Essential Features to Test in E-Commerce Web & Mobile Application

At the present time, 35.13% of the world’s population owns a smartphone. With the increasing number of smartphone users, for businesses, mobile traffic is as relevant as desktop traffic.

Approximately, more than half of the internet traffic makes online purchases by using a smartphone device. Hence, company websites need to be perfect for mobile viewing, too, as it is a bare necessity.

If you successfully want to run your e-commerce website, then mobile users and mobile shopping; are the two unavoidable factors. In this tech-savvy internet world, mobile users and mobile shopping must be a potent part of your digital marketing strategy.

On the other hand, if you don’t consider these factors, it means you are ignoring a major portion of potential customers. Nowadays, the number of tablet or smartphone users is much higher as compared to desktop users, so e-commerce businesses have no option but to optimize their websites for a perfect mobile view.

If we talk about last year’s holiday season, more than 35% of online shopping originated from smartphone users.

As there is a sharp hike in the e-commerce business sector, e-commerce apps demand performance and security testing to recognize the threats in the system and map its potential vulnerabilities.

In this post, we will discuss some of the critical features of e-commerce apps that need to be tested for ideal system functioning.

Importance of E-commerce Trends

Before we discuss the features of e-commerce apps that need to be tested, let us understand how e-commerce trends are important from the business perspective. The e-commerce sector is becoming more and more competitive day by day.

If you are running an e-commerce business and you want to stay ahead of the competition, then you have no choices to make instead of monitoring e-commerce trends constantly.

It does not matter how old your e-commerce store is; if you do not walk shoulder to shoulder with e-commerce trends, then it may cost your business to stay behind in the race of competition. Before we go further, let us see some of the mind-boggling trends of e-commerce.

– Unstoppable Growth of Online Sales

According to Statista 2019 report, the e-commerce sales figures in 2014 were approximately 1.3 trillion, and by 2021, the number will jump to 4.5 trillion.

– Influence of Mobile E-Commerce

In 2017, the contribution of mobile e-commerce was approximately 34.5% of total e-commerce sales. According to experts, the sales figures of mobile e-commerce are expected to be somewhere around 54% by the end of 2021.

– Rise of Mobile Shopping

As per the 2016 sales report, mobile e-commerce sales figures grew 15% more as compared to the previous time. By 2021, 73% of e-commerce sales will be done using mobile phones.

Vital Testing Steps & Key Principles for Effective E-Commerce App Testing

Ecommerce website testing integrated with web and mobile applications is a strict necessity for businesses that have executed custom e-commerce solutions. Now the question arises – what online retailers should aim to cater to when it comes to e-commerce software testing?

Basically, there are three steps that they need to follow for bug-free software testing, let us discuss each step one by one.

– Performance Testing

First of all, they need to work on performance testing so that the app can handle a load of online transactions during the holiday season.

– Security Testing

Security testing is the next step that they need to execute to verify cyber-attacks and compliance with regulations. The primary purpose of security testing is to protect businesses against identity theft.

– Usability Testing

Finally, you need to perform usability testing. It not only helps in providing a rich user experience to your customers but also attracts them to revisit your website.

Key Principles for Effective E-Commerce App Testing

With the booming Omni Channel retailing trends, it becomes an ultimate necessity for e-commerce websites to perform robustly across all channels. Software applications, mobile apps, and unified integrated systems are the building block for an e-commerce business.

Besides, robust test management and test automation also play a significant role in this scenario.

Test automation not only helps in faster time management but also recognizes expected changes and takes appropriate steps. On the other hand, robust test management supports making the whole process more productive.

1. Dynamic Test Management for Practical Results

Test management protects the entire software system by developing a risk management process. Besides, an efficient test management strategy is a vital need for the development of web applications. Moreover, testing planning and test coverage also strengthen the execution process.

