Running an online store can be a daunting task. There are so many things to consider, from the design of your store to the products you sell to the checkout process. One of the most important aspects of running a successful online store is ensuring that your customers have a positive shopping experience. This involves testing your store to ensure it is functioning correctly and that customers can easily find what they are looking for.
We will discuss ten eCommerce testing and the different tests you should run on your store to ensure you provide a great user experience.
Table of Contents:
What is eCommerce testing and why is it important?
Ecommerce testing is the process of verifying an online store to ensure that it is functioning correctly and that customers can easily find what they are looking for.
By doing regular tests, you can find and fix any issues with your store before they cause problems for customers. Additionally, testing can help you improve the overall shopping experience for customers by ensuring that your store is easy to use and that the checkout process is smooth.
The different types of tests you can run on your online store
There are many different types of tests you can run on your store, from performance to security tests. This section will cover ten essential eCommerce tests you should run on your online store.
1. Performance Tests:
Performance testing is essential to ensure that your store can handle the high traffic volume of a successful online business. You need to test many aspects of performance, including page load time, server response time, and database response time.
It would be best to keep in mind that most search engines, like Google and Bing, are using these criteria to rank the pages. Therefore, if your store is slow, it will likely be ranked lower in the search results, leading to fewer customers finding your site.
Many tools are available to help you test the performance of your sites, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, Google Lighthouse, and GTmetrix. Run tests on the maximum number of web pages you can to identify any areas where your store needs improvement to load faster.
2. Security Tests:
Running security tests on your store is essential to protect sensitive information, such as customer credit card details and personal data. You need to test for many different types of security threats, including SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting attacks, and man-in-the-middle attacks.
These common hacks could seriously damage your business by stealing customer information, taking your site offline, or spreading malware to your customers' computers.
There are various testing tools to assist you in evaluating the security of your stores, such as Acunetix and Qualys SSL Labs.
3. Functionality Tests:
Functionality testing is critical to ensure that all the store features are working correctly. This includes testing the search function, product pages, and the checkout process.
Even if it is critical to make sure your website is working as intended, it can be time-consuming to test all the features of your store manually, there are several automated testing tools available on the market, but most of them require technical knowledge.
This is why we created UIlicious, our automated testing tool is simple to use, even for people who don’t know how to code or who have never done QA in the past.
Examples of eCommerce functionality tests run with UIlicious:
This test was made with UIlicious searches for a product type on an e-commerce website. Then, it looks for a specific term in the product list and clicks on the closest link.
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4. Compatibility Tests:
Compatibility testing is essential to ensure that your store works correctly on all devices and browsers. This includes testing different screen sizes, operating systems, and browser versions.
This is essential as more shoppers use their mobile devices to shop online. Over 50% of all eCommerce traffic now comes from mobile devices, so it's critical to make sure your store is compatible with these devices.
Again, you can use an automation tool like UIlicious to perform compatibility testing on your store quickly and easily. Besides, testing your store on different screen sizes, you can also verify if your website works perfectly on six of the most-used browsers in the world, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.
5. Usability Tests:
Usability testing is critical to ensure that your store is easy to use and navigate. This includes testing things like the layout of your store, the design of your product pages, and the checkout process.
Ensuring that your store is easy to use is crucial as it can help to increase conversion rates and reduce shopping cart abandonment.
UIlicious is also an excellent tool for usability testing. It allows you to create easy-to-read scripts that will replicate the user behaviors to see how easy it is for users to perform tasks on your store.
The example below shows a test that goes to the Mercedes UK online store and tries to search for the nearest retailer to Manchester for a specific product:
This test runs with the script below.
I.goTo("https://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk");
// agree to cookies
I.see("DAIMLER GROUP (UK) uses cookies")
I.click("Agree to all")
// owner's area
I.click("Owners' area")
I.click("accessories & collection")
// view accessories
I.see("Technical Accessories Online Store")
I.click("Buy today")
I.amAt("https://configurator.mercedes-benz-accessories.com") // make sure we got the right page
// select car class
I.see("Select car")
I.click("E") // E-class car
I.see("E-Class")
I.click("Saloon")
// viewing a product
I.click("Telematics")
I.click("Mount for tablet PC")
I.see("Product details")
I.see("Item number: A0008272200")
// find a retailer
I.click("select a retailer")
I.click("Search by address")
I.fill("City / Postcode", "Manchester")
I.pressEnter()
I.click("Show as a list")
I.see("Mercedes-Benz of Manchester Central")
I.click("Select retailer")
// add to cart
I.click("Add to cart")
I.click("Proceed to checkout")Since UIlicious scripting language is easy to read, you can understand all the different actions we are asking our service to complete to replicate a user's behavior.
