Despite what drag-and-drop website builders would have you believe, creating a website takes time. But any website worth visiting needs to be planned and developed. A website must be tested for functionality even after the content has been added and it has been created. This is true if the website is well-liked and has a lot of pages that visitors may browse. While that is great for the industry as a whole, it means more competition for those of us who already work in e-commerce. Customers have a lot more options to pick from when competition is higher. Finding the best deal and the fastest delivery time in e-commerce is no longer the only criteria for a transaction.
Most users will quit a website due to poor functionality, proving that user experience matters more than you might believe. About half of your potential customers will be kept away if you take the time to test a new product page before publishing it. When you consider all the testing that must be completed before a website can be regarded as ready for launch, it might be a little perplexing. Given that it discusses the most crucial of these tests, this post aims to ease your burden a little. No matter a website's purpose, it shouldn't go live without this e-commerce website testing checklist.
What Does Ecommerce Testing Mean? Why Is It Essential?
eCommerce testing may be defined as the process of testing different eCommerce website aspects, such as design, specifications, functions, pages, and features, to guarantee they are in good shape and are not affecting the site's performance in any way. Testing, when done with care and often, can not only enhance your site visitors' entire experience but also boost conversion rates. The importance of testing and optimisation is explained in more detail below.
1. Boost User Interaction
Testing, as already mentioned, aids in verifying the cleanliness of a page element. It reveals which website component or procedure influences a user's onsite experience and enables us to address problems fast. The level of onsite engagement will increase with improved user experiences.
2. Come Up With Marketing Plans
Making effective planning for your website is made possible through testing and optimisation. You can engage more visitors and lengthen their stay by highlighting the issues with your website.
3. Minimise Hazards
Making big and significant adjustments to your website often ends in strategic shifts that are notable or even severe losses. But planned testing of these changes can help reduce the likelihood of these hazy losses.
4. Boost Conversion Prices
Your website's conversion rate is sure to rise because you're testing almost every area of it and making sure that visitors have a positive experience thanks to site optimization.
5. Greater Awareness Of Visitor Behaviour
The mapping of the wants and preferences of your website visitors and the next optimisation of your site might be challenging. But, with testing, anything is conceivable. It is one of the most effective and efficient ways to find out what your visitors enjoy.
Types Of Testing In E-Commerce
You can use a wide variety of testing techniques to check the viability of every component of your website, from the source code to the product pages. The following are some of the popular website testing techniques:
Functional testing
Usability testing
Security testing
Performance testing
Database testing
Mobile application testing
Even though each of these approaches has its own set of guidelines, using several testing approaches at once can lead to confusion and interference with test results. Thus, it is always advised to run one test at a time or to use a reliable testing tool. Due to this, you must prioritise your testing schedule based on how each test will affect the overall conversion rate of your brand. You may strike the right balance by using theories like agile testing, which is employed by teams who perform software testing.
Through mobile app testing and website testing, concentrate on significant bugs and software flaws that affect everyone.
Why Do Page Tests Before Launch?
E-commerce website building can take a lot of time when you have a lot of products to offer. It makes sense if you have considered skipping the testing phase instead of pressing publish to save time.
You have already visited the website, right? Both the photographs and the pages load. Launching a website without testing may result into:
User locations, devices, and internet connections can all affect the speed that a website loads.
Since you deal with payment transactions, security testing is crucial. Don't skimp on this!
When you add a new page to a website, even ones that have been tested and published for a long time can develop new flaws. Testing each page is crucial because of this.
Integrations need to be checked often if you use add-ons or plugins (such as WordPress/WooCommerce). Make sure it functions on all your pages, for instance, if you use the HubSpot WordPress Plugin to track conversions.
When you publish new pages, catalogue inconsistencies happen very often.
What Are Some Of The Main Concerns With Testing In E-Commerce?
Making life simple for your visitors is the guiding idea of good user experience (UX). Your website's tasks should all be easy to understand. You want users to be able to explore your website or application with the least amount of hassle.
