One little glitch on your website can result in lost customers, missed-out sales, and annoyed visitors that leave negative reviews across the web. So how can you avoid revenue-sapping problems with your software? The answer is quality assurance (QA). In this article, we’ll explain why it’s so important for e-commerce retailers to implement a QA strategy and what are the most common defects that impact it.
The truth is that you cannot have online marketing without regular quality assurance tests of your website. Keeping up on e-commerce quality assurance can mean a big difference between a dazzling conversion rate and a high bounce rate.
Quality assurance is a process designed to ensure a high degree of functionality, usability, and performance of a system. In an e-commerce setting, software QA is most commonly undertaken prior to updates, product launches, new features, and releases.
Why QA is Vital for E-commerce
The e-commerce industry is a billion-dollar industry that banks on prominent factors like ease of buying different products, convenience, and affordability. Many companies spend a considerable amount of money and countless hours to develop the best e-commerce websites with the primary objective of making profits. Everything from purchases to financial transactions processing happens through the website and providing optimum satisfaction to the customers is quintessential for the business to survive in the over-competitive market.
Devoting significant time towards improving or maintaining quality in terms of products offered or functionality can help the company to strengthen its brand and survive in the market for a longer period of time.
At the same time, e-commerce software is uniquely prone to problems. Platforms are often complex and are expected to fulfill a range of functions at volume. So it’s vital to check that your online store performs smoothly under various conditions and doesn’t have major defects that can harm your business.
Common E-commerce Defects that Impact QA
Security Vulnerability
The long-term effect of a security flow can be devastating, which is why companies are often so unwilling to come forward. Software QA has a range of techniques to pinpoint and close any holes in the website’s defense, such as penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and other types of security testing.
Faulty Purchase Processes
Order processing often requires a number of integrations and demands customers to take several steps to make a purchase. Perfecting your checkout should be an ongoing process, and you should integrate analysis and improvements as a regular part of product development. Consistently track analytics, test the performance of your site, monitor the impact of your campaigns and updates, and regularly improve your product through each iteration.
Poor Compatibility
E-commerce solutions need to be compatible across a range of browsers and devices. Customers are shopping in different countries, in numerous languages, and using a variety of interfaces. Websites may render differently in different browser versions, which often leads to unexpected functional defects. QA ensures that your website or app runs smoothly in all browser versions that are popular among your target audience.
Ineffective Product Filtering
Visitors should be able to find products they want to buy easily. Bugs in product filtering disappoint customers and often make them leave. Finding glitches in product search and filtering is a routine task for functional testing engineers.
QA Checklist for E-commerce Testing
Functionality – This type of testing is concerned with the inputs and outputs of the system. It is essential for gauging whether or not the system’s functions are delivering the required results, both individually and in concert with other modules.
Regression testing – which ensures that new code works with previously developed elements of a piece of software, is a part of functionality testing.
Usability testing – This aspect of the QA process is involved with streamlining the interaction of users and the e-commerce interface. It asks, “Is it possible for users to achieve an outcome in the quickest, most efficient way possible?”
Security testing – The devastating effect of security breaches means that software must be tested for vulnerabilities and enhanced where possible. It is important to remember that security violations can come from people both outside and inside an organization.
Performance testing – Performance testing is primarily concerned with an app’s ability to deliver outcomes under different circumstances. Site speed, load times, performance under increased traffic are the areas that need to be considered.
A/B testing – Quality assurance can also encompass A/B split testing, a well-known way to increase the conversion rate of a website.
Generally speaking, a structured approach to quality assurance will include the following basic elements, encompassing a mix of manual and automated testing scenarios. The checklist below includes examples of some of the most common e-commerce features that would likely be flagged for testing.
- Performance & load testing;
- User Experience (UX);
- Homepage (the first step of a customer journey);
- Search functionality;
- Shopping cart;
- Product’s details section;
- Payment process;
- Mobile responsiveness;
- Performance of top-notch integrations;
- Security testing.
Final Note
To make your e-commerce competitive, you must pay the greatest attention to these points, and be sure that you deliver a consistent, high-quality opportunity for your customers. From small things like load times to having to register or create an account before making a purchase, every detail can determine your future success.
Yet with growth also comes risk. As features are added and software becomes more complex, the potential for problems also increases. But this shouldn’t be the case. A comprehensive, detailed approach to quality assurance (QA) can ensure that e-commerce retailers, whether big or small, are able to avoid the potentially devastating effects of bugs and hacks.
Incorporate quality assurance & testing in your maintenance activities, because the ultimate thing that drives success in the digital age is the customers’ perception.
If your e-commerce platform is requiring SEO optimization, quality assurance & testing, we are ready to help and ensure it. We are participating in the life of the product, and do our work with a passion for your success. Feel free to contact us for collaboration!
