A Complete Guide To eCommerce Website Testing For A Better Website Experience

According to a report by Statista, retail e-commerce revenues are projected to grow to 6.54 trillion US dollars in 2022. E-commerce was already a huge online activity but has become even more pronounced post the pandemic-induced lockdown in 2020.

With the growing number of online buyers, your e-commerce website needs to be robust to meet the demands of your customers. Having a good e-commerce website is not enough today; you need to update the website to meet your business’s new requirements and goals. In addition, your e-commerce website should enlist products so that the users engage with the site and convert faster.

You should continually assess and upgrade your website. Thorough eCommerce website testing is essential. It assures that your users are interacting with a bug-free website, thus enhancing their experiences. Through the testing process, you check the website's functionality, assess how it operates across devices, and evaluate the risks the website possesses.

Let us take a look at the importance and benefits of testing your retail website.

Need for eCommerce Website Testing

The primary reason to conduct thorough eCommerce website testing is to improve the user’s experience. If your user visits a website that takes time to load or is filled with errors, they will not find it engaging. As a result, they will leave even before they have interacted with the product pages.

Secondly, website testing tells you the exact faults of the website. It also helps improve the functionality and secure the features of the website. Overall, eCommerce testing gives you an optimal app/website that helps businesses interact, nurture, and convert users.

We will take you through the benefits of eCommerce testing that will help you understand this better.

Benefits of eCommerce Website Testing

1. Better Engagement

When the site is in sync with the user’s needs, they will browse it and visit all relevant pages. With eCommerce website testing, you check the page for issues and frictions that might hamper user journeys. You will remove all the bugs and content issues that might lead to delayed loading or even abandonment.

2. Reduced Risks

When you check the site for bugs before launch, you will reduce the risk of losing a potential customer. You would incorporate the functionality that resonates with the needs and improve the features to align it with user intent. Even the strategies and upgrades are planned. As a result, you would not face high bounce rates or cart abandonments, which lead to losses.

3. Improved Conversions

When your site exudes quality, your users will breathe easily. You can impress them with high-quality images without compromising on loading speed. As a result, you will notice an increase in conversions, which will make your website profitable.

4. Data for User Insights

After every abandonment and issue that led to customers leaving your site, you have data to understand the user better. When you plug this into your site testing plans, you will reveal a website that thoroughly defines your user’s personality. Testing can also help you understand what your customer prefers, how they connect with a website, and what makes them disappear. If you plan to outsource your software testing needs, it is important to follow the best practices and guidelines for outsourcing software testing.

Quality Risks eCommerce Testing can Prevent

1. Unavailability of the Online Store

It is quite a common issue, especially during peak season. It occurs if there is an issue with the server, hosting, or at the provider end. It could also be due to the high load during sales and peak holiday seasons. The error page appears, or the users get the error “site is unavailable,” which leads to bad experiences.

2. Unable to Find Products

A lot of us go to online stores to find specific products or brands. There is a sense of disappointment when you are unable to find a particular product. You tend to abandon the cart that contains other products only because you failed to find one specific item. It could prove to be a loss to the retailers.

3.Performance Issues

When your site loads slower than usual or your users cannot navigate the website, it has significant performance issues. Operational issues can lead to abandonment and eventually low conversion rates. It can also impact your store’s profits, as the users switch to sites that load faster.

4. Shopping Cart Issues

Imagine having found the product but not being able to order it. Doesn’t that sound worse than not being able to find the product? Well, these issues occur if you have not tested your site correctly. It can even lead to customers moving away from your website, as people will immediately go to the other marketplace serving them with the same products. The other issue in this category is when the user is unable to add the coupon code. Not testing this part of the site can also lead to significant security issues while completing transactions.

5. Improper Analytics

If your analytics is not up to the mark or has not configured it correctly, the results will not be useful. You will not get the metrics that can help you assess the conversion rate, profitability, or investment returns. Eventually, it will impact your business strategy.

6. Incompetent UX

The layout, the text, the movement, and the overall context help you convert visitors into customers. However, if there is a fault with the website’s various components, you will notice a reduction in conversions. For example, if the experience while browsing or at the checkout is not impressive, the users will abandon the website. You can reduce this risk by making your testing process foolproof.

8 Key eCommerce Website Test Cases

Test cases help present the scenario as articulately as possible. Furthermore, it helps you check the functionality for all possibilities, thus ensuring thorough checking. We have compiled the top eight test cases that seem unavoidable for checking your eCommerce website thoroughly.

