Ecommerce Testing

Introduction to Ecommerce Testing

In Ecommerce Testing, eCommerce is a commercial activity of buying and selling goods/services digitally through the internet. Amazon, Taobao, Walmart, Flipkart, Ola, and Uber are the top eCommerce companies globally, and most of them have a presence in India. -The share of eCommerce sales in total retail sales is around 8% globally; in the US, it is 13.5%, and in India, it is 2.2%, and it’s growing in double digits everywhere. No Smartphone users globally raising to 2.7 billion, the volume of eCommerce transactions is bound to grow exponentially. Ecommerce vendors should host a vibrant website with superior performance/user experience features to enhance their online sales. Websites should be tested thoroughly in all aspects before it is deployed to users.

In this article, let’s see various techniques in testing eCommerce sites.

What is eCommerce Testing?

It is a process of checking all the features and functions of a website to ascertain whether it works as per its original specifications and ensuring it performs to the expected speed if the load reaches designed levels.

The Purpose of Testing is to Enhance:

• Reliability by fixing defects in the code.
• Quality by removing ambiguities, misunderstanding of requirements of coders/analysts.
• Performance level by ensuring the right level of resources are allotted to manage the load and fine-tuning/optimizing the code.
• The user experience by removing unwanted navigations/process steps and improving look and feel.
• Security by stressing coding standards and structures.
• Compliance with all rules and regulations by adhering to set policies/principles.
• Availability of the website to users on a 24×7 window without any disruption.

How does eCommerce Testing Work?

Below are the steps shows how does it work:

Web site development/implementation’s success depends on the depth of the testing carried out before it is deployed online.

1. As the first step of the testing process, we need to identify scenarios to be tested, which

• It Will have to be derived from the system requirement documents (SRS or BRD)
• Need to spell out various functionalities to be tested, and it should cover end to end to processes of the application.
• Are defined as a high-level asset of actions.
• Are brief one-liners.
• Should focus on what to test rather than how to test.

2. The next step is to identify test cases for the scenarios identified. There could be multiple test cases derived from each scenario.

A test case consists of:

• A list of actions to be executed to verify a feature or functionality of the applications.
• Set of test data for testing each action.
• Steps to be followed, Preconditions.
• Expected results.
• Unique conditions that may be used by Tester to check the functionality.

More resources are required to run through test steps and document the results. Test cases should be simple, unambiguous, end user-oriented, cover all the features, and it should be easily identifiable. Test scenarios and test cases should be prepared along with system requirement documents, and once the development of the application module is complete, the testing team should get into the testing activities interacting with the development team.

Types of Testing

Below are the Types of Testing:

eCommerce applications are hosted either as a web site or mobile apps. Websites are accessed by Desktops/Laptops and mobiles through browsers using URLs. Mobile apps are downloaded from the apps store on mobile devices.

eCommerce Testing should cover scenarios of:

• Website access thru Desktops/Laptops and mobile
• Mobile Apps

1. General Testing

There are some general testing the eCommerce applications undergoes like any other applications, and they are listed in the table below:

2. Specific Testing

There are specific types of testing pertaining to eCommerce applications, and they are listed below:

Testing Tools in Ecommerce Testing

Some of the widely used tools for testing websites are:

• Selenium: Open-source testing suite for web Applications in any browsers/platforms. It enables automated functional & regression testing using simple scripts. It has a record/playback facility for authoring tests without knowledge of script language.
• JMeter: Used mainly in performance & load testing, and it is an open-sourced tool in Java.
• Spur: Tool to verify web design and used by the web development company.
• Browsers: Tool to check cross-browser layout differences and scripting errors on a website.
• Link research tool: SEO tools to check content quality on the website.
• Click heat: Provides a pictorial heat map of clicks to assess hot and cold zone in an HTML page.

Conclusion

With more and more users embracing online shopping, a good response time/speed and stability of the website plays a big role in retaining customers. A well-tested eCommerce site will provide the vibrancy needed for the success of the online business.

Recommended Articles

This is a guide to Ecommerce Testing. Here we discuss types, tools; what is Ecommerce Testing? how does it work?. You can also go through our other related articles to learn more –

1. Ecommerce Shopping Websites
2. What is a Bug in Software Testing?
3. Types and Handling Errors in JavaScript
4. Useful Differences of Load Testing vs Stress Testing