Digital transformation has become
imperative for businesses including the ones in the retail sector to remain
competitive and deliver superior customer experiences. The growth in eCommerce
has seen a phenomenal increase in the past few years with customers taking to
online shopping with vengeance. According to statistics, eCommerce has seen a quantum
jump from $1336 billion in 2014 to $4206 billion in 2020. It is further
expected to reach $6542 billion by 2023 (Source Statista.) Since so much is
riding on these companies, they should ensure the customer experience to remain
top-notch. And when it comes to delivering superior customer experiences, a
host of factors lies behind. These include performance, throughput, seamless
navigability, attractive images galleries, and strong and secure payment
gateways, among others.
Of late, eCommerce companies have
entered into the domain of mobile applications given the huge number of
customers using such apps on their smartphones on the go. The convenience
offered by such apps has made them highly sought-after by the customers.
However, all said and done, these apps are vulnerable to both performance and
security issues. Performance-wise, the apps may slow down while loading or
transacting, give erroneous counts, become non-responsive across devices, and
many more. On the other hand, security has arguably become the biggest issue to
plague the apps. Again, if statistics are referred then the average cost of
security breaches will cost economies a whopping $150 million by the end of the
year 2020 (Source: Juniper Research.) So, the need of the hour for enterprises
developing such applications is to invest in eCommerce performance testing.
Why eCommerce performance testing?
Since eCommerce applications have
interfaces with various financial instruments like bank accounts, credit/debit
cards, or digital wallets, among others, they need to be secured. Also, since
these applications deal with inventory management in real-time in both B2B and
B2C environments, they should be tested on various parameters. Let us
understand why businesses need to employ a performance
testing strategy for eCommerce applications.
# Various platforms: eCommerce
applications are accessed from various device platforms such as smartphones,
desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets. Since these devices have different
hardware and software configurations, the performance of any eCommerce
application will be determined on the strength and capacity of these
configurations. However, with the performance testing of eCommerce applications, the seamless performance of such
applications can be ensured to a greater degree. And since performance is
directly related to customer experience, the more the merrier.
# Different browsers: eCommerce
applications contain rich images, social media plugins, product descriptions,
and payment gateways, which help in converting visitors into customers. Since
these applications containing such elements open in different browsers such as
Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, etc., they need to function
seamlessly. With a stringent performance testing
exercise, any glitch preventing the smooth functioning of such applications can
be identified and fixed.
# Load and stress thresholds: eCommerce applications, especially in a B