Despite the simplicity of these principles, their application can be challenging. The user experience depends on many different things. From the initial click on a product through the buying basket, consider all the phases of a user's journey and test them. For instance, you can monitor how users interact with different input fields by using form analysis. You can gain insight from this data into the areas where users are having issues.
Three Tests To Run Before Publishing A New Page
Skilled optimizers from across the world contend that spending high on modern marketing initiatives and concentrating their efforts on testing and optimisation are the greatest ways for eCommerce enterprises to survive the current market heat, preserve their customer base, and secure revenue development. These can offer seamless, frictionless customer experiences and support the development of businesses. Product descriptions, personalization choices and filters, product photographs, and videos, reviews, and review videos are a few of the many components that make up ecommerce pages.
1. A browser Test
Despite the increased fragmentation of devices and browsers, a website must be cross-browser compatible with a sizable number of devices. This implies that evaluating website functionality across a variety of device-browser-OS combinations is essential. Testing using cloud-based services, which provide access to more than 2000 real devices and browsers for cross-browser testing, is a simple approach to achieve this. Users are relieved of the responsibility of acquiring, maintaining, and updating devices and browsers because the entire infrastructure is hosted in the cloud. They only need to register and begin the test. A website's behaviour under actual user circumstances will also be confirmed by testing on actual devices. Testers will be able to view how real users will see the website. This simplifies finding and fixing errors. Sign up, choose your favourite device, browser, and operating system, and then launch a test on BrowserStack. Make sure you find every fault before your users do by using the built-in devtools to debug.
2. Adaptive Design Evaluation
The mobile version of a website will be crawled and indexed by Google instead of the desktop version, according to its mobile-first indexing policy. In contrast to how it renders on a desktop, the search engine crawls and indexes a page based on how it appears on a mobile device. Also, mobile devices accounted for 51.51% of all global search traffic in the third quarter of 2019. More and more website traffic originates from mobile rather than desktop platforms. Thus, a website's responsive design is an absolute must. When viewed on mobile devices, which the target audience is prone to use, the website must display without flaws. Determine which devices have the best odds of bringing traffic to a website by looking at website analytics and market research. Use a responsive design tester for these devices to then evaluate the website.
3. Speed And Broken Link Testing
No matter how fantastic the material or photos are on a website, it doesn't matter. It is crucial to test how fast the page loads. Every time new content is introduced, speed testing must be done. If the website is not speed-optimised, many users are going to leave, resulting in a reduction in revenue. Broken links are one of the few things that annoy website visitors the most. An online link needs to function if it is present. If not, it undermines the website and the brand that supports its credibility. Check to make sure that all internal and external links are active and leading visitors to the correct pages. Verify a website on time for broken links when new content has been added. It takes a lot of time and effort to go through each page for broken links. Since there are many tools available online that make the task simpler.
An e-commerce website has multiple flows, making checking it a problem in and of itself. To test an e-commerce website, one needs to be familiar with testing methodologies and the nature of e-commerce.
The websites or applications for Amazon, Flipkart, Walmart, and many more are available if you wish to look at some of the E-commerce websites.
1. Common Test Cases For E-commerce Website
Verify that consumers can get through all the products in the various categories.
Verify that each link points to the appropriate product or category page and that none of them is broken.
Verify that you can see the company logo.
Verify that the entire text, including the product name, category name, price, and product description, is displayed.
Verify that every image is visible.
Verify sure there is a relevant product listed for the category on the category pages.
Verify that the category pages' total product count is accurately displayed.
2. Excel Test Cases For The Login Page On The Website
Verify that the Login Page has the appropriate validations.
If the Email, password, or mandatory field is empty, look for an error message.
Verify the email and password validations.
Make sure you stay logged in while browsing products after logging in. You should test the behaviour as well.
Will the session expire if the user doesn't interact with the website for a while? After the session has expired, confirm that the user has logged out.
Check to see if you are logged out and cannot access any of the accounts sites after logging in.
3. Excel Test Cases For A Shopping Website's Home Page
Verify that the home page should appear upon successful login.
Verify whether the user name is shown on the homepage.
Verify that the homepage appears in various browsers.
Verify whether the products are shown on the home page.
Verify whether or not the search function is accessible from the home page.
