6 reasons why website testing services are critical for E-commerce and Retail

If you are a product-based business, chances are you will sell your offerings better on Amazon or other E-commerce marketplaces than on your own website.

A bold statement indeed, but it is true.

With the digital transformation tidal wave raging in all high and mighty, traditional businesses must either go online or face the wrath of falling sales. Thus, compelling business owners to start a website. But without the help of dedicated website testing services, your website will not produce sales but be a merely inadequate online representation of your business.

With more than 74% of people looking up a brand online before purchasing, it is essential for businesses to have a fully functional and well-tested website.

If your goals are to bring more visitors to your website and convert them into paying customers, website testing services can assist you in making it happen.

In today’s article, we will discuss the need for and importance of website testing services and how they can help you create and maintain a good-quality website and ultimately rake up your website sales.

Let’s begin.

Why are website testing services important for e-commerce websites?

We cannot stress enough the importance of verifying and validating both the front-end and back-end elements of a website. Here are some reasons why website testing services can prove to be fruitful for e-commerce portals:

They ensure that UX is apt, and everything works correctly

Performance testing is one of the critical aspects of website testing. A website that has to bring in sales and purchases must be visually flawless. This includes images, clickable elements, text legibility, navigational flow and links. In addition, a good User experience plays a crucial role in determining the future usage of the website. Therefore, a solid UX testing strategy has to be in place.

Testing can also keep other performance snags such as slow load time, surge usage performance, etc. under check. API testing services can also help perform usability testing for e-commerce APIs, checking for user-friendliness.

They secure financial transactions and amp up website safety

E-commerce sites are highly prone to cyber-security mishaps. This is because they deal with a voluminous amount of sensitive data and customer information, making them an inviting honeypot for cyber attackers.

Attacks such as credit card fraud, scam calls, phishing attempts, DDoS attacks, etc., have been prevalent in the past few years with the increased usage of online shopping sites.

Security testing is thus instrumental in providing your customers with a safe shopping experience. The security aspect is two-fold here. Firstly, retail websites need to protect customer data against cyber threats. Secondly, they want to secure their monetary transactions by setting up the necessary security and encryption mechanisms.

Thus, a robust cyber security framework designed and implemented by experienced website testing services can heighten the security walls for an e-commerce website.

They integrate all native and 3rd party applications seamlessly

Website integration occurs when all components of a single website can communicate and work together without any hassles. Integration testing is one way to ensure this.

Retail software is complex, with many components and 3rd party applications all sewn together perfectly. Website testing services perform integration tests for these software components and system interfaces to verify that they work together perfectly. API testing is an essential subset of the whole integration test suite, thus making API testing services necessary for e-commerce platforms.

They ensure that the e-commerce portal serves both desktop and mobile users alike

Mobile users account for 45% of shoppers on an e-commerce platform with a 30% greater spend (in terms of average order value) than their desktop counterparts. Also, 9 out of 10 shoppers believe that the mobile shopping experience can be improved in terms of ease of use, security and UX.

Mobile application testing is thus a pre-requisite for every e-commerce or retail website and it needs to be performed by a trusted website testing services provider.

They help in the successful implementation of OMS, WMS and TMS systems

E-commerce APIs consist of various integrated systems, used for logistics and storage management. These include OMS- order management systems, WMS- warehouse management systems and TMS- transportation management systems. An e-commerce or retail website must be well integrated with these systems to be able to update product availability and track orders.

A website testing services can test these integrations to create a seamless retail system.

They help reduce costs and speed up testing.

For in-house teams to produce strategic testing plans, execute them and then maintain them regularly can be a long stretch. This is because a lot of investment goes into hiring and training testing resources and spending a few extra dollars to set up the testing infrastructure. You can avoid this by outsourcing software testing.

Thus, by bringing in website testing services with the required expertise in the retail field, there can be cost optimization and a guarantee of deploying the software faster.

What needs to be tested on a retail website/ e-commerce portal?

Here’s a helpful checklist of a few UX elements that require testing E-commerce or retail websites:

• Homepage elements
• Rendering of images on different devices
• Image links and alt text

• Accessibility tests for differently abled users
• Navigational ease
• Search bar and auto-suggest
• Product recommendations
• Product details and specifications

• Stock information
• Shopping cart functionality
• Check out pages and payment options
• Payment gateway integration
• After order tests (for cancellations, modifications, returns)

• Login and ‘contact us’ functionalities
• Testing the submit reviews functionality

Although this list hasn’t even scratched the surface of what you must test on an e-commerce portal, it can be a helpful guide for those looking for a starting point.

Conclusion

As E-commerce websites are entangled and complex in nature, they require specialized testing, which cannot be performed by an in-house testing team alone. Quality website testing services step in and help mitigate business risks with their expertise in testing for retail.

Also, these retail portals require continuous regression test suits to keep track of the daily changes made to the interface whenever products are added or removed or when other functionalities are altered. Thus, cementing the need for testing and testing providers.

It goes without saying that retail has the fiercest battleground with the most cutthroat competition out of all the industries. So, it is only fair that it receives special attention in terms of a digital check-up. This is why website testing done by quality API testing services can truly make a difference.