The Role of QA in eCommerce
eCommerce sales have shown a steady rise. The growth is expected to continue in the years to come (if not decades!). According to Statista, many industries worldwide generate more than two-thirds of their sales revenue from online sales. The website further states that digital shoppers worldwide have grown approximately by one billion between 2019 and 2022 and are expected to continue to grow.
As consumers shift towards online shopping, companies are also working towards generating online sales. One of the critical elements of online shopping is an eCommerce website. Modern consumers are becoming choosy and selective when buying online. They are looking for websites that offer them a user-friendly and interactive shopping experience. As a result, eCommerce companies are in a frenzy to keep up with the demands of their online shoppers.
As new functionalities and upgrades come to the market, eCommerce store owners try to make them available to their customers as soon as possible. Sometimes, this can be unfavorable as websites aren’t tested in a hurry and could be poor-performing or, worst cases, about to collapse. Quality issues with eCommerce websites can quickly cause dissatisfied customers and lost marketing and sales opportunities. For any ecommerce business, quick and effective testing translates to exceptional customer experience leading to a profitable business.
As eCommerce websites become sophisticated, QA testing has become important to ensure that the website corresponds to the changing market trends. Hence the role of QA in the eCommerce ecosystem is vital. A QA team works to prevent the recurrence of defects in your website, thus improving the quality of the website and making it easier to include features and products in the future. With proper quality assurance on your website, you save money and gain a competitive advantage.
How Do You Go About Quality Assurance Testing?
Quality assurance testing is the process of checking that an eCommerce website meets standards for quality and completeness. Quality assurance testing can also be done by a group of people who are not developers but know software development practices. These people are called “QA testers,” and companies usually hire them to do this work. QA testers evaluate the website in its current state. They will test it and provide feedback on what they find. Quality assurance specialists have experience testing software/websites to see if it follows specific requirements or has a bug that needs fixing. If developers are working on changes to the software. Quality assurance testers can also help check for errors in those changes and ensure that everything is working properly. Software testing & quality assurance in eCommerce involves several types of testing. Below is the eCommerce testing checklist:
- Functional testing
- Usability testing
- Database testing
- Performance testing
- Security testing
- Mobile Application Testing
- A/B Testing
Risks Prevented by Quality Assurance Testing
eCommerce testing can prevent several website quality risks, such as:
Unavailability of an online store
This is a common problem during peak seasons, such as Black Friday. Online stores can stop working due to the high number of website visitors. The quality assurance manager or team can perform a QA audit of your eCommerce website beforehand and prevent your website from becoming unavailable, say on Cyber Monday!
Weak search functionality
When a website has weak search functionality, it means that the site does not have an efficient way for people to find what they are looking for. Website owners should avoid this because it leads to low customer satisfaction and conversion rates. The QA analyst can help you prevent this problem by testing the site with different browsers and devices and internet connections. When they do this, they will be able to identify which browsers and devices are more likely to cause problems with your site’s design or functionality when compared with others. The next step in preventing this problem is testing the site’s performance on various internet connections by simulating slow connections or disconnecting from Wi-Fi.
Slow loading speed
Slow-loading websites can lead to a high bounce rate, low customer satisfaction, and decreased revenue. Quality assurance is important for website owners because it helps them to identify potential problems before they affect their site. It also ensures that the website will load smoothly on different devices and browsers.
Poor shopping cart functionality
Implementing quality assurance into the design and development process can prevent poor shopping cart functionality. This will ensure that all necessary requirements are met before launching the product to the public.
Misleading analytics
One of the steps in quality assurance is ensuring that a product or service meets specific standards. It also includes providing a website free from bugs and other errors. Poor analytics can be misleading. It can give you false information about how your site is doing. Quality assurance helps to make sure these poor analytics don’t happen.
What Features Are Tested By QA Tester in eCommerce Website Testing?
Website Functionality for different user scenarios
QA tester will ensure their website is compatible with different user scenarios. They can test their website by following these steps:
- Identify the user scenario that they are testing for.
- Identify the set of tasks the user will perform on the site.
- Make a list of all the site’s pages and identify what content each page contains.
- Identify which pages have content that any changes to accessibility or usability would impact.
- Create a test plan for how to test each page and how to measure success for each task.
- Test all the pages in your plan and make changes based on feedback from testers and your observations about how well things work out in practice.
Compatibility with web browsers
The compatibility of a web browser with a website is tested by using different browsers to see if they meet the requirements.
Application workflow
Testing application workflow involves identifying all potential risks and threats to eCommerce website quality. Risks also include threats from outside sources, for example, suppliers. Inspection points are determined so that QA testers can monitor the quality of the website at different stages. The quality assurance specialist sets corrective steps in case of faulty or poor functionality.
Mobile responsiveness
Mobile responsiveness is about more than just creating mobile-optimized content. It’s about ensuring that your site’s features are accessible to mobile users, including navigation, forms, buttons, menus, images, videos, and more. Mobile responsiveness is a quality assurance issue for web designers and developers. It’s also an important consideration for businesses and organizations that want to reach their customers on the go.
Security and vulnerability assessments
QA engineers perform security and vulnerability assessments during the software development cycle phase. QA engineers must conduct this assessment early to ensure the software is safe. The assessment should also be done before each software release for a new version or update.
Social media integration
Increasingly companies are using social media to engage with their customers and monitor and assess their target customer’s behavior. Many companies are using social media integration as a quality assurance method, and it’s becoming more popular. Companies use social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc., for customer feedback and reviews.
SEO related aspects
SEO is a crucial aspect of Quality Assurance. A sound QA engineer should be able to identify and fix issues that can cause a website to rank poorly in search engines.
Key Takeaways
Quality assurance and hence the role of QA in eCommerce is important for the online store. It ensures that the website performs at its optimal levels, reaches its target audience, and provides a great user experience necessary to attract and retain customers. It is important to think about quality assurance early in the design and development process because this will help to avoid any major issues with the website/software. Quality assurance also makes it easier to add new features/updates to the website in the future. Tekglide provides top-notch quality assurance testing to its clients to ensure that their eCommerce store runs smoothly and provides a great user experience. A great online customer experience ensures that your website can attract and retain the target customers. So, make sure to book us a call now.
