E-Commerce Testing (WooComerce, Magento)
- 6 min read
- Marin Lukač
It has come to the point where you fall out of the competition if your business doesn’t have a website. So, why is that? The answer lies in convenience – if you wish to buy a product or a service in a physical store, you have to make several steps. Go into the store, search for what you need and ask for help if there is any additional information you would like to know. But why waste time going through that entire process, when you can simply do all of it very quickly online?
The same thing goes for e-commerce(webshops). People love convenience and you can find almost anything you need online; furniture for your home, a new phone, clothes, supplies, gadgets, appliances etc. Whichever you need can be ordered right from your sofa and delivered to your front door. Much easier than going to the store, right?
However, you can encounter many different problems when conducting your business online. Proper development, marketing and of course, testing is absolutely necessary in order to make sure that everything works properly and gives you the best possible results you can get.
This article will give you an insight into important e-commerce testing strategies and techniques, especially on WooCommerce and Magento webshops – two leading platforms for e-commerce websites.
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Testing strategies and techniques
First of all, good design means good business. There is a huge variety of online shops, so if your site doesn’t catch the eye of a potential customer at first sight, it is most likely he / she will just pick another site. A good design doesn’t only mean a nice appearance – it means that you combine that with effectiveness, functionality and simplicity. The less complicated it is to achieve a goal (eg buying something), the better the User Experience will be (UX). You can divide your testing into certain typical categories from which you can continue testing.
Functionality test
First, there is the functionality test – go through the e-commerce site and make sure everything is working properly. Every link leads to where it’s supposed to lead, every button / every menu works and the product info is correct. Login / logout / create account works, different payment methods work, search / sort / filter for products is giving right information. Basically, every function or widget you have on every page of your website has to function properly in order to gain the best UX and to minimize the chance of your site crashing due to update, etc.The usability test
After functionality test, here comes the usability test . How effective is your design when it comes to your conversion rate? Check if your customers have any difficulties when trying to achieve something on your web shop. That could be for example, buying a product or just getting more info.Security testing
One very important part of e-commerce testing is security testing . Because your clients are giving sensitive information such as payment details etc., you have to make sure that their data is secured and protected from malware, hackers and other potential threats. Some platforms like Magento offer automated testing services for some elements of your web shop. This one is better checked manually, as it is the most crucial part of your website in order to keep integrity. If there are cases where your customers had security breaches while buying from your web shop, then it is impossible to expect other potential clients to give you their trust and do business with you, when you can’t guarantee their information is secured.
Performance and database testing
You also need to test the performance of your web shop. Time is money for most people. If the site is slow to react or load, it is most likely that clients will leave and do their buying on another site. If you notice some problems, make sure you delete all the features in your code that aren’t actively used on your site in order to speed up the completion of other commands in the code.
Test your database as well, as every piece of information on your web shop has to be correct and up to date, including photos, prices, discounts, etc.
Responsiveness testing
A / B testing
Finally, you should always do your A / B testing if possible. Make two similar versions of your site to see which features work out best for your customers in order to get the highest conversion rate as possible (Conversion rate = Conversions / Traffic).
Photo: OmniKick
When it comes to WooCommerce web shops, you should do regular end-to-end tests. It has been common that new updates, plugins, themes or code changes crash the site, so it is crucial to have everything in order.
The complete test can include:
- homepage testing
- product pages testing
- adding / removing products from the shopping cart
- checkout testing
- registration / login testing
- payment process testing
- database and warehouse info testing (when somebody buys a product, does the quantity in store change), etc.
By now, you can already conclude that there is a ton of things that can pose a potential problem for your e-commerce business. It takes a lot of work to make sure everything is running properly. Sometimes it can get a bit complicated to understand the issues. If you need any help with testing or maintenance of your web shop, feel free to contact us ! We will be more than happy to manage that workload for you.
Magento testing
As for Magento , it is of great help that the platform offers a free testing guide implemented. With everything we already said you should test, they also offer help with product quality testing, such as your Magento and Web API Functional testing, Performance, JavaScript tests, etc. You can also do some Code Quality tests which include static and unit pieces of code and much more to help you get your web shop up to perfect speed and functionality.
Conclusion
To recapitulate and conclude, continual testing is of crucial importance for leading a successful webshop. WooCommerce , Magento , or any other. Many things can go wrong, and you have the obligation to make sure it doesn’t happen. It will keep your expenses to a minimum and prevent losing a lot of money on problems that could’ve been avoided. Of course, by doing so, you will automatically have a much higher customer satisfaction.
Magento offers defined guides for testing your e-commerce. But, there are certain things you need to take care by yourself.
Here are some key things you have to check on your Magento , WooCommerce or any other web shop:
- Functionality (homepage, product pages, register / login, recommended / on-sale products and all other functions)
- Responsiveness (mobile / tablet / desktop)
- usability
- Security
- Database (product quantity in store, available discounts)
- performance
- Payment & Checkout (including units, tax rules, etc.)
- A / B testing
For any detail questions, make sure to contact us to get the help you need!