Verify whether or not the products on the homepage are clickable.
On the home page, look at the alignment.
Verify that the products are presented on the main page according to their categories.
Verify whether or not the user profile is accessible from the home page.
4. Registration Page Test Cases For An E-Commerce Website
Verify sure on the registration page, all the required areas are present.
Verify that the fields that are mandatory or required have a * next to them.
Make sure that, if possible, fields other than text boxes are provided for a better user interface, such as dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc.
Check that the last section of the page has both a submit and a cancel/reset button.
After filling out all required fields, confirm by clicking the submit button, at which point the server receives the data.
After filling in all the needed forms, confirm that selecting the cancel/reset button cancels the submit request and resets all the fields.
Verify that validation should, whenever possible, happen on the client side.
Verify that pressing the submit button without filling out the required data will result in a validation error.
Verify that data will be sent to the server without any validation errors if the optional fields are not filled out and the submit button is clicked.
Check the text boxes' largest height.
Confirm the date and email fields (only legitimate dates and legitimate email identifiers should be accepted).
Enter alphabets and other special characters to check the validation of numeric fields.
Verify the trimming of the leading and following spaces.
Verify that filling in the blanks in the mandatory fields results in a validation error.
Address Book Test Cases For E-commerce Website
Verify the Address Book Page validations.
Check the customer's entered address.
Check the capability for Add New Address.
Check the ability to change addresses.
Verify whether the product is offered at the address the customer provided.
What Sections And Components Of The Site Should You Test?
Every test has as its end goal to boost sales and conversions for your online store. Running conversion optimization tests with the highest ROI should be your main priority. To guarantee a flawless visitor experience, there are some aspects of your eCommerce website that you are bound to target. Here are a few examples:
1. Searching And Navigating
Visitors to your website or mobile app use the site search and navigation to browse the content of your website. You should always put the user's experience first and make sure they are bug-free.
2. Homepage Design And Features Of The Website
The homepage is one of the most crucial pages on any website because it serves as the public face of your company. Even if it won't be your main landing page, it should have one of the most detailed designs. The user experience must be excellent, and everything must function well. You can perform a variety of eCommerce testing scenarios on your homepage. Website personalisation is one feature that is getting easier to get for sites using various content management systems.
3. Product Pages
Your eCommerce store's visitors will either arrive on a product page right away or over time browse to one. When they get there, you want them to buy the thing. What information about this product or service does your prospective customer need to know for them to use my payment gateway? How can I make it more likely that a customer will put a product in their shopping cart? But there isn't only one way to respond to these queries. To determine the changes to the product information page that will benefit your company the most, you will need to conduct testing. To see if adding components that emphasise urgency or scarcity can increase sales, for instance.
4. Performance Of The Website Across Devices
People are using a wider variety of devices to access your website, as was already discussed. The need for responsive websites cannot be overstated. As a result, you can change your website to fit a variety of screens and devices.
But even if your website is responsive, issues can still arise. Problems with cross-browser compatibility are frequent. The OS used to access a website, the size of the screen, and the internet speed all affect user experience, further complicating matters. As you are doubtless already aware, there is a direct connection between the time it takes for a page on your website to load and the possibility that a customer will buy.
Conclusion
The entire purchasing ecosystem has changed during the last ten years. Whereas people used to enjoy shopping at nearby grocery stores for all their needs, they now prefer to browse through a wide selection of goods online and make purchases at their convenience. In terms of accretive revenue growth, a global consumer base, and quicker business expansion, the change has benefited eCommerce enterprises a great deal. But it has also put them in a tough spot of having to keep up with the population's growing and changing demands.
To keep customers, it is crucial to provide a seamless user experience. Conversion rate optimization, meanwhile, can have an impact on revenues when changes are made to a website's design. The significance of eCommerce testing was covered in this guide. We talked about the different kinds of testing you can run on your website and some of the logistical considerations involved. At last, we went over some of the most crucial components of your eCommerce store that you should test, supporting each point with statistics and real-world examples to show how vital it is to your company. Stay in touch with The IoT Academy to learn and grow in the technical world!
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