How many Types of Testing for E-commerce Platforms are there

 

With digitization gathering pace and more companies or organizations going online, e-commerce has become the go-to domain for people, more so during the pandemic, to buy different types of products. Even statistics point to the upward trajectory of e-commerce, which is likely to reach $4.5 trillion in 2021 (Source: firstsiteguide.com.) The most popular e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and others, have traffic going into the billions. The share of e-commerce vis-a-vis retail is steadily increasing, with 23.6% in 2025 and reaching up to 95% in 2040. The pandemic has given a boost to e-commerce, with UNCTAD stating that B2C sales notched up by 13 of the world’s top companies in 2020 stood at $2.9 trillion.

There is no denying the fact that e-commerce is going to be the go-to domain for consumers in the future thanks to its convenience, usability, security, and round-the-clock availability, among others. However, the positive growth story does not mean every company joining the e-commerce bandwagon is going happily to the bank. In fact, statistics are grim regarding the number of companies failing to find favor with their target customers. Most of them are start-ups that cannot face competition from established e-commerce behemoths. According to an estimate, the failure rate of e-commerce businesses is about 80%. (Source: failory.com.) So, why do so many e-commerce businesses fail and how can e-commerce website testing be a part of the solution? Let us find out.   

What is e-commerce website testing and why is it important?

In today’s digitized landscape, your e-commerce or retail site can play an important role in clocking sales. It can be a wonderful and highly-effective touchpoint on the internet for your storefront. In order to deliver the best shopping experience to your customers, the e-commerce site should be tested for glitches and other parameters. Otherwise, with so many e-commerce platforms available for customers, any lack of smooth functioning can drive them to your competitors.

To ensure your potential customers are happy shopping while visiting your website, there should be rigorous retail testing of the site for functional and non-functional issues. With e-commerce website testing, testers can identify the vulnerabilities or glitches plaguing your website, and see to it that the site loads fast, is navigable, and is safe to transact on. Also, with incidences of cybercrime growing by the day, customers are wary of transacting unless they are absolutely sure of the safety and security aspects of any e-commerce website. So, let us understand the types of e-commerce application testing to make your website robust, responsive, functional, fast loading, and safe.

What are the types of testing for any e-commerce system? 

ECommerce QA comprises many types of testing that are explained below.

Functional testing: Any e-commerce website follows a set pattern - allowing customers to view and select products, add them to their cart, add promo codes (if any), make payment, and checkout of the system. Thereafter, the products ordered are delivered to them on the appointed day. Any break in the pattern can cause customers to feel frustrated and make them leave the website for some other competitor. Functional testing as a part of e-commerce website testing can identify glitches or vulnerabilities that can mar the customer experience. It helps to validate all the features, does all the groundwork, and ensures the website functions as per the expectations and specifications. The areas of any e-commerce website requiring function testing are:

·         Login system

·         Search results page

·         Search and filters

·         Order details

·         Add to cart or shopping cart

·         Discounts or promo codes

·         Order confirmation and tracking

Performance testing: Your customers are preparing to shop on your website on an important day, such as Black Friday or Christmas. But no sooner did they hit the website, the site malfunctioned and shut down. Statistics state that 40 minutes of downtime can cost an e-commerce giant like Amazon $5 million in sales. This calls for performance testing of e-commerce applications to ensure the scalability, reliability, speed, and stability of the website against increased load thresholds. It ensures the website does not go slow, or worse, crash when experiencing a massive traffic inflow. The types of performance testing are 

·         Load testing

·         Stress testing

·         Scalability testing

·         Volume testing

·         Spike testing

Security testing: The cybersecurity challenges from malware, ransomware, and trojans are increasing by the day, and the risk of security breaches, fraud, and theft online has made many customers think twice before sharing their confidential information. There are sophisticated bots that can imitate user behavior to take over accounts and harvest personal information. It is only through e-commerce domain testing in security that potential security risks can be identified and online payment gateways made secure.

Compatibility testing: Your e-commerce application can be accessed by users from many touchpoints - desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone, and across a broad range of hardware configurations, networks, operating systems, and browsers. Compatibility testing ensures the e-commerce application or website functions seamlessly across the above-mentioned environments. Also, this type of e-commerce testing can prevent issues such as version updates, screen size adaptation, navigation flows, and broken frames, among others. These are of two types; forward and backward testing.

Usability testing: Your e-commerce application can attract more traffic if users find it easy to navigate. Usability testing helps testers to evaluate if the website is easy to use, and if users are able to complete the objective of visiting a page. For example, can they go to the ‘shopping cart or add to cart’ section after selecting a product on the product listing page? Apart from assuring ease of use, this type of e-commerce application testing focuses on the website’s or app’s flexibility to handle controls and meet its objectives. 

Conclusion

Ecommerce website or app testing is an integral phase of development wherein risks or glitches are identified (and fixed). It lets the portal meet the users’ requirements and business objectives and ensure customer satisfaction and retention.

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James Daniel is a software Tech enthusiastic & works at Cigniti Technologies. I'm having a great understanding of today's software testing quality that yields strong results and always happy to create valuable content & share thoughts. 

Article Source: medium.com