E-commerce Testing

Q: How to test a catalogue page?

Design - The site’s appearance follows the requirements. Filters - The goods are filtered correctly; - The filter matches the general checklist requirements. Adding products to the shopping cart - Every product can be added to the shopping cart; - Visual confirmation that a product has been added to the shopping cart. Number of product units - If the catalogue page lets you choose the number of product units to purchase, the same number of units should be added to the shopping cart; - The quantity field on the catalogue page follows the character limit; - Product counter; - The number of products in the shopping cart is updated when new products are added to it; - Optional. The quantity field takes warehouse stock into account. Changing the mini shopping cart - When products are added or removed from the shopping cart, their sum and number are recalculated. Tags - If the admin assigns a parameter to the product (New, Bestseller, Sale, etc.), that parameter is displayed on the product card and the catalogue page.

Q: How to test a product page?

Page title - The page title is generated correctly; - The page title contains the name of the product. Product information - The product information is displayed correctly; - Extra blocks are displayed. Adding products to the shopping cart - Adding a product to the shopping cart is possible; - Visual confirmation that a product has been added to the shopping cart. Return to the product list - There is a link or breadcrumbs to return to the product list. Number of product units - Product counter; - If it's possible to choose the number of product units to purchase, the same number of units should be added to the shopping cart. Tags - If there are New, Bestseller, Sale, etc. tags assigned to the product, they show up on the product page.

Q: How to test a shopping cart?

Price calculation - Learn how discounts work, check the site's calculation algorithms; - All existing discounts are applied properly; - The order sum is calculated correctly; - The sum is calculated while taking coupons, discounts, delivery, commissions, etc. into account. Filling out the Quantity field - When too many characters are entered, the site waits for the data to be edited to either 0 characters or their maximum number. This is accompanied by a warning; - When letters or characters are entered, either further typing is blocked or an error message is displayed; - When a small number is entered in the quantity field, the site expects it to be immediately changed to a correct value; - When the number 0 is entered, the item is deleted from the cart. A confirmation message pop-up is advisable; - When negative numbers are entered, either typing is blocked, the number is reset to its previous value, or an error message appears; - When numbers are entered in the Quantity field the full order price is instantly recalculated accordingly. Return to catalogue - The link to return to the catalogue is present. Proceeding to order - When the user clicks the Order button, they are taken to the order page or to the next stage of entering order information.

Q: How to test a mini-cart?

Working alongside the main cart - The shopping cart page doesn’t have a mini-cart; - The mini-cart is present, but it behaves in sync with the main one. Removing items - The cart page has has working links for removing items; - When the removal link is clicked, the item is removed without the page reloading. The order price is recalculated; - When all items are removed from the shopping cart, a message similar to “The shopping cart is empty” appears. The header of the item table and all price-displaying elements are hidden.

Q: How to test the order placing feature?

Forms - All forms function correctly. - Authorised users have fields auto-completed with the data from their profile. Order information - The information about the items ordered and their quantity is displayed correctly. Order sum - The full order sum is displayed correctly. Selecting the delivery address - If authorised users have the function to save delivery addresses, a field for selecting a saved address is displayed, along with the option to create a new address; - When selecting a saved address, all the fields are auto-filled correctly. - When a new address is selected the address fields are cleared. Order history - The order is displayed in order history; - When the order is saved to the system, it is displayed in the user profile on the “Order history” page with the correct status and order data. Administrator information - The information is displayed to the administrator; - The administrator sees the payment and delivery methods selected in the admin view and an automated email. Sending an automated email - When the order is placed successfully, an automated message with order information is sent to the email provided by the user; - When the payment for the order is complete, the administrator receives an email with new paid order information. The dependency between delivery and payment methods - When an order is placed, payment options are correctly displayed depending on the delivery method and vice versa, if such dependencies exist. Unauthorised user - If registration is necessary to place an order, an unauthorised user gets a lazy sign-up form, a sign-up link, and a log-in link pop-up.

Q: What else should I test on the e-commerce website?

Payment receipt - If the store has payment receipt functionality, there is a link to generate and print a payment receipt; - Payment receipts are generated correctly. Status changes - The website admin can change the order status, payment status, and delivery status; - The admin's email address for receiving letters about new orders can be changed in the settings.

What is considered e-commerce?

To put it simply, e-commerce is the notion of purchasing and selling products and services online; developing your own online store or setting one up using Instagram or Telegram.