2. Cross-platform Testing to Ignore Uncertainties

Developing a test environment for e-commerce would be costly, as it covers multiple platforms. So, in this respect, Cross-platform testing can be the right call. If we talk about cross-platforms, they consist of cross-browser adaptability, which makes them ideal, concurrent, and secure for multiple browsers and platforms.

That’s why it is very crucial to hold the right automated tools for the sake of load testing and performance testing.

3. End-User centered User Acceptance Testing

Once the development work is over, it is essential to perform security testing to make sure that users can securely perform all the required activities on the website.

Moreover, user acceptance testing is a necessary call for e-commerce systems, as user experience and user behavior are the two critical factors that affect user behavior.

4. Test Automation for Responsive Go-to-Market Cycle

Test automation demands a robust test strategy, planning, scripting, and resources. Also, it helps in faster time-to-market and diminishes the cost of control in the long run. When it comes to the development of an e-commerce website from scratch, all the features need to be tested.

Moreover, Automation testing saves not only time but also operational cost, especially when the web and mobile version of a specific website goes through the testing phase at a single point in time.

5. Regression testing to ensure the functionality

Regression testing is software testing used to confirm that all the recent programs or codes are not negatively affecting the performance of existing features. Moreover, Regression testing is a collection of already executed test cases that are re-executed to make sure that the existing features of an app are working in the right direction.

Features to Test in E-Commerce Web and Mobile Applications

If you want your e-commerce web and mobile app to perform well on the scale of user experience, mobile responsiveness, customer data security, quick load time, and secure transaction, then it is damn important to test its various features.

Additionally, the success of your e-commerce app also depends upon the functionality of these features. Following are some of the important things that you need to test in an e-commerce web and mobile application:

If we talk about the testing of e-commerce web and mobile apps, there are five important components in the structure that you need to test in order to obtain satisfactory results, and these are Homepage, Product description page, Search bar, Shopping Cart, and Payment page. Starting with the Homepage, we will discuss every type one by one.

Homepage

The main image on the Homepage of a website is the very first thing that is noticed by almost every customer who visits your website. So, this image needs to be either static or dynamic, with text and images. We have listed some of the points that you need to test:

1. Auto-Scroll: It should be set to auto-scroll, and if it is already, then check the interval at which the image is set to be refreshed.
2. Test MouseOver Effect: Check whether the hover is functional, and whether the main image is clickable or not. If yes, test whether it is redirecting to the right page in an ideal time range.

Product Description Page

Once the customers find what exactly they are looking for, it would be good if they should be redirected to the product specification page after clicking the product image.

On this page, you need to test numerous points such as; Product image/price, Product details, Delivery options, Shipping Details, and Product stock/out of stock information.

Search Bar

As you know, e-commerce applications consist of several products, and you cannot show every product in front of them. So, what do you think can work here? Search bar! Yes, by using a search bar, they can easily and instantly find the items.

But, the following are some of the things that you need to keep in mind while testing the functionality of the search bar:

• Search should be on the basis of the name of the brand.
• Relevant search results
• Similar product categories need to be shown along with price, reviews, brand, and size.
• In the case of multiple page results, there should be options available to navigate them.

Shopping Cart

Once the customers choose the product and add it to their shopping cart, here are some of the things that you need to test on the shopping cart page:

• After adding the items to the cart, make sure the user can still continue shopping.
• If a user computes the same item to his shopping cart, ensure that the count of the item must increase in the shopping cart.
• The total number of items and price total should be reflected in the shopping cart.

Payment Page

This is the page where customers make payments for their purchased items. Following are some of the points that you need to test on this page:

• First of all, you need to check whether all the required payment options are available.
• In the case of guest users, give them the option to register their email/number for the website, once they are done with shopping.

Conclusion

By reading the information mentioned above, now you are aware of the vital software testing steps, fundamental principles, and features that you need to test in e-commerce web and mobile applications.

The shared information helps you take your e-commerce web and mobile app to the next level by reducing challenges associated with e-shop quality. Moreover, if you have any queries in the same context, feel free to mention them in the comment section.