A Guide to Testing your eCommerce Store
Ahead of Black Friday and the holiday season, it’s essential to perform rigorous testing of your online store. This will ensure a smooth and efficient shopping experience for your customers, and leave you with more conversions and less complaints. Which is what we all want, right? This article therefore aims to provide a guide on testing your eCommerce store.
But first and foremost, here are a few types of testing you should cover when wanting to make sure your store runs smoothly:
- Functional testing
- Usability testing
- Security testing
- Performance testing
- Mobile testing
Now, let’s take a look at a couple things to include in your checklist:
Homepage:
Although other parts of your store are important, your homepage is often what customers are directed to and see first. You therefore need to ensure that all elements on your homepage work as they should.
If you have a hero image (like most stores), make sure it’s:
- Loading correctly.
- The correct size.
- Playing the correct slideshow, in the correct order, at the correct intervals.
- Clickable (where customers can be directed to shop for products).
- Make sure that it takes them to the correct page.
Search Functionality:
This is another key feature to your site. If customers can’t easily find the products they’re looking for, chances are you’re going to miss out on a sale.
When testing the search functionality on your store, try search for products according to:
- Brand (ie: Billabong)
- Category (ie: Swimwear)
- Price (ie: $30)
- And lastly, of course try searching for each product title on your store.
Product Page:
Once you’ve tested your search functionality and all is good, then move on to your product pages.
Here, make sure to check the following:
- Your images are high-res and are the correct size.
- The price of the product is correct and visible.
- There is a clear CTA (buy now / add to cart).
- Show whether the product is in or out of stock.
- The sizes and colours are correct.
- The product description accurately describes the product and provides the customer with enough detail that leaves them without any questions.
- You have the correct reviews displayed.
- Returns and shipping information is stipulated.
Checkout & Payments:
This is arguably the most important step for customers when purchasing online. As an eCommerce store owner, you should therefore place a significant amount of importance on testing the checkout functionality and payment options of your store.
Make sure of the following:
- All products and their prices are shown at checkout.
- You’re able to click back to these products.
- You’re able to remove products or increase the quantity of the products.
- The total should be correct and updated if changes are made to quantities etc.
- You’re able to easily apply coupons or discount codes.
- Shipping costs are made visible.
- Payment options are visible upon checkout.
- Check that all work.
- Ensure the session is timed out if customers wait on the payment page for too long.
A few others to keep in mind:
- Successful login
- FAQ’s
- Contact us page
- Shipping & Returns page
Conclusion
In order to ensure your store runs smoothly during BFCM and the holiday period, it’s essential to perform rigorous testing. This will ultimately ensure a positive online shopping experience for your customers, and leave you with more conversions and less complaints! This article provided a brief guide to testing your eCommerce store.
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