Ecommerce Testing

June 14, 2016

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The term 'e-commerce' or "electronic commerce" defines the set up and execution of business, trading, commercial process in the virtual world of web with the help of internet.

In general, it is all about the buying and the selling of variant types of product on-line, over internet. The e-commerce activities are carried out through specific websites namely e-commerce websites equipped with the different and special types of features and functionalities like virtual store of items of different categories, filter and searching products of your desire, payment gateway with multiple options to pay for your purchase and many more features.

With such useful functionalities, e-commerce websites has become an integral part of our day-to-day life, and thereby it's flawless and uninterrupted working is a much needed requirement.

What is meant by the e-commerce testing?

As the name specifies, e-commerce testing is used to evaluate & assess the e-commerce websites for their intended and accurate working with no security and performance issues.

In e-commerce testing, different types of traits, designs, specifications, pages, modules, functionalities, features of the e-commerce website is being considered and targeted which are more likely to be prone to different risks & issues associated with the security and performance of the website.

Why is testing important in the E-Commerce website?

The e-commerce websites are the future of the world and its popularity is growing rapidly. The demand of these applications is immensely high, as they promise to provide attractive benefits, such as, variety, fast delivery at a competitive price, and more. E-commerce applications are very critical for businesses and require a lot of investment, therefore to ensure its safety, e-commerce applications require extensive testing, which validates its quality, functionality and whether it is secure for the users or not. Other reasons for testing e-commerce applications are:

• The first and primary reason is because e-commerce is business critical and highly visible to its user’s.
• Any failure can be immediately expensive in terms of lost revenue and even more expensive in the longer term if disaffected users seek alternative sites.
• Testing ensures that all the pages of the website are tested thoroughly.
• Ensures that e-commerce transactions are secure and validated.
• Verification and validating the product or application before it goes live in the market to prevent it from intruders and hackers.
• To check the usability of the application.
• To make defect free and user friendly application.
• Quality Assurance of the software or application developed.

8 Important Things to Test in Ecommerce Web and Mobile Applications:

Although, all the aspects and features whether major or minor should be covered under the test, testers may go for the following aspects keeping in view limited resources and deadlines.

• Compatibility with the Browser:

  To ensure the correct and similar functioning of the website across all different browsers.

• Login Page:

  To ensure proper access to the existing account after providing the valid credentials. Further, new users to the website are able to create account or able to access the home page via guest profile.





• Search and Filter Mechanism:

  Customers don't have time to go through each of the website page in order to look for & locate the product. Moreover, the product should be visible to them instantly on applying filters based on their needs.

• Payment Gateway System:

  It consists of proper checkout mechanism, accurate billing, secure payment process, invoice generation, timely sending of order confirmation over mail and mobile, etc. along with the privacy and security of the whole payment process.

• Mobile Compatibility:

  With the advancement in the mobile technology people are prone to execute almost all possible tasks with the use of smart phones. These tasks also include online shopping. Thus, the website should be executable, readable on the mobile platform without any hassle.

• Usability:

  Usability of the website plays an important role in attracting the large number of target audience for the website. Therefore, it is essential to keep check on the website's user-friendliness traits.

• Security:

  As these websites consists of personal data & information and involves financial transactions, safety and security aspects of the website should be considered as topmost priority.

Challenges of E-commerce Testing:

The process of testing an application is a complex one and it requires constant attention of the tester as well as their expert knowledge and experience. However, during the testing process, a tester can face several challenges that may become a major hurdle in testing the e-commerce application. These challenges can may be time consuming and can also require extra efforts of the testers. Therefore, following are some of the challenges encountered by the team of testers while testing e-commerce application:

• Compliance with security guidelines to safeguard customer data and identity.
• To support multi-lingual markets and business regions, compliance with accessibility standards is important.
• End to end testing and test management for large e-commerce transformation programs is another challenge that arises while testing e-commerce application.
• Scalability and reliability of applications.

Some Useful E-Commerce Testing Tools:

There are lot of tools available in the market which are effective to carry out the task of e-commerce testing. Few of them are

• Concept Feedback
• Google Analytics Content Experiments
• Fen-GUI
• Unbounce
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Browsera
• BrowserStack
• Perfecto Mobile

Our next topic will focus on various points to be considered while performing ecommerce testing. Click the link to read the complete ecommerce testing checklist.