E-commerce websites are key to any business's success, offering flexibility and convenience for online shopping. Post-Covid, it has become common for people to shop online frequently. E-commerce businesses thrive on these online customers, making it essential to engage users and convert their interest into sales. A thorough testing and quality check of the website is crucial.
An attractive and interactive e-commerce website is key to any business interested in trying online shopping. Since they are not visiting the store but a webpage, it is important for businesses to engage users and get conversion throughout their visit and stay on a website. Better website, better business. Therefore, a thorough testing and quality check is essential.
What sort of testing can a brand do for their ecommerce website?
E-commerce website includes testing of a web application in desktop, mobile and tablet devices. Since the content of these sites are dynamic in nature, it requires testing of browser compatibility and screen resolution, content of website and data simulation of products, product availability, cart management, checkout and order processing, login, multifactor authentication, session management. These aspects are requiring going through:
- Exploratory testing – doing test for random scenarios.
- Functional testing – evaluating the key functions of various features.
- Integration testing – evaluating the data synch of different applications.
- Regression testing – validating the bug fixes have not broken the site
- Backend database testing – comparing and ensuring data are synched.
- UAT testing – verifying website from end-user’s perspective.
- Performance and load testing - ensuring the response load time of site page and how much user’s load a site can handle.
- Accessibility testing - ensuring testing for visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments.
- A/B testing – creating and comparing two versions of a webpage against each other to determine which one perform better.
Key Aspects of E-commerce Website Testing
Evaluating an e-commerce website or application includes checking compatibility across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. Dynamic content requires testing for browser compatibility, screen resolution, product data simulation, availability, cart management, checkout and order processing, login, multi-factor authentication, session management, and more. These aspects require exploratory testing, functional testing, integration testing, regression testing, backend database testing, UAT testing, performance and load testing, and A/B testing.
Homepage
The homepage is the gateway to the website. It offers an introduction to a business, branding showcase, product carousels, services, values, and information hub. It leaves a first impression to visitors, therefore, business needs to accommodate all a company has to offer and guide visitors to learn and navigate throughout the different sections. It guides visitors to navigate through different sections. To ensure a seamless experience, it is important to evaluate key homepage elements including the logo, header menu, main navigation menu, language switcher, user login menu, hero images and content, navigation to the correct pages or products, and the footer menu.
Source : https://www.amazon.ca/
Search Functionality
Prospective customers often use the search function when they cannot locate what they want or are unsure of their needs. A robust e-commerce search engine that returns desired results increases the likelihood of purchase completion. Testing should cover exact searches, product type searches, problem-based searches, implementations of auto-complete and auto-suggestions, and search functionality on various pages such as the search result page and product listing page.
Source : https://www.amazon.ca/
Product Details Page (PDP)
PDPs are invaluable revenue generators, providing detailed information about a product and a call-to-action (CTA) to complete a purchase. Testing should verify the product name, images, specifications, size, color, pricing, product availability, and display of similar product suggestions.
Source : https://www.amazon.ca/
Shopping Cart
The shopping cart page serves as shopping bag. It facilitates adding products or services of the user's choice. It is a critical gateway to the order process. Cart page design can significantly impact conversion rates. Testing should include item validation, quantity and price, total cart amount, promotions, shipping warnings, and validation of the order summary. Customer can shop anonymously user or authenticated user.
Source : https://www.amazon.ca/
Checkout
The checkout page is a critical step for any e-commerce website as it directly influences the customer’s final decision to complete their purchase. The checkout page collects order related information such as shipping address, shipping method and charges, payment validation, credit card details, billing address, and alternative payment options like PayPal and Apple. Testing of these key aspects are critical for offering smooth purchasing process to ensure a seamless and secure transaction.
Source : https://www.amazon.ca/
Order related pages
The order confirmation page presents to the customer after a successful purchase. This page reassures the customer that their payment was successful. Typically, it includes the order number, order summary, order details, customer details, shipping method, and delivery time and date. Key tests for this functionality include order placement, confirmation email delivery, synchronization with the ERP system, and verification of payment details.