But the people who have the ability to look a bit deeper will tell you that e-commerce isn’t limited to buying and selling things online. It’s also the sum and relationship of all the constantly changing (ultraflexible) business processes that include every stage of fulfilling an order, from its creation to delivery.

Those that can see e-commerce for the quickly growing business niche it is today will say that e-commerce is the future that’s been ten years in the making. Starting with the development of the first primitive online shops to acquiring local coverage, it will continue to develop further, becoming a global process of interaction between a common user and the enterprise – the production line.

To me, e-commerce is an ecosystem with a large array of different functions and opportunities that’s built into our dynamically developing world. It’s a system that grows and expands alongside the blazing fast evolution of technology. The final goal of its development is the complete automation of orders and fulfilment of human needs, where humans are either completely uninvolved or only act as a controlling organ.

The growth of the e-commerce market

According to Statista, the retail sales of e-commerce worldwide will keep growing extensively up until 2025. The simple reason for that is the fact that modern day customers make purchases using both traditional web applications and native mobile apps.

E-commerce testing: Retail sales of e-commerce — Source: Statista

The development of e-commerce

The e-commerce industry has seen some great advancements in recent years, in large part thanks to the development of various software technologies. Let’s look at the three most prominent examples.

Progressive Web Applications (PWA) for e-commerce

The development of technologies bears mentioning as well. The Progressive Web Application (PWA) technology has marked a big leap for e-commerce, since it removed the need for business owners to develop a separate iOS and Android application and, by extension, to spend money on publishing apps on the App Store and Google Play.

The two main advantages of PWA in e-commerce are:

The ability to create an icon similar to one that a classic mobile app would have. Clicking it will still take the user to the web version of the app, as if they were accessing it through their browser.
The ability to send Push notifications to users. This will keep them updated on all the sales, promotions, and business activities, closing the distance between the brand and its customers to the point that’s impossible to achieve with a regular browser.

We will gladly help you develop an application like that.

Enhanced delivery chains

Delivery chains and logistics have seen great development in e-commerce. When an order is made, a signal is sent to an integrated delivery system. That system depends on the preferences and legal agreements of the business owner, as well as on the geography covered by the delivery service.

Then the signal can be sent to a warehouse, where it will be processed by an automated warehouse management system, after which it will be sent to the customer. This is a very surface-level description, but it is enough to demonstrate how many automated processes can be set in motion by the user pressing the “buy” button.

E-commerce and IoT

Don’t forget the intense growth the Internet of Things has been experiencing recently. Many modern houses have a smart speaker that can create and send a product list to the nearest store upon the user’s vocalised request.

Further development of this field will lead to the creation of a 100% automated system, where the smart house will be fully responsible for ordering and delivering food, hiring cleaning services or repair workers. And yes, this is still that e-commerce we’ve been talking about for the past couple of minutes.

E-commerce CMS platforms

CMS (Content Management System) is a website filling system. Picture a storefront display with a lot of shelves – CMS is those shelves. You can increase the size of the shelf, select a theme for it, and change the way it looks. You can set up how the products will be displayed and in what quantities. You can create conditions under which a product will leave the shelf and the storefront, as well as decide what to show a potential customer in case there are no products left on the display. And CMS aren’t just applicable to storefronts, they can also be used for blogs, closed business systems, and many other things.

The functionality of a CMS surpasses that of a website constructor. There are many ad banners and links to website builders on the Internet, and all of them claim that they can help you create a fully-functional online store, even if you have zero software development experience.

But is that really true? – Yes! Certainly. It’s a great solution if your business or e-commerce startup is aimed at providing one kind of product or service with a region of operation that is roughly the size of a small town. But if you have no development experience and are launching an international high-grade e-commerce project or a startup integrated with systems like Inventory Management, Product Information Management, E-commerce Warehouse Management, etc., then you will need a team of professionals to handle it. They will not only develop the project from scratch, but also test it to ensure the end result is of the highest quality; that way future customers will keep returning to your store for years to come.

Compare your idea to our recent projects. If you see anything similar in theme or scale, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Now let’s look at the main CMS in e-commerce before we discuss why testing is especially important for e-commerce projects. Based on this pie chart, the leaders are Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify.

E-commerce testing: Main CMS in e-commerce — Source: AheadWorks

Magento

The absolute leader on the market is Magento. Magento has two versions: Magento Open Source and Magento Enterprise.

