Bug Testing in E-commerce: How to Prevent Checkout Errors and Ensure a Smooth Customer Journey

The global e-commerce industry is a driving force in today’s economy, with sales expected to have reached $6.3 trillion in 2024, as per Statista. Businesses and consumers are becoming increasingly reliant on digital transactions, thereby making seamless online shopping experiences more critical than ever. A single bug in an e-commerce platform—especially during the checkout process— has the potential to derail the customer journey, resulting in heavy loss of revenue, damaged reputation, and reduced customer loyalty. It is, therefore, crucial for E-commerce businesses to address these challenges head-on by adopting robust automation testing of e-commerce websites and bug-tracking practices. With automation testing of e-commerce websites, businesses can proactively address bugs, ensuring that checkout errors and navigation issues don’t disrupt the customer journey.

Why Bug-Free Shopping Experiences Matter?

Trust and efficiency are the two main pillars that the e-commerce industry is built on. To have bugs in the system can disrupt these foundational principles, leading to significant repercussions for businesses. There are a number of why rigorous bug testing is indispensable:

1. Protecting Revenue

The checkout process which is the financial backbone of any e-commerce platform has the potential to be ridden by a number of bugs such as payment gateway errors, incorrect shipping charges, or failed coupon applications. Each of these bugs can lead to abandoned carts and lost sales. A Baymard Institute report revealed that 69.99% of online shopping carts are abandoned, with technical issues accounting for a large portion of these cases. With proactive bug testing, smooth functioning of these revenue-critical processes can be ensured.

2. Building and Retaining Customer Trust

To be able to go through smoothly from start to finish in the shopping experience, significantly fosters customer trust. Errors such as delayed payments or compromised data security are known to have the opposite effect. Studies have shown that 88% of users are less likely to return to a platform after a poor experience. Comprehensive bug testing builds and protects customer trust by ensuring smooth, secure, and reliable transactions.

3. Enhancing User Experience Across Devices

70% of online shopping is carried out on mobile devices, making it critical for platforms to ensure compatibility across devices and browsers. Poorly optimized features, slow load times, or layout inconsistencies are known to frustrate customers and impact retention. With effective bug testing, these issues can be identified and resolved early, ensuring a consistent user experience.

Common Types of Bugs in E-commerce Platforms:

E-commerce platforms are complex and multifaceted systems. Even a seemingly minor issue can cascade into more significant problems. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that teams possess a keen understanding of common bug types to help prioritize testing efforts:

How to Identify Critical Touchpoints for Bug Testing?

Ensuring a seamless customer journey has much to do with focusing on the right critical touchpoints during bug testing, such as:

1. Search and Navigation: Ensure users can find products quickly and intuitively. Test for accurate search results, category filtering, and pagination.
2. Shopping Cart Functionality: Verify that items can be added, removed, or saved and wishlisted without errors. Ensure the cart preserves changes across sessions.
3. Checkout and Payment Gateways: Test for smooth integration with various payment methods, secure data handling, and accurate price calculations, including offer discounts, etc.
4. Post-Purchase Flows: Validate order confirmation emails, refund processes, and delivery tracking systems.

Best Practices for Bug Testing in E-commerce

1. Leverage Automation Testing of E-Commerce Websites

Leverage automation testing of e-commerce websites to streamline repetitive tasks, validate checkout processes, and ensure cross-browser compatibility using tools like Bugasura for enhanced results. Automation testing significantly accelerates bug detection and ensures repeatable accuracy in critical workflows. Tools like Bugasura offer indispensable support for:

• Automating repetitive tasks such as form validations and payment workflows.
• Simulating real-world scenarios, including applying discounts, changing shipping addresses, and retrying failed payments.
• Ensuring multi-browser compatibility and device responsiveness.

2. Adopt Shift-Left Testing Practices

One of the key ways to minimize the risk of late-stage defects requires that testing is incorporated early in the development cycle. Integrating testing tools like Bugasura with CI/CD pipelines for continuous monitoring and conducting regular code reviews helps to identify potential issues proactively.

3. Perform Scenario-Based Testing

Real-world testing scenarios prove efficient in uncovering hidden bugs that often tend to be overlooked by traditional tests. Some examples include testing coupon applications and loyalty rewards, simulating abandoned cart recovery workflows, and stress-testing high-volume checkout processes during peak sales.