The order history page lists all past orders and allows authenticated users to retrieve specific order details page, which includes the order summary and other order related information. This page supports order cancellation feature. Key tests include verifying the availability and functionality of the cancellation option, ensuring the successful processing of cancellations, handling payment refunds, adjusting inventory, and sending cancellation emails and notifications.
Source : https://www.amazon.ca/
Customer Account Menu
Customer account menu page let customers view information related to account and orders. Testing of below customer account menu components guarantees hassle-free account management experience and customer satisfaction:
- Profile page: profile page shows customer’s personal details, date of birth, language preferences, changing user’s name and password.
- Address: address pages let customers add and save billing and shipping address.
- Payment information: this page lets customers add and save credit card information.
- Wishlist page: wishlist pages show lists of items that customers have added during their product details page visit, from product listing page, or from the cart page. From this page customer can add item to cart and can be good opportunity to get conversion.
- Loyalty Programs: Customers need to sign up for the loyalty program that includes benefit of earning points while purchasing eligible products and redeemed points during checkout for eligible products.
Source : https://www.amazon.ca/
Major QA Challenges for E-commerce Website Testing
- ERP integration: A key challenge in e-commerce integration testing is the synchronization of data between the e-commerce platform and the ERP system. This includes syncing customer information, catalogs, products, warehouse, and inventory data. Any discrepancies, such as missing data or inconsistent data structures, can lead to delays in deliverables. To exemplify an order.
- Customer data simulation: Simulating customer data is a critical aspect of testing. Testers must plan to have robust data available in the test environment well in advance before test execution begins. It is important to identify the requirements for test data early on, during user story grooming and sprint planning.
- UI/UX design testing: The impact of UI/UX design on the user journey is significant. Testing should cover navigation, image optimization, product recommendations, personalization, error handling, and the display of effective error messages. Even though UI/UX bugs considered to be low priority, they can affect the user experience. Testing for responsive design is crucial to ensure that the website’s content displays correctly across various devices and browsers. This includes checking form fields, tooltip icons, texts, and ensuring that images and optimized mobile experiences.
- Performance and load testing: Performance and load testing play a critical role in providing a smooth user experience. For new websites, the absence of benchmark data such as requests per second, transactions per minute, and page load response times can make it challenging to evaluate performance and load test results.
- Security and confidentiality compliance: The customer trust is onat stake and therefore thorough testing of user account information, ensuring the confidentiality of data and content, and protecting payment information. It is also crucial to verify that confidential data is not accessible to unauthorized users.
- Accessibility compliance: Ensuring that the e-commerce website is accessible to customers with varying needs is a compliance necessity. The website should be assessed to confirm that it is adaptable to diverse cultural contexts and accessible to a multi-lingual audience.
In this realm of e-commerce, addressing key testing challenges ensure the seamless user experiences. Navigating the complexities of e-commerce requires expert’s solutions, and our consulting services provide just for that. We offer services that enable to plan and implement customize with ecommerce platform with ERP system. Our customer data simulation ensures the preparedness of comprehensive and realistic test data. We meticulously optimize the user journey ensuring responsive designs and prioritizing security and compliance safeguarding customer information and maintaining trust. Elevate your e-commerce platform with our tailored solution. Contact us now to transform challenges into opportunities for growth.
This article was written by Hetaxi Morker, Quality Assurance Manager at Thinkmax. With decade of experience in QA profession, Hetaxi stands at the forefront of software quality assurance. Her proficiency encompasses a broad range of testing methodologies in agile scrum and hybrid framework. Working at Thinkmax has honed her skills across Optimizely platform to website to ERP system. Shes brings wealth of experience in QA process improvement related initiatives and implementation, test management activities and performed variety of testing such as smoke, functional, integration, regression, exploratory, load and performance testing, accessibility testing etc. Her skills are supported by suites of professional certifications: CTFL, ISTQB Performance Tester, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Optimizely’s Web Experimentation. Shes approaches each project with solution-oriented mindset to ensure result-driven delivery of quality. Connect with her to elevate the quality of your upcoming project to new heights of excellence!