailored test cases, test plans, and recommendations to make sure your web app remains jack and nimble. If done correctly, testing can improve your visitor experience, your website’s functional performance, and build credibility.
1. Functional Testing
Consider a beautiful and well-populated website where users can select any type of item, but eventually, fail to check out or are incapable of applying promo codes. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? This is imaginably one of the many functional faux-pas related to such websites and can damage your audience's conversion rates. Put simply, in this type of testing, a tester’s main goal is to ensure the quality of features and that they perform according to requirements. Some of the common features tested in this type are:
- User authentication
- Website search and filters
- The Shop Cart function
- Promotional codes and personalized deals
- Order tracking and tracking
- Check out the user
If there’s one thing that kills your website’s buzz, it's unplanned downtime. In fact, this type of downtime has become a top research priority for 72% of companies in the e-commerce space. Research by Kissmetrics reveals that 73% of internet users have reported encountering slow and/or unresponsive websites, making them turn away. Performance testing helps you promise a scalable, speedy, and stable experience for your users. This is important because, during peak traffic events such as holidays and festivals, website traffic tends to shoot up. This can cause several types of dangerous instances because of an increase in user load. Testers evaluate your website’s performance by increasing user load and identifying potential pitfalls. Some other aspects of metrics involved in performance testing include:
- Load Testing
- Stress Testing
- Volume Testing
- Spike and Scalability Testing
Needless to say, with growing internet usage, the threats from hackers are also increasing in parallel. Hackers are generally interested in exploiting vulnerabilities and loopholes to extract personal user-based information. Cultured hackers have even gone to the lengths of creating in-app bots that can mimic user behavior and commit fraud throughout their journey. These frauds are mostly related to financial institutions and hackers trying to obtain a user’s credit card information. Security testing is a viable option to invest in because it helps you keep both business and users safe. Some common measures involved in security testing include:
- Penetration Testing
- Vulnerability Testing
- Ethical Hacking
- End-To-End Security Scanning
- Risk Assessments and Audits
Risks or Threats Related to E-commerce Testing
E-commerce testing is a challenging endeavor. E-commerce websites are quite sophisticated. It is hard to simulate every potential user behavior since testers cannot forecast the character of the consumers. With the rapid evolution of technology, testers are finding it difficult to govern tools or methodologies for e-commerce tests.
1. Hasty Technology Changes
We live in a rapidly changing world, keeping both developers and testers on their toes. Technology changes are pretty common. New software can bring in added functionalities to enhance the user experience. However, with every new technology, testers have to curate test environments that can help them comprehensively evaluate the application. With daily breakthroughs around the corner, this can get quite overwhelming.
2. Varying User Behaviour
Every person visiting your website or store is different. From a novice user to an experienced buyer, activities are different. This hints at the need for testers to simulate every user type so that they can identify pitfalls and bugs. The process is time-consuming and, not to mention, complex.
3. Maintaining multiple integrations
Several owners prefer using ready-to-use website templates from Magneto or Shopify, including CMS, to launch their online stores. These types of stores have different types of third-party integrations for basic functions such as calculating shipping charges, checking out processes, and entering promotion codes. Such situations require the tester to create a perfect harmony between all of these integrations and make sure they work to achieve business KPIs.
Conclusion
Given the online retail space, it is paramount your website provides a seamless, unrivaled, and friendly user experience. E-commerce testing helps you evaluate every component of your website to mitigate bugs and make sure it’s optimized for your target audience. This guide helps acclimatize with e-commerce testing, its types, benefits, and cons.
At Conovo Technologies, we believe a website shouldn’t just exist, it should thrive. We make sure this happens by testing the responsiveness, security, and overall performance of your website with in-depth test cases and scenarios. Our experienced testers can help you with both manual and automation testing solutions.