E-Commerce Automation Testing Tools and Techniques

Automation Testing has massively improved companies’ app development and testing capabilities in recent years. For instance, automation testing helps developers verify the proper functioning of thousands of elements present in a modern application. Automation testing is also beneficial for all the modern types of apps currently emerging in the industry. E-commerce applications are a great example to justify how automation testing can massively improve the quality and functioning of an app. With the proper implementation of all the automation tools and techniques, the developers can massively improve their testing experience while developing e-commerce apps.

In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about all the tools you will require for properly implementing automation testing on e-commerce applications. We will also discuss some of the best practices that can help developers to improve their overall testing experience while implementing test automation.

Understanding Automation Testing

Understanding automation testing is very simple, as it is just what the name suggests. In this process, developers have to use predetermined test files to automatically execute the testing on multiple elements present in an application. While implementing automation testing, the developers also have the freedom to change the parameters present in the test file according to the requirements of the development project.

Another major benefit of automation testing is that it allows developers to reuse massive sections of the test code. This means developers do not have to rewrite all the test cases in future app development projects. During the initial years of automation testing, developers could introduce automation test cases only with the help of the Selenium test suite. However, with the passage of time and technological improvement, various alternatives like Cypress and Playwright have arrived in the market.

However, there are certain drawbacks of automation testing that all new app developers must be aware of. The first one is that the initial expenses of introducing automation testing are pretty high. So, sustaining the upfront expenses of automation testing might be unjustifiable for individual developers or small application development companies. So, it is a great idea to analyze your business ventures and possible returns or investment before diving into the world of test automation. Secondly, due to the massive influence of automation testing, many new developers get the misconception that automation testing can eliminate the need for manual test cases. However, it’s a complete myth; with modern technology, it is almost impossible to replace manual test cases. This is because certain testing processes, like exploratory and visual testing, require constant access to the knowledge and experience of a human developer.

Rise of E-Commerce Apps

The term “e-commerce” stands for electronic commerce. It is a modern application that helps developers bring their businesses online. With this application, end users can have a complete shopping experience within the comfort of their desktop or smartphone. Due to the busy lifestyle of modern customers, these types of applications are gaining a lot of popularity in a short time. This is because the end users can perform all the shopping payments and delivery processes while they’re at their job or even celebrating a special occasion. Currently, hundreds of e-commerce applications are available in the market serving different segments of the business industry.

We can define e-commerce apps as a piece of technology that helps developers browse and buy products from huge online stores. Market analysis shows that 85% of the online shopping segment prefers native e-commerce applications over an e-commerce website. Another statistic shows that the introduction of an e-commerce website has improved overall sales by almost 25%. This number is expected to grow by the year 2025 as the total e-commerce sale will increase by 14% by then. This is a huge segment considering that the total e-commerce sale was only 4% five years ago.

So, we can easily understand how e-commerce applications can help improve any business organization’s skills. Maintaining a proper relationship with the customers and providing them with end-user satisfaction will help companies not only build a good image for their brand but also create a huge base of loyal customers.

Role of Automation Testing in E-Commerce Apps

An e-Commerce application deals with different processes at the same time. To understand this idea, we can take the basic example, including the normal shopping practice of three steps. The first step is browsing and searching for the product. The second step is adding it to the cart and then providing your payment details. The final step in this process is to provide the delivery details and complete the transaction. Now, let us try to guess the complexity of this process because thousands of different customers will be trying to complete all of these three processes at the same time.

So, we can easily see that an e-Commerce application can highly benefit from the introduction of automation testing. This is because it is almost impossible for a human testing team to keep up with the rising complexity of these applications. However, when a company is operating an e-commerce application, it cannot afford any downtime during its lifespan. This is because even the slightest downtime can massively destroy the reputation of a company.

So, the only possible solution to this problem is the introduction of automation testing in the development environment of a company. It is also a good practice for application development companies to properly plan all the test cases before beginning the execution of the testing process. This will help the app developers and testers to avoid any unwanted surprises during the development lifecycle.

Testing Techniques for E-Commerce Apps

Now let us take a quick look at some of the most effective testing techniques that developers must implement while developing e-commerce applications:

• The first thing that the developers must perform is functional testing to avoid any issues in the application after launch. Providing a stable application is one of the best practices to create the initial reputation for a company.
• Next, the developers must perform usability testing to ensure that all the customers have a smooth buying experience with the application. It is yet another step towards achieving the ultimate level of user satisfaction for your application.
• Developers should perform security testing on the e-commerce application to ensure that all the transactions are secure. It is very important as your application will store a lot of sensitive data regarding your customers.
• Performance testing on e-commerce applications will help the developers to provide the optimum performance despite different hardware configurations.
• Cross-Browser testing will allow the developers to provide the best end-user experience irrespective of the device version, operating system, or browser version.

With the help of automation testing, the developers can automate all the testing processes that we discussed above.

Automation Tools and Platforms for E-Commerce Apps

The introduction of automation testing can be quite confusing for developers who are new to the world of test automation and aren’t accustomed to all of its testing techniques. Many developers believe that the wrong implementation of automation testing can massively slow down the testing capabilities of app development companies. The best solution to this problem is using multiple automation testing tools and platforms that are easily available in the present market. These platforms can not only help to improve the efficiency of the testing processes but can also introduce certain other additional features that can improve the quality of the final application. We can use the example of cloud platforms to further improve our knowledge of third-party integrations.

Cloud platforms help application development companies to solve issues related to physical device testing benches. Physical device testing benches consist of multiple real devices that help the developers verify the application’s functioning on these platforms. However, the current device market has become so diverse that it became almost impossible for application developers to maintain a physical device lab due to its expensive and highly rigid nature. Moreover, it becomes almost impossible for the app developers to constantly update the device test bench. So, cloud platforms help the developers initiate the testing processes on real devices on their servers. Developers can conduct unlimited testing processes from anywhere in the world on these servers by paying only a minimum license fee.

LambdaTest will be a great example to understand how cloud platforms can help developers improve their testing qualities. To introduce LamdaTest, we can say that it is a cloud-integrated bench to conduct secure cross-browser test cases on modern web applications. Cross-browser testing is almost the current market standard to ensure that your web application is of high quality. This is because cross-browser compatibility gives ease of mind that your end users will get the best experience irrespective of shifts in the operating system and browser version. LambdaTest also has various advanced features like parallel test execution to improve the test execution efficiency of the application. Using the feature of parallel test execution, the developer can initiate multiple testing instances at the same time consisting of different test configurations.

While using LambdaTest, the developers can import the test scripts from different popular test automation frameworks like Selenium, Cypress, and Playwright. Using this platform, the developers can also initiate automated cross-browser compatibility test cases on certain web applications that have local servers as their host. LambdaTest improves the accuracy of the test cases by combining different reports from simulators, emulators, and hundreds of real devices.

Conclusion

So, we can easily see that with the changing business tactics and shopping preferences, eCommerce applications will continue to gain a lot of popularity in the future market. So, it is equally important for e-commerce application developing companies to introduce automation testing and properly maintain the quality of their app. This is because end-user satisfaction is the most important parameter that helps application development companies control the bounce and retention rates.

In this competitive industry segment, it is almost impossible for companies to let go of any user base segment due to device or browser incompatibility. It is an excellent idea for app development companies to conduct frequent seminars and awareness campaigns in their development and testing teams to spread proper knowledge regarding the importance of automation testing.