1. General Test Cases

The general test cases you write need to assess the typical functions within an eCommerce website. It could include the movement of the user as well as filters on a particular page. It could also be the loading of the category pages. The idea is to check the interactions and evaluate the overall experience the user will have when going through the website. Given below are some of the test cases that you will have to write for this category.

• Image checks, which will help identify the quality, visibility as well as the relevance of the images with the page context
• Filtering options to verify if they are working. In addition, it will ensure that it helps them identify the specific set of products whenever the user checks a particular option.
• Navigation through the website should be comfortable and frictionless.
• You should also check if the pages and the products are relevant to each other.

2.Homepage Test Case

The homepage is not just another page that impresses the user with its design. In eCommerce, the homepage acts as your guide and salesman. It is the page through which users tend to move to the other category and product pages. The robustness of this page becomes essential as it makes or breaks a customer.

• If there is a scroll on the website or a clickable image, check if it works. If the scroll is automatic, check the interval between scrolls and evaluate the efficiency.
• Will the mouse hover lead to another image? Will the click take the user to the relevant page and product?
• If the user navigates from the home page, can they move to another part of the website without friction?
• Are the clickable text and images working on the website?

3. Search Test Case

Customers rely on the search function to find the products, category or brands on the eCommerce website. It is the most commonly used feature. Therefore, it is essential to check and verify that this function works properly.

• Is it mentioned how the users could search? Are all the search possibilities functioning correctly? If you have claimed that the users can search using brand name, check if that works and reveal the relevant results.
• Can you filter your search results for the different options such as brand, reviews/ratings, and others?
• Can you navigate between search result pages on the website?
• If the search bar is located on the website, ensure that the user can search from the homepage. If you are allowing users to search from internal pages, make sure to test that feature.

4. Recommended Products

eCommerce websites commonly feature recommended products based on past purchases and the most bought products for recent searches. These recommendations are also shown after the user has purchased a particular product.

• Assess if the recommendations are in sync with the search made by the users. Again, you need to study analytics to identify if the recommendations will interest the user.
• Once the customer has completed the purchase, your website should immediately showcase recommended products. Make sure this feature works.

5. Payments

Have you ever turned away from a website because the transaction was unsuccessful? Many visitors have moved to another site that offers immediate and secure transactions. Abandonment at checkout is one of the primary reasons why you should assess your payments page.

• Test if all the payment modes mentioned on your website work
• Assess the checkout options, and check if the user will experience any waiting time while checking out? Incorporate guest checkouts for ease of use
• Are there any specific sign-in requirements for returning customers?
• How safe is the transaction? For example, does the website take the customer to a secure page when asking them to enter the card details?
• How does the user return to the website once the payment has been accepted?
• Validate the flow of the checkout page and the interactions at various points

It would help to write a test case that will evaluate all payment aspects from start to finish.

6. Shopping Cart

On average, the cart abandonment rate across industries is 69.80%. To avoid losing customers after loading the cart, you should invest in test cases to gauge your shopping cart.

• Have you allowed the users to edit the shopping cart? For example, can they add or delete the items at checkout?
• Are the users able to add coupon codes, vouchers, or gift coupons at checkout?
• Are the taxes levied as per the location of the user?
• Does the system calculate the shipping cost correctly for the area?
• Can the user add items after viewing the cart?

7. Product Details Page

The product pages should be articulate to interact with them and convert them into a customer. The product page will need to perform a salesperson’s job by giving away all the relevant information about the product. The information should include details, uses, specifications, properties, prices, and product images. It would help if you correctly placed everything on the page. Test for the following to validate these pages

• Are the photos used high quality and adequately defined on these pages?
• Are there reviews on the page?
• Has the page mentioned the delivery and shipping-related information?
• If the product is out of stock, has it been said on the website?
• Does the page include all the specifications?

8. Post-Order Test Cases

Things need to work smoothly even after the order has been placed.

• Check if the user can cancel their order after placing it?
• Check if the customer can view the order details on the website? Can they view the history of their purchases on the website?
• Does the website house the invoices for the purchases?

Conclusion

With all your marketing efforts, you managed to grab the attention of the users. What next? You want them to convert after visiting your website. However, it is not possible if they face hurdles while interacting with your website.

Testing the eCommerce website will give you a thorough idea of how it works and what features make it challenging. You can remove the errors and reduce the risks after evaluating all aspects. You need to majorly check the home page, category, and product pages, as well as a checkout for reduced abandonments and maximum conversions.

Partnering with the right QA team can help evaluate the issues first and improve your website’s quality. At Maruti Techlabs, we offer comprehensive and holistic Quality Assurance and Quality Engineering Services. To ensure the top-notch quality and outstanding performance of your website, get in touch with us here.