Magento Open Source has a primitive – or, better say, minimal – set of out-of-the-box functions, which can be massively expanded with a large number of custom modules from different developers.

At the same time Magento Enterprise offers a full spectrum of features, with all necessary and not-so-necessary functions available from the get go. The price of Magento Enterprise is quite high, especially when compared to the free Magento Open Source. However, extra Magento Open Source modules can also cost you serious money.

So, when it comes to the efficiency of Magento-based projects, we can conclude the following: if the project is built on Magento Enterprise, it will be more stable and high-quality from the start. A project made on Magento Open Source will be more profitable for the client (due to its lower price), but will likely encounter a lot of quality problems because of having an array of different custom modules.

These third-party modules may have internal bugs and conflict with certain Magento versions. Moreover, there is a high probability of these integrated modules coming into conflict with each other, if they come from different manufacturers. This will very likely happen with websites that haven’t been migrated to Magento 2.

WooCommerce (WordPress)

To understand WooCommerce, you first need to understand WordPress. WordPress is a worldwide CMS that is especially popular among bloggers, writers, and the creators of static low-load websites. This CMS operates based on templates and plugins. Not unlike Magento, it lets users integrate a lot of varied functions that can help one’s website shine in the endless Internet expanse.

Among the above mentioned plugins, WooCommerce stands as the e-commerce flagship. It allows users to create an Internet store structure, complete with all the necessary functionality.

In terms of testing, online stores and projects built on WooCommerce have a very significant flaw: load handling. WordPress isn’t designed to deal with high loads, so projects built on it will neither have a worldwide, multiplatform, and multifunctional reach, nor have a lot of APIs connected to delivery services, exchange rates, and bonus cards.

Shopify

Shopify is also one of the leading e-commerce CMS. Essentially, it’s a more complex website constructor similar to Magento and WooCommerce, though it does have its fair share of differences.

Firstly, it was meant to be a purely e-commerce platform from the very start. This means that it won’t have any blockers or problems when you try to integrate your store with various third-party services. There also shouldn’t be a problem if the website has a lot of concurrent users.

Secondly, Shopify is very affordable if you’re a business owner, and especially if you are a startup, which needs to carefully manage every penny. When any blocker can affect the development of the project, having a low price is a significant advantage.

Of course, Shopify development has its disadvantages. A casual user will most likely be unable to create fully-functional service integrations or customise the store’s frontend due to a higher-than-average level of complexity.

When we develop with Shopify, we harness our own experience and established principles of working with the platform.

Shopify’s multilanguage and multicurrency functionality deserves special attention, as it always presents a particular challenge during the process of quality assurance. In a way, it tests the ability of the QA specialist working on it.

What is e-commerce testing?

e-Commerce testing refers to testing the different elements of an e-commerce website or mobile app. This includes checking if its functionality, design, integrations, and miscellaneous features work correctly, as well as ensuring decent load handling, security, and general good performance.

This is rarely a one-and-done process – proper e-commerce testing is done continuously and is mandatory before the release of each new iteration. A well-tested (that is, an easy-to-use, fast, and reliable) website will increase conversions and ensure customer loyalty.

How do you test an e-commerce product

Anyone who wants to make an online store can do e-commerce testing either on their own or with the help of a development team. If you choose to refer to an experienced company, project development will include both creating and testing the application. Testing specialists won’t just be checking if the buttons work or not, they will also conduct tests on the following aspects:

Load limits;
Security;
Database stability;
Correct data processing in the backend (read more about it here);
Third-party services integration;
Internalisation and localisation of the project.

But technically speaking, anyone who has made their own e-commerce project or startup can test and evaluate its surface-level quality by using the following simple checklist.

How to test an e-commerce website

Here’s a basic testing checklist you can use for your e-commerce website. It will help you ensure its surface-level quality and highlight the parts that need improvement.

How to test a catalogue page?

Design
– The site’s appearance follows the requirements.

Filters
– The goods are filtered correctly;
– The filter matches the general checklist requirements.

Adding products to the shopping cart
– Every product can be added to the shopping cart;
– Visual confirmation that a product has been added to the shopping cart.

Number of product units
– If the catalogue page lets you choose the number of product units to purchase, the same number of units should be added to the shopping cart;
– The quantity field on the catalogue page follows the character limit;
– Product counter;
– The number of products in the shopping cart is updated when new products are added to it;
– Optional. The quantity field takes warehouse stock into account.