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6. Accessibility Tests:
Accessibility testing is essential to ensure that people with disabilities can use your store. This includes testing for screen readers, keyboard navigation, and alternate text.
Many tools are available to help you test the accessibility of your stores, such as aXe, Google Lighthouse, and WAVE.
What kind of accessibility tests should you run on your online store?
7. Localization/Internationalization Tests:
Localization/internationalization testing is essential to ensure that people worldwide can use your store. This includes testing for things like language support, currency conversion, and regional settings.
By doing so, you can make sure that your store is accessible to a global audience and that you can sell products in multiple currencies to customers who speak a variety of languages.
There are many tools available to help you test the localization and internationalization of your stores, such as OneSky and PhraseApp. But, some of the most common localization testing scenarios can be directly verified with UIlicious.
For example, this very short script verifies that a string is correctly spelled in Spanish when switching from the English version of Airbnb's website to its Spanish version:
I.goTo("https://airbnb.com")
I.see("Become a host")
I.click("Choose a language and currency")
I.click("España")
I.wait(5)
I.see("Hazte anfitrión")Here you can see the screenshots taken at every step by UIlicious:
You can use our tool in way more complex ways to verify the localization and translations of our web projects.
8. Recovery Tests:
Recovery testing is vital to ensure that your store can recover from any problems. This includes testing for data loss, system crashes, and power outages.
They are basic tests to run, as they can help ensure that your store is always available and that customers can always complete their purchases.
There are many tools available to help you test the recovery of your stores, such as Site24x7 and Pingdom.
9. Stress Tests:
Stress testing is vital to ensure that your store can handle high traffic volumes. This includes testing for page load time, server response time, and database response time.
Whether you're running an irresistible promotion or facing a DDoS attack, it's essential to ensure that your store can handle sudden peaks in traffic.
There are many tools available to help you test the stress of your stores, such as JMeter and LoadRunner.
10. Smoke Tests:
Smoke testing is a type of black-box testing that is used to identify critical errors in a system. It is used to test the most crucial functionality of a system to ensure that it is not severely flawed.
Smoke testing is vital to run on your online store before each release, as it can help identify any major issues that need to be fixed before the release is made live.
Many tools are available to help you smoke test your stores, such as Selenium and Appium. But, once again, UIlicious is a more flexible and user-friendly smoke test in your shop.
Common Bugs Found on Online Stores
Here is a list of some common bugs that are found in online stores:
Shopping cart not working:This is a common bug that can occur if the shopping cart software is not compatible with the website's platform or if there are coding errors.
Website crashes or is slow to load:This can be caused by a variety of factors, such as high traffic volumes, server issues, or database problems.
Products are not displayed correctly:This can happen if there are problems with the product images or if the product descriptions are not formatted correctly.
Prices are incorrect:This can occur if the price calculation is not working correctly or if the currency conversion is not accurate.
Coupons or discounts are not working:This can happen if the coupon code is not valid or if the discount is not applied correctly.
Shipping charges are incorrect:This can occur if the shipping rates are not configured correctly or if the shipping calculator is not working properly.
Order confirmation emails are not sent:This can happen if the order confirmation email template is not set up correctly or if the SMTP server is not configured properly.
Customers cannot create accounts:This can happen if the account registration form is not working correctly or if the account verification process is not working properly.
Customers cannot log in to their accounts:This can happen if the login form is not working correctly or if the account password recovery process is not working properly.
Customers cannot change their password:This can happen if the password change form is not working correctly or if the password recovery process is not working properly.
Customers cannot place orders:This can happen if the order form is not working correctly or if the payment gateway is not configured properly.
Orders are not processed correctly:This can happen if the order is not being sent to the correct email address or if the order confirmation email is not being sent.
Payment gateway is not working:This can happen if the payment gateway is not configured correctly or if the payment processor is not working properly.
These are just some of the common bugs that can occur in online stores. By running regular tests, you can help to identify and fix these bugs before they cause major problems for your customers.
By running these essential tests on your store, you can ensure that it is running smoothly and that customers are having a positive shopping experience. However, keep in mind that this is just a starting point. You should make sure that your testing strategy is maintainable, scalable, and always up-to-date.
If you're looking for a tool to help you with eCommerce testing, check out UIlicious. It's a cost-effective and user-friendly test automation tool that makes it easy to create, maintain, and scale your tests.
Not decided to have a look at it? Click on this link to start your free trial and see how UIlicious can help you increase your sales and reduce your bounce rate.
