E-Commerce App Testing - Challenges, Tips, Checklist and Test Cases

What Customers look for on an E-Commerce Website?

If you’re a buyer like me, you notice when you’re visiting a good e-commerce website. Featured products visible on the homepage, add to cart button works very fine; everything feels interactive. Pages take no more than a second to load. Information is delivered as soon as we search on the search bar. The site seems easy to use when you navigate it. You start getting vibes - Ah! I can order this product with different payment options.

You start noticing on the site; it allows you to create an account in quick minutes, search for products under the desired range, compare the prices, and send you an OTP to prevent your account info from fraud cases. It supports you while refunding, shipping your product, and staying in touch from booking an order to get delivered at home.

You start giving importance to the platform, filling with excitement, and check out their website again and again. You start building trust in sellers and share with your friends and family to buy from the same platform. This is something which I like as a buyer, and maybe you feel the same.

Clearly, such e-commerce websites create an emotional bond with customers and give self-realization as You need me and I need you a lot. It improves business profits.

Our user testers say that you could automatically improve its conversion rate by 78% after increasing the site speed.

What is an E-commerce Application Testing?

E-Commerce testing is the process of testing an e-Commerce application (Online Shopping Platform). It drives value in the e-commerce business by ensuring conformity to client requirements and preventing errors.

E-commerce mobile/desktop app testing aims to ensure:

• Software Quality.
• Software Reliability.
• System Assurance.
• Capacity Utilization and Optimum Performance.
• Higher ROI.
• Transparency management to companies in day-to-day activities.
• Easy accessibility and high performance, the usability of the site.

Testing an e-Commerce application is a bit challenging because the nature of the e-commerce application test scenarios is complex. It isn't easy for testers to detect every possible user action as they can’t predict the nature of the customer. With rapid technological changes, sometimes they find it hard to monitor techniques or tools for testing eCommerce applications.

Challenges of E-Commerce Application Testing

Check out some common challenges of e-commerce testing below:

• User Profiles

From beginners to experienced customers, everyone today loves online shopping. It gives comfort to purchase and saves a lot of time. So, you will not get the same customers all the time. Your site visitors can vary as per their demands or the products you sell.

When it comes to fulfilling their unique needs, you can’t ignore e-commerce testing services.  E-commerce mobile app testing ensures all your customers have access to their user profiles while creating an account on e-commerce sites. Identifying each single profile activity can be challenging for the tester.

• Security

E-commerce mobile/web app testing is necessary to protect e-commerce mobile/web applications. Sometimes hackers take over a website or computer. They know the most common website hacking technique called SQL injection attack.

Most websites use SQL (Structured Query Language) to interact with databases. It allows the website to create, insert, update, retrieve, and delete the records from databases.

SQL or database is used for everything from login into the website to save e-commerce transaction history. So, hacking chances are common with e-commerce websites. Few tools are available for security testing, but understanding and implementing the right e-commerce testing scenarios are challenging for testers.

• Faster Technological Shift

Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Product Visualization are the biggest global trends in eCommerce. It is difficult to predict the next e-Commerce technology. Still, e-commerce testing company has to embrace new challenges at work.

Applications of e-commerce vary from business-to-business, consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer, consumer-to-business. All of them represent a different and dynamic concept. Therefore, the eCommerce application testing process can be different. Their technological shifts can bring new challenges for both testers and developers.

New software needs better functional and different test cases to make it as per one’s expectation. Each time your testers have to set up the new environment and work accordingly.

Suggested Read: Progressive Web App (PWA) Testing

• Business Ecosystem

Things like delivery, shipping cost, dispatch address, item tax vary on e-commerce sites based on customer-to-customer. Credit card issues happen with these sites while making a payment.

Buying and selling goods and services is not a single purpose of Electronic Commerce. You need to collaborate with business partners, conducting electronic transactions, servicing customers within an organization.

All such tasks require an e-commerce testing company to ensure your business is going on the right track. But fulfilling all needs of an e-commerce website testing checklist with different e-commerce testing scenarios is challenging.

Testing Tips - How to do Performance Testing for an E-Commerce Application

E-commerce apps should be well-designed to leave the first impression on customers. Nearly half of the population has online shopping apps on their phones. They make purchases as per their preferences. They like to get updates about sales, discount options, and the launch of new products.

Speed plays a crucial role in the success of websites. Website speed defines how quickly site pages load on browsers. However, poorly performing sites become the reason for low traffic and low conversion rates. Performance testing and load testing are some factors that you have to keep in mind for eCommerce applications. It offers an easy to use, glitch-free, and fast experience to users.

