Ecommerce Website Testing Method

Ecommerce website owners should give proper consideration to test their sites on a regular basis. It is not just required to make sure your site is working properly, but it also ensures that it provides best user experience to your customers.

However, testing an ecommerce site is not similar to testing a normal website. You need to take care of very many things while performing ecommerce usability testing. There are more features in these sites, and there are more platforms to test your site with. Therefore, it is better that you hire a professional quality assurance company to do this task on your behalf.

Before going ahead, it is important to know what elements to test in an ecommerce site and how to test them. Below are a few tips on the same:

What to Test?

• Content on your site such as titles, images, banners, Meta descriptions and other content placed on the site

• Formatting within your CSS file

• Content on your checkout screen

• Validating payment gateways for proper functioning such as payments, data collection, cart and checkouts

• Make sure all links are working properly

• Availability of items. Make sure to remove the items that are out-of-stock

• Site navigation and internal linking

• Promotional coupons and special offers/discounts

• User dashboard, login and registration pages

• Functions of system or application or software

• Browser compatibility

• Responsiveness to different devices

In short, you must test everything related to your site and your users. For an ecommerce website, most important element is providing the users with an easy accessibility and user-friendliness. Website usability testing should remain at the top of your priority list when testing an ecommerce website.

Minimal Testing

If you do not have resources or time to execute such comprehensive testing every single time, you may go with minimal testing which covers the most essential elements. However, comprehensive testing should be performed before launching the site, and it should be performed at least twice a year.

Minimal testing may include testing your site for its compatibility for different web browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. It should also include testing compatibility to different mobile platforms such as Google Android, Apple iOS, Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices. Make sure your site is responsive and easily accessible at devices of different screen sizes.

How to Test Ecommerce Website?

There are many techniques and tools available in the market to test an ecommerce website. However, manual testing is the most effective amongst them. Hire an experienced quality analyst and ask him to create a usability testing checklist to perform the comprehensive testing of your site. Alternatively, you may outsource your requirements to a testing company. There are hundreds of quality testing companies out there. Make sure the company you hire has good experience in working with ecommerce websites, because as stated above, testing an ecommerce site is a lot different from testing a simple website.