4. Focus on Performance and Load Testing

Load testing is especially critical for e-commerce businesses. Simulating peak traffic conditions to evaluate your platform’s resilience during high-demand periods helps in identifying page load times under heavy server loads, and the platform’s ability to handle high volumes of transactions simultaneously.

5. Monitor and Analyze Key Metrics

Given that tracking performance metrics is crucial for assessing the efficiency of bug-testing processes, it is essential to focus on:

• Defect Density: Identifies high-risk areas with bugs per 1,000 lines of code.
• Defect Escape Rate: Measures the percentage of bugs found in production versus pre-release.
• Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR): Optimizes workflows by reducing bug resolution time.

Case Study: E-commerce Brand that Optimized Bug Testing

Tata CLiQ, a prominent Indian e-commerce platform, recognized the need to enhance its digital marketplace to meet evolving customer expectations. To achieve this, Tata CLiQ partnered with Moolya for a comprehensive quality assurance (QA) engagement aimed at elevating the overall user experience.

Client Overview

Tata CLiQ is the Tata Group’s flagship digital commerce initiative. It offers a unique “phygital” (physical + digital) shopping experience that integrates online and offline retail. The platform features a diverse range of categories, including fashion, footwear, accessories, and beauty, and it holds exclusive partnerships with both international and domestic brands.

Challenges Presented

The primary challenges included:

• User Experience Optimization: Enhancing the overall user journey to ensure intuitive navigation and efficient interactions.
• Module-Specific Enhancements: Improving functionalities across various modules such as Customer Experience (CSE), Search and Catalogue, Supply Chain, Payment (Lower Funnel), and Customer Service.
• Competitive Analysis: Understanding and surpassing the usability standards set by competitor applications.

Solutions Implemented

Moolya adopted a holistic approach to address these challenges, focusing on end-to-end enhancement of Tata CLiQ’s marketplaces, including Tata CLiQ and Tata CLiQ Luxury. Key actions included:

• Dedicated Module Assignments: Test engineers with extensive e-commerce experience were assigned to specific modules, ensuring focused attention and expertise.
• Comprehensive Competitor Analysis: The team thoroughly tested competitor apps to identify usability and navigation gaps, providing actionable insights for improvement.
• Collaborative User Experience Evaluation: Working closely with Tata CLiQ’s technical team, Moolya analyzed user flows and app traffic to streamline processes and enhance service delivery.
• Real-Time Functionality Tracking: The testers monitored app functionalities in real time, creating detailed bug reports and implementing preventive measures for major issues.

Outcomes

Moolya’s business analysis and testing efforts led to significant enhancements in Tata CLiQ’s user experience, including:

• Improved Product Experience: Holistic testing and analysis resulted in a more intuitive and efficient user journey.
• Incorporation of New Features: Insights gained facilitated the development and integration of new functionalities, contributing to the evolution of Tata CLiQ’s offerings.
• Influence on Tata Neu Development: The analysis and improvements also played a role in the development of Tata Neu and other e-commerce applications within the Tata Group umbrella.

By going beyond traditional testing scopes and embracing a comprehensive approach, Moolya contributed to elevating Tata CLiQ’s platform, enhancing customer satisfaction, and reinforcing its position in the competitive e-commerce landscape. Tata CLiQ’s reliance on automation testing of their e-commerce website played a pivotal role in reducing cart abandonment rates and improving platform reliability during high-traffic events.

Bugasura: Revolutionizing Bug Testing for E-commerce

Why Bugasura is Ideal for E-commerce Bug Testing?

With the stakes being significant and high in the e-commerce industry, every bug—major and minor—is known to have significant consequences. By prioritizing automation testing of e-commerce websites, businesses are better equipped to identify and resolve bugs efficiently, ensuring a smooth and secure customer journey. With its advanced features and collaborative tools, Bugasura empowers teams to stay ahead of potential issues, reduce downtime, and deliver exceptionally pleasant shopping experiences. It supports automation testing of e-commerce websites by integrating with CI/CD pipelines, providing real-time analytics, and streamlining bug resolution workflows.

Are you ready to elevate your e-commerce platform?

Explore Bugasura today and revolutionize your bug testing and tracking processes.

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