Changing the mini shopping cart
– When products are added or removed from the shopping cart, their sum and number are recalculated.

Tags
– If the admin assigns a parameter to the product (New, Bestseller, Sale, etc.), that parameter is displayed on the product card and the catalogue page.

How to test a product page?

Page title
– The page title is generated correctly;
– The page title contains the name of the product.

Product information
– The product information is displayed correctly;
– Extra blocks are displayed.

Adding products to the shopping cart
– Adding a product to the shopping cart is possible;
– Visual confirmation that a product has been added to the shopping cart.

Return to the product list
– There is a link or breadcrumbs to return to the product list.

Number of product units
– Product counter;
– If it’s possible to choose the number of product units to purchase, the same number of units should be added to the shopping cart.

Tags
– If there are New, Bestseller, Sale, etc. tags assigned to the product, they show up on the product page.

How to test a shopping cart?

Price calculation
– Learn how discounts work, check the site’s calculation algorithms;
– All existing discounts are applied properly;
– The order sum is calculated correctly;
– The sum is calculated while taking coupons, discounts, delivery, commissions, etc. into account.

Filling out the Quantity field
– When too many characters are entered, the site waits for the data to be edited to either 0 characters or their maximum number. This is accompanied by a warning;
– When letters or characters are entered, either further typing is blocked or an error message is displayed;
– When a small number is entered in the quantity field, the site expects it to be immediately changed to a correct value;
– When the number 0 is entered, the item is deleted from the cart. A confirmation message pop-up is advisable;
– When negative numbers are entered, either typing is blocked, the number is reset to its previous value, or an error message appears;
– When numbers are entered in the Quantity field the full order price is instantly recalculated accordingly.

Return to catalogue
– The link to return to the catalogue is present.

Proceeding to order
– When the user clicks the Order button, they are taken to the order page or to the next stage of entering order information.

How to test a mini-cart?

Working alongside the main cart
– The shopping cart page doesn’t have a mini-cart;
– The mini-cart is present, but it behaves in sync with the main one.

Removing items
– The cart page has has working links for removing items;
– When the removal link is clicked, the item is removed without the page reloading. The order price is recalculated;
– When all items are removed from the shopping cart, a message similar to “The shopping cart is empty” appears. The header of the item table and all price-displaying elements are hidden.

How to test the order placing feature?

Forms
– All forms function correctly.
– Authorised users have fields auto-completed with the data from their profile.

Order information
– The information about the items ordered and their quantity is displayed correctly.

Order sum
– The full order sum is displayed correctly.

Selecting the delivery address
– If authorised users have the function to save delivery addresses, a field for selecting a saved address is displayed, along with the option to create a new address;
– When selecting a saved address, all the fields are auto-filled correctly.
– When a new address is selected the address fields are cleared.

Order history
– The order is displayed in order history;
– When the order is saved to the system, it is displayed in the user profile on the “Order history” page with the correct status and order data.

Administrator information
– The information is displayed to the administrator;
– The administrator sees the payment and delivery methods selected in the admin view and an automated email.

Sending an automated email
– When the order is placed successfully, an automated message with order information is sent to the email provided by the user;
– When the payment for the order is complete, the administrator receives an email with new paid order information.

The dependency between delivery and payment methods
– When an order is placed, payment options are correctly displayed depending on the delivery method and vice versa, if such dependencies exist.

Unauthorised user
– If registration is necessary to place an order, an unauthorised user gets a lazy sign-up form, a sign-up link, and a log-in link pop-up.

How to test payments and ordering status in e-commerce?

Payment system
– The battle server has a real payment system activated;
– When the user proceeds to payment they are directed to the selected payment method.

Recalculating the sum
– The sum is correctly recalculated depending on the delivery method;
– The sum is correctly recalculated depending on the payment method.

Cancelling the order
– If the order is cancelled during the booking stage, the products remain in the shopping cart.

Order status
– The order status is changed after payment;
– The order status in the admin panel is changed after payment;
– When the order is placed successfully, all items are deleted from the basket;
– Status is set during saving;
– When the order is saved to the system, it gains a correct status (“Awaiting payment” if it’s unpaid, “Paid” if it’s paid).

The contents of the email sent to the user about the order
– The email sent to the user about the order contains a correct link to the order history page.

Data transfer to the administrator panel
– All data is correctly transferred to the administrator panel (sum, discounts, notes, order structure).

