E-commerce has re-invented the way companies and brands do business, and how consumers do transactions. With the aid of the Internet, transferring of funds, making purchases, marketing goods and services, managing inventories, and operating various business processes are now easier than ever and can be done from anywhere in the world.
E-commerce businesses are made tangible through applications such as websites and mobile software. It is vital for online businesses to have dependable applications; otherwise, it would be useless to for them to go online. It is therefore critical for e-commerce websites and applications to undergo rigorous testing in order to ensure that their business would be accessible from anywhere, from any time, and from whatever device. Users of e-commerce applications would shun businesses with faulty websites and undependable mobile software so testing is an absolute necessity.
Importance of Testing your E-commerce Websites
Websites are the primary e-commerce application that a business can offer. While regular websites offer nothing more than information, e-commerce websites allow actual transactions and would require a lot of testing to ensure that such transactions will work. Failure of e-commerce websites can cause devastating consequences to the business. Some shortcomings of e-commerce websites are crashing when there’s too much traffic, links that don’t direct users to the right pages, pages that don’t load fast enough, and compatibility issues with different web browsers. While these can be considered small issues, they make a business less attractive, making them lose a lot of customers.
Meanwhile, one of the gravest mistakes that e-commerce business can do is having unreliable security protocols that expose consumer information to cybercriminals. In case of a data breach, customers will be exposed to a lot of risk such as fraud. Security is of paramount concern when it comes to e-commerce business so don’t make the mistake of having unreliable security measures.
Testing your website should help eliminate these mistakes, saving you and your business from huge losses not only in money but also of your customer’s trust. Testing truly is important for an e-commerce business.
What to Test on E-commerce Websites
Your e-commerce site would require a complete test. There are lots of nooks and crannies that you should look into to avoid in the slightest issues. Here are some of the things you should test on your e-commerce website:
Application Payment Gateway
The payment gateway is one of the biggest things you have to check to ensure a secure and smooth checkout process for your customers. In your payment gateway, consider the following things:
Payment methods: ensure that you provide your customers with the payment methods you allow. Standard payment methods are a debit card, credit card, and PayPal. There are some who allow Cash for Delivery, but this would require you to partner with a trusted collection agent or a dedicated in-house team. Ensure also that if cancellations are made, refunds are possible.
Total cost: Ensure that the total cost will be calculated accurately. Ensure that VAT, shipping charges, discounts, and promos would be integrated correctly. Make it certain that the customers would be charged only for what they buy.
Invoice and confirmation: Make sure that after payment is finalized, that the customers will receive a confirmation via email and through a printable confirmation.
Returns and refunds: Provide an easy way for customers to transact refunds.
Cybersecurity and Vulnerability Issues
Cybersecurity is a huge issue in e-commerce, and even big companies sometimes face problems. Cybercrooks target the big companies because, of course, of the large potential gains that they can have if they successfully penetrate their e-commerce site. Smaller industry players should not be lax in their own security measures though as small-time cybercriminals, and those who would want easier money would also try to go for smaller businesses.
You may utilize SQL injections and ethical hacks to ensure that your site is safe from these evil doers.
Check for Browser Compatibility
Make sure that your site is compatible with different web browsers. Not everyone would be on Google Chrome because there are other web browsers that others might fancy. Ensure that your site is compatible with all of the browsers.
Mobile-friendliness of the website
Ensure that your e-commerce site is also mobile-friendly. A lot of people are primarily using mobile devices nowadays and would most likely do their transactions using their handheld devices. Doing this would help you capture a lot of potential customers as well.
Website Performance and Search Engine Optimization
Your e-commerce website should be fast and reliable to ensure a smooth experience for your customers. There is a number of tools that you can use to check the performance of your site. Examples are:
Test My Site
Pingdom
Web Page Test
GTmetrix
Also, make sure that your site can easily be seen by being active in your search engine optimization initiative. Search engine optimization techniques are constantly evolving so you will always be in-the-know of which factors can help your site rank more. You can start with Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, a help from Google itself for you to know the basic way of how search engine optimization can be done. There are also a lot of other guides out there so read them and practice them, so you can easily be seen by more potential customers.
