Why Manual Testing is Important for E-commerce Websites

What can go wrong with your e-commerce websites? Complicated checkouts, broken layouts, slow websites, payment failures, half-baked product details, and unclear navigation can all lead to lost sales, negative brand perception, and customer deterrence or dissatisfaction. 

Software testing is essential for the proactive identification of these issues. Manual testing primarily helps you imitate real users, identify website loopholes, and fix them to enhance user interaction. 

This blog focuses on understanding why manual testing is important for e-commerce websites. It also discovers the key areas where manual testing is essential and the best practices that can lead to optimum results for e-commerce companies. 

Significance of Manual Testing for E-commerce Websites

Manual testing gives a human touch to the entire Manual testing process and hence is crucial for e-commerce websites due to the following reasons:

• It makes you a dummy user, through which you can identify the good parts of the e-commerce website and determine if you are satisfied with them.
• It supports the detection of unexpected behaviours of users that go unnoticed in automated testing.
• It lets us see if the navigation is smooth, the design is interactive, and the website’s usage experience is satisfactory.
• It helps to check the different types of users and their different ways of interacting with the platform.
• It aids in identifying how people with disabilities use the platform and detects their problems when interacting. 

Key Areas Where Manual Testing Enriches E-commerce Website Functioning

Functional Testing 

Functional testing for an e-commerce platform checks its features to see whether they are functional as desired. So, you can imitate a user and check if the following works or not:

• New user registration
• Login credentials for existing users
• Product search
• Purchasing and checkout process
• Addition to and removal from carts
• Integration of inventory, order processing, and payment gateways
• Returns, exchanges, and refund requests

By testing these elements, you can check their functionality. If you find any errors or obstructions in their processing, you can correct them. Moreover, you must also investigate if adding new products or making other website changes affects any of the features or processes. Their smooth operations ensure customers stay on the website, shop, and enjoy a seamless experience. 

UI & UX Testing 

E-commerce websites aim to provide a better customer experience through a functional and interactive website. To ensure this, the website must be intuitive, address users’ needs, and be easy to explore. Manual testing is the best way to determine a website’s navigation and interactivity.

By having different types of users interact with the platform, it is easy to find how users explore different pages, try to do different tasks (buying, adding to cart, etc.), and observe the activities happening. A/B testing allows the creation of two different versions and testing both to find the one that works best. 

Manual testing makes it possible to check the accessibility to see if people with different disabilities can also use the platform easily. With user interface inspection, you can identify if layouts, designs, buttons, and links are properly designed and lead to the correct page. Thus, the user-friendliness of an e-commerce platform is an essential metric to check that can lead to higher credibility, conversion rates, and sales. 

Payment Gateway & Security Testing

Users share their data on ecommerce websites, such as payment details, profiles, and favorite products. If this data gets shared illegally, it can lead to several potential problems. So, data security and safety testing are essential. Proactively testing of these aspects leads to implementing necessary security measures, systems, and patches to avoid financial losses and reputational damages. 

Manual testing lets you check if the e-commerce platform has the necessary security certifications and protocols. Check the protection principles from cross-site scripting (CSS) and SQL injection. Performing vulnerability assessments and simulating cyberattacks in manual tests allows you to identify the threats and compromised areas. Moreover, it helps investigate the encryption of sensitive and personal data at rest and during transit. 

Performance Testing

Performance testing means testing the website’s ability to handle the load of activities under different conditions. In the usual conditions, it is easier. However, things change when there are festivals or sale periods; too many users access the website simultaneously. The inventory updates happen every second, and payment gateways are overworking. The e-commerce platform must not die down or get stuck in such situations.

Manual testing allows you to examine the load-handling capability of the e-commerce website. Load testing allows the simulation of high activity to check the impact on performance, while stress testing identifies the breaking point after which the platform stops operating. Manual testing enables one to check the website’s scalability to see if its performance remains the same when traffic increases. These tests let you investigate the website’s responsiveness, stability, and stress-handling capacity.

Cross-Browser & Cross-Device Compatibility

Does your e-commerce website work on Android? On ios? On Chrome? Safari? It is essential to check if your platform runs equally efficiently on different types of browsers, devices, screen sizes, and operating systems. Manual testing lets testers interact with the e-commerce platform on different combinations of browsers and devices to check the performance. 

In this case, you must inspect the following aspects of the website:

• Navigation of pages
• Page layouts and designs
• Correct linking of buttons
• Quality of videos and images
• Website loading times

These tests enable you to get a consistent view across different devices and operating systems so that users have a satisfactory website experience. Thus, user responsiveness and website performance across all platforms must be of high quality. 

Cart, Checkout, and Payment Testing

It is common to see e-commerce customers filling their carts with products and then abandoning them. The reasons for discarding the cart can be the complicated checkout process or limited payment options. Manual testing makes it easier to find these issues.

You can check the number of steps required, from clicking on ‘Buy’ to receiving a confirmation of the order. Investigate the number of payment methods allowed on the platform and their correct processing, the working of promo/discount codes, and the correct confirmation of the order and delivery date given. You can reduce abandonment rates by inspecting these aspects of checkout and payment processing. 

Best Practices of Manual Testing for E-commerce Websites

You know the critical areas where manual testing can improve your e-commerce website performance. Besides, you must adopt the following best practices to ensure better user satisfaction:

• Include all possible features, functionalities, and user interactions of e-commerce websites in your test cases to enable detailed manual testing.

• Keep updating your test cases based on feature additions, website changes, and unique user interactions.
• Create unique scenarios involving odd product combinations, high traffic loads, unusual behaviour, or extraordinary struggling situations to check website functionality during uncommon user behaviour. 
• Since mobile phones are the preferred devices for e-commerce shopping nowadays, mobile optimization is crucial. So, your manual testing must include checking mobile compatibility. 
• Involve real human users in managing the manual testing to allow actual feedback on all aspects of the e-commerce platform. 
• Inspect the performance consistency of e-commerce websites on all types of devices, operating platforms, and browsers. 
• You must manually test every external third-party integration on the e-commerce website – its functionality, impact on the base website, and interactivity. 
• Inventory count keeps changing every minute for e-commerce companies; so, testing its frequent updation on the front end in line with the backend is essential. 
• Manual testing must involve testing the website’s localization, including languages, currencies, units, and other cultural differences. 

Conclusion

E-commerce companies aim to make their website users’ experience enjoyable, convenient, and smooth. To achieve these objectives, you must test every feature and functionality and create an error-free, user-friendly, intuitive platform that builds trust, drives conversions, and increases sales. 

Manual testing allows you to check your website’s usability, functionality, security, interactivity, and performance. Post-testing, you must improve these aspects to surpass your competition and serve your customers with the best products and services. You can make it better and more productive by adopting the best practices mentioned in manual testing. For expert testing support, it is best to have Inevitable Infotech as your testing services provider. 

Take advantage of Inevitable Infotech’s expert manual testing services for your e-commerce business’s continued success.

Contact us today!