Message after a successful or unsuccessful payment
– After the payment has been confirmed successful, the user is transferred to the page that says how much was paid and for what, as well as what to do next;
– If an error occurs during payment, the user is told how to attempt it once again.

Saving order data
– When an order is saved to the system, all data about the products, their quantity, the delivery address, the recipient, payment methods, and delivery methods is transferred correctly.

Link to return to the basket
– There is a link to return to editing the order.

A “Thank you” page
– When the order is placed successfully, the user is transferred to a page with brief information about the order and a description of what the store will do next.

What else should I test on the e-commerce website?

Payment receipt
– If the store has payment receipt functionality, there is a link to generate and print a payment receipt;
– Payment receipts are generated correctly.

Status changes
– The website admin can change the order status, payment status, and delivery status;
– The admin’s email address for receiving letters about new orders can be changed in the settings.

E-commerce testing tools

E-commerce testing is mainly powered by the QA engineers’ experience and, of course, specialised tools. These can be paid or freeware, and the latter can be just as useful as the former in determining the quality of an online store, for example. Let’s take a look at a couple of them.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a tool that ascertains the page’s productivity on mobile and desktop and offers ways to improve it.

A PSI page contains both artificial and field data. Artificial data is useful for fixing performance errors, since it’s gathered in a controlled environment. But it won’t always account for some real-world bottlenecks. That’s why field data is irreplaceable when gathering true, actual user experiences. Though, it comes at the cost of having a more limited number of indicators.

Selenium

Selenium is a set of products that covers projects with a broad variety of tests, most of which have to do with automation. What makes it stand out among other tools is that the program set is open source. They’re also convenient to use and easy to adapt to the object that’s being tested.

Jmeter

Jmeter is a program for automated load testing. We’ve talked about it in more detail here – check it out, it really is interesting.

Challenges of e-commerce testing

There are a number of industry-specific challenges you should be prepared for when delving into e-commerce testing.

Availability of integrations

A lot of e-commerce applications are built using CMS or such platforms as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. These heavily rely on third-party integrations to calculate taxes, handle deliveries, manage payments, support gift cards, and hold all kinds of promotions.

It’s not just that these integrations must be tested thoroughly. Everything can work perfectly at the time of the app’s release, but as your solution receives gradual updates (or as the integrated third-party software rolls out new versions), new compatibility and performance issues may arise. If that does happen, the team will need to rework the integration or switch to a different service completely, so integration testing requires special attention in e-commerce.

Cross-platform complications

Today, more people than ever before use their handheld devices to buy goods online. Because of that, e-commerce websites need to be built with mobile systems in mind, which often means developing a special iOS and Android app.

As a result, the QA team will need to consider a massive number of possible hardware and OS combinations when testing – and that’s on top of testing the desktop and mobile versions of the web app. There is a selection of cloud-based test automation tools that can be harnessed for parallel testing on a range of browser and desktop combinations. But naturally, this development still lengthens and complicates the testing process.

For one, automation tests must be designed in a way that prevents UI changes from affecting the testing logic, which is not always an easy task. Here, POM (Page Object Model) will be of great help, as its test logic and the search for web locators are loosely coupled.

And generally speaking, cross-browser tests must prioritise the most popular devices and platforms, which requires additional market research. Selenium and Cypress are great tools for streamlining the testing process, and, of course, there’s always the option to hire e-commerce specialists to make it more thorough.

Changes in the catalogue

Online stores tend to expand their catalogue either horizontally or vertically. Regardless of the way your e-commerce software scales, the process of testing it will become more complex as the online shopping application grows.

Firstly, since the store will present more options for its customers, the website’s traffic is likely to spike. This will increase the need for regular load and performance testing, so that the store keeps operating at a stable and fast level with large numbers of simultaneous users. And be ready for these spikes being especially huge during Holiday seasons.

Conclusion

There are many different practices and approaches out there, but e-commerce is often singled out because it combines two very important functional nodes: “Payment – Order” to “Order – Delivery”. Even the smallest deviation in the factual result of the node’s operation can bring about disastrous consequences, such as one of the sides losing money or the loss of delivery.

You must assess the risks extremely carefully if you wish to develop an e-commerce project by yourself, as the spectrum of elements that require testing will be far broader than those provided in a typical surface-level checklist. But it will result in a genuinely high-quality, reliable, and competitive product.