A software testing company has test cases for online shopping websites. A good tester knows how to give a positive site experience to e-commerce app users.

Ecommerce Application Testing Process: Ways To Do Performance Testing

• Identification of Objectives

One of the main benefits of eCommerce testing is performance examination.

It examines every aspect of the application, like check its functions, payment gateways, blog section, page accessibility, etc.

• Checking Behaviour of Apps

Performing load testing is a must for eCommerce websites and mobile applications. Site traffic can reduce the speed of the application. People may feel difficulty during transactions.

Hence, you need to check the behavior of apps through eCommerce testing tools. QA company can perform a load test. Their professionals will let you know how the app behaves under heavy traffic.

• Device Optimization

Ecommerce mobile app testing performs to check the device compatibility. Your eCommerce site should be compatible with all operating systems, versions (Android, iOS), browsers.

A software testing company can let you know whether the pages of your site display correctly. Whether the navigation and font size needs improvements or not. Dead hyperlinks are other issues of websites and mobile pages that you need to evaluate ASAP.

• Cloud-Ready

Performing cloud-based testing is another aspect of e-commerce platforms. It gives a positive shopping app experience with high performance on the cloud.

Cloud-based testing is essential to give control of the application to multiple users. It plays a huge role in the entire process of performance testing.

This type of testing you should never skip because people add items to the cart section when they scroll products on their mobile phones. But sometimes they complete the transaction process from their laptops, desktop computers. Having particular test plans and test results of an eCommerce application are the responsibility of your testers.

• Geographical

Performance testing of e-commerce applications is crucial to ensure the app performs well across geographical locations, no matter where the user is.

QA service providers have to use application-specific test cases to make the software perfect for all users.

E-commerce load testing reports you against the app's vulnerability and fault tolerance. With testing, you can analyze the app’s content, language support, payment processing system, order tracking, etc.

On the other hand, performance testing is suitable for measuring maximum sales and all aspects of the app. It assures that end users have a positive experience while using the app.

Must-Know E-Commerce Project Checklist & Test Cases

Here is the e-commerce project checklist with test cases for e-commerce website testing. We are taking the Amazon website to showcase the steps:

1. Homepage

Almost all retail websites contain this kind of clickable image. It is known as a hero image represented in a slideshow. The majority of the homepage is covered with this hero image. So, you have to test the following things.

• Can it be hovered on?
• Is it displaying the next image while scrolling?
• Is it auto-scrolling?
• At what interval will the image be changed?
• Can it be clicked on?
• Is the content viewed?
• Does this hero image look similar in different browsers and different screen sizes?

2. Search Bar

Ecommerce platforms include a search bar to help people search for products faster. It should be visible in front of their eyes.

3. Login/Signup

It is another important factor we include in our e-commerce website testing checklist. Signup or login is necessary to get a quick update regarding booked orders. People don't create an account with their mobile numbers when they get two or more choices for profile creation.

Test Cases:

• Is the website allowed to create two profiles with the same numbers?
• Are text boxes worked?
• By clicking on the continue button, is it allowed for proceeding?
• Is the contact information valid or fraud?

4. Products Description

Every user reads the product description before making a payment on the e-commerce platform. Testing an e-commerce application with a successful mobile testing strategy makes the right sense. It confirms that the user will get product information after searching for a particular product.

What to test:

• Are all features displayed?
• Is the font of the description correct?
• Is the product specification looked different while searching for another product?
• Is the given number in the product description working?

5. Payment Options

When it comes to writing e-commerce application test cases, test scripts for payment options are hard to ignore.

Test Cases:

• Check multiple payment options.
• Text confirmation with the order number generated.
• Are all payment options (net banking, COD, net banking, Credit Card) working?
• What happens if I click on the ‘Pay Now' button?
• If storing personal financial information, performing security testing is mandatory.
• If your customer is facing sign-off issues, make sure to test sessions.

Arrange other e-commerce application test cases:

• FAQ.
• Contact Us Page.
• Privacy Policy.
• Customer Service Page.
• Social media profile linking.
• Returns & Orders Page.
• Category Pages.
• Page Layouts.
• Navigation.
• CTAs.
• Images.
• Content optimization.

In Conclusion

E-Commerce application testing is the one-stop solution to cater to the needs of customers and shopping websites. Executing performance, usability, security, end-to-end test scripts are much more important to give your users the best shopping experience ever. BugRaptors is a certified testing solutions provider. We work with several industry verticals from healthcare, media, telecommunications, education to e-commerce platforms. We have 550+ clients worldwide and have extensive experience in bug reporting and quality assurance.Explore our portfolio to know more about our clientele and work experience.