Why eCommerce Website Testing Is Crucial For Every Business?

Did you read the report saying that by the end of 2021, the number of online buyers is all set to reach a mark of  2.14 billion, this clearly vouches for the success of eCommerce websites that have exceptionally grown in the past few years. And due to this popularity, eCommerce website testing has also changed its game and today it is way more sophisticated to meet the growing demands and very well correspond to emerging changes in the market.

eCommerce Testing is a procedure useful for evaluating and assessing eCommerce websites and apps to ensure they are functioning accurately and as desired without any performance or security glitches. With eCommerce website testing it is possible to consider and effectively target various designs, functionalities, web pages, and website features that are more prone to several risks associated with website performance.

What Is eCommerce Testing?

The process of testing an eCommerce website or app or any online shopping platform is defined as eCommerce testing. This process is useful to avoid various errors that might occur during the software development process and it adds value to the product ensuring it aptly meets all the client’s requirements.

As an eCommerce website/app is being developed, the most crucial is its design which has to be user-friendly after eCommerce is to cater to the user and everything is basically about them here and if they find the website complicated to handle, then they’d refrain from using it and this results in low conversion rate. And then, to ensure that all the features offered by the website are performing well to the T, there has to be proper website testing that helps in getting rid of any bugs or defects occurring during the use. It is quite necessary to ensure this so the users enjoy a smooth, enjoyable experience with the eCommerce website.

Now eCommerce testing needs sound knowledge of web-based and mobile app testing. The testing is constantly performed on several platforms, several browsers, and in several combinations, so to ensure that it is working very well on all kinds of devices and it is compatible with each and every browser.

Why eCommerce Website Testing Is Crucial?

The main purpose of an eCommerce website is to sell products and it is useful for increasing the conversion rate. Hence it has to be secure & user-friendly.

They are fundamental in the success of businesses these days as today technology has evolved so much that everything is available at the fingertips. And this is why these eCommerce websites have a crucial role to play as these are today’s shopping stores and they are pivotal in the success of all businesses. People love to use these online stores so much as they provide faster & better delivery and are growing at a very fast pace with being the need of future.

Also, a lot of investment is made in making these websites and no one wants their resources, time and efforts to be wasted. And to ensure that, there is ‘extensive testing’. At times it happens that an eCommerce website crashes, causing a lot of damage to users and also the organization, thus it has to be continuously tested.

How eCommerce Website Testing Can Help Your Business?

Today eCommerce is a vital part of any business and to maintain a good eCommerce website, a lot of things need to be taken care of and some crucial aspects where eCommerce Website Testing can immensely help are:

• It ensures the promptness of the transactions: eCommerce Website Testing ensures that every single page on the website is thoroughly tested and is validated for completing all eCommerce transactions. This also helps in knowing whether the website is ready to be used by the customer or not.
• It validates various factors: eCommerce Website Testing also allows to check the website/app in the aspect of usability, functionality, performance, compatibility, and security. These are significant factors for any website.
• Enhances usability: It is crucial for an eCommerce website to have increased usability and also tackle the risk factors associated with it, and these can be attained through the Testing process.
• Ensures good buying experience: Every website desire to offer a smooth experience to their customers without any glitches and errors on the website and through Testing it is possible to offer an improved user experience to them.
• Reduces risk of changes: eCommerce industry is prone to changes and these changes are quite welcomed as they are necessary to make the entire experience faster and smoother for the website users. And by conducting ‘regression testing’ it is easier to ensure that the integration of new changes does not affect the performance of a website and causes no unwanted errors.
• Evaluates functionality & compatibility against load: To ensure the customer requirements are being meet perfectly, every business requires ensuring that all the functions offered on their eCommerce website are properly working at different amount of load conditions. The organizations should also ensure that their website successfully supporting various browsers and platforms. Through Testing all these aspects can be taken care of and it also ensures compatibility and good website performance during heavy loads.

Other than these, eCommerce Website Testing also ensures that all website pages are thoroughly tested and that the transactions are fully secure and validated. It ensures that there is no compromise on any crucial factors, like user experience, customer data security, loading time, and mobile responsiveness. Website Testing also prevents your website/app from being harmed by cyber hackers and it ensures defect-free & user-friendly apps.

Different Types Of eCommerce Websites & Applications

Well, depending on buyers and sellers, eCommerce websites can be put into 5 different categories:

1. Business-To-Business (B2B) Model

In this model, one business helps another business using an online platform, for instance, we have Amazon Business, 3DXTech, Alibaba.com.

2. Business-To-Customer (B2C) Model

In this model, businesses help direct customers through an online store from where people can purchase goods. For instance, there are Uber, Pandora, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

3. Customer-to-Business (C2B) Model

In this model, an individual directly sells his products to big firms, for instance, we have writers, freelancers, artists, web designers, and other service providers.

4. Customer-to Customer Model

In this model, an individual sells his products directly to customers, so here everything that is required to be done needs to be done and managed by the person running the business, such as shipping, website maintenance, product listing, etc.

5. Consumer-to-Administration (C2A) Model

In this model, the business transactions take place between an individual and the public administration. For instance, an online platform to book seats in a movie theatre.

What Risks Can Be Prevented By Performing eCommerce Website Testing?

Conducting eCommerce Website Testing not just prevents unsatisfied customers, losing revenues, spoiling brand reputation, but it is also useful in uncovering and avoiding several other risks, such as:

1. Poor Analytics

Through the website, analytics businesses gain important insights regarding website traffic, average order value, sales conversion rate, revenue by traffic source, percentage of returning customers, a lot more. However poor analytics and testing cause businesses to lose their chance of gaining the advantage of a reliable basis to assess overall business strategy.

2. Poor Cart Functionality

Often it happens that customers can find goods they were searching for but can’t place the order due to an issue with the shopping cart function, where they might face issues in adding/removing options or in applying discount coupons. This again causes a lot of disappointment for the customers.

3. Slow Website Loading Speed or Weak Search Functionality

Most customers like browsing through the items on offer before they make the final purchase. However, slow loading speed or weak search functionality causes a delay in this process and this can lead to a lot of disappointment and certainly result in a low conversion.

4. Unavailability of Online Store

This is a common problem faced by the service providers, however, a high-quality Website Testing solution can prevent this issue, mainly for high loads during peak times, such as holiday sales.

Some Important eCommerce Website Testing Cases

So, the Test cases are mainly the scripted/non-scripted scenarios created for checking various functionalities of an eCommerce website/application. And here we have provided a comprehensive checklist and important test cases that should be the focus of an eCommerce Website Testing team.

1. General Test Cases

It is vital that the general Test cases for the eCommerce websites are thoughtfully composed in a detailed manner. Here immense attention needs to be paid to even the smallest aspects such as the homepage’s interaction quality, how smooth is the navigation across product categories, or check whether the product picture enlarges upon clicks, and do a lot more. Various general tests that are required to be executed on the website consists of:

• Whether the website links are redirected to correct category/product pages
• Whether there is clear visibility of the product, price, category name, product description, and company logo
• Whether all category pages have a relevant product that is particularly listed for the category
• Whether the count of the total number of products listed on category pages is correct.

2. Homepage Test Case

In the case of eCommerce websites, the homepage goes much beyond the simple design features. The homepage is usually seen as a clickable image/slideshow with auto-scroll that redirects your website visitors to specific pages. It is a robust tool for marketing purposes and acts as profile space of the eCommerce website and this is why Testing is extremely crucial at this stage. In the case of the homepage, the specific things that a QA team needs to focus on are:

• Whether the page auto-scrolls and check at what interval the images will be refreshed?
• Whether it scroll to the next one when the customer hovers over the homepage?
• As the customers click on it, does it take them to the right page or the right product deal?
• Whether the loading speed is acceptable for you?
• Whether the visitors are able to effortlessly view the rest of the content, like social media links in sire footer, banners, newsletters, etc.
• Whether the homepage is appearing in the same manner in various browsers and different screen resolutions.

3. Search Test Case

This is the most used option in eCommerce websites. However, even with an intuitive and extensive category design, at times it gets difficult for the customers to find products they are searching for. This is why testing the search feature is crucial and it makes it easier for the customers to quickly locate products without any hassle. Things that need to be tested in search functionality are:

• Whether the search is available based on the product name, brand name, etc.?
• Whether different sort options are available on the basis of brand, price, ratings/reviews, and more?
• Check the ideal number of results to display per page?
• In the case of multiple-page results, whether the options are available to navigate between them.

It is crucial to note that your customer can look for the product right on the homepage or from any interior page, hence ensuring the website search is accordingly adapted.

4. Recommended Products Test Case

This essential part often gets neglected in terms of eCommerce Testing. Once the client has made the purchase, there is a follow-up session where the customers are shown recommended items that can be purchased further by them. This is a crucial page that needs to be tested well as it is pivotal in winning customer loyalty in long run. Here you need to check:

• Whether the recommended products offered to the customers are of any interest?
• Whether the recommendations are shown on the page as soon as the customer confirms the order they made?

5. Payments Test Case

Often customers leave the eCommerce website midway without making any purchase when they fail to make transactions or when there are unsuccessful transactions. And this way one loses a lot of customers and due to this very reason payments are a crucial test case to run a successful eCommerce website. A few important things that need to be tested on the payments page are:

• Are various payment options from start to finish are working well?
• Are customers able to checkout as guests for making payments or is registration required before checkout?
• When there are returning customers, does the page prompts them to sign-in?
• Conduct security tests for the storage of customer’s credit card information or any other financial information. It is vital to take all the necessary steps to ensure the user’s financial information is very secure.
• After the payment has been made, what is the return page defined?
• Whether the customers receive an order confirmation as a Text message/email along with an order number as soon as they complete the transaction.

6. Shopping Cart Page / Checkout Flow Test Case

For an eCommerce website, a Shopping cart is a crucial aspect, and hence thorough checkout flow testing must be done. This way, the customers can easily select & store many items in the shopping cart and purchase them at once. Here one needs to test:

• Whether all the items and their total amount are displayed in the shopping cart?
• Do the options work to add items to the cart and continue with the shopping?
• Calculate and show applicable taxes as per the location
• Is the option to add more items to the cart working with accurate total reflection?
• Is the option to remove items from the cart working?
• Does it accurately calculate the shipping costs with various shipping options?
• Is the option to apply the coupons working well?
• Check that the user can choose the desired attribute of the product, like color, size, etc., on the product page.
• Check that the users can add the products to their wishlist.
• Check that the user can purchase the products added to the cart after signing in to the app.
• Check that the user can’t add more than the available inventory of the product
• Check that the limitation to the number of products the user can buy is performing correctly by showcasing an error message and restricting the user from purchasing beyond the limit.
• Check that the product delivery for the places where shipping is unavailable can be declined.
• Check that the other pre-paid payment modes are working as expected.
• Check that the product return option is working fine.

7. Product Detail Page Test Case

Testing a product page is a very important aspect of an eCommerce website. Testing ensures that the products displayed on the website are working correctly. On the product page, one finds important information, such as pricing, product image, product description, product specification and it is vital to make sure that all this information is accurately displayed every time a customer login to the app. Here it is important to test:

• Whether is Product Price is displayed?
• Whether the Image/Images appear correctly?
• Are there specifications (options like color, size, or variations) displayed?
• Can users easily access review & check-out options?
• Is the Shipping information displayed?
• Does the website display delivery options?
• Does the website mention in-stock/out-of-stock details?

8. Post-Order Page Test Case

When an order is placed on the eCommerce website, there are several actions that can be done in relation to the purchase. And this makes it important to test the post-purchase functionality. A few important test cases on this page include:

• Check if the customer can cancel the order or alter the order quantity
• Check if the customer can review recent purchase orders and previous orders.
• Check if the customer can change the billing or shipping information or other profile info.

9. User(Buyer) Registration/Login – Test cases

• Check whether all the identified fields are added to the registration page/login page.
• Verify if better UI dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, and more fields are present wherever possible other than text boxes. 
• Check that after entering all the required fields and clicking the reset/cancel button, the submit request cancels and reset all the fields.
• Verify that leaving the mandatory fields empty and clicking the submit button will result in a validation error. 
• Validate the textboxes’ upper limit.
• Check validation on the numeric fields by filling in special characters and alphabets.
• Check that entering blank spaces on mandatory fields results in a validation error.
• Check that the mandatory/required fields are marked with “*.”
• Check if the page displays both reset/ submit and cancel buttons at the end. 
• Verify that on entering all the required fields, and clicking the submit button, submit data to the server. 
• Check that whenever it’s possible, validation needs to take place at the client-side.
• Check that leaving the optional fields empty and clicking the submit button will send data to the server with no validation error. 
• Check validations on the email, and date fields should be allowed. 
• Verify that the leading and trailing spaces are trimmed.
• Check that post making a request to the server and then again sending the same request with the same unique key will result in a server-side validation error.

10. Seller – Product Development Test cases

• Verify that the product development panel is working as expected for single and even for multiple product creation.
• Check that the maximum product development limit for the seller is also performing fine, restricting the seller to develop more than the desired number of products. 
• Check that duplicate product development is barred through the panel. 
• Check that the products that sellers develop become visible on the site after a certain time.
• Check that authenticated sellers attain access to product development panels set for the authorized categories.
• Check panel for verifying mandatory fields. 
• Check that the seller can update the price and details of existing products.
• Check that the updates seller made become visible on the site after a certain time. 

Conclusion

In the case of an eCommerce business, it is vital to conduct quick & effective website testing from time to time to ensure that the website is offering an exceptional customer experience that helps the businesses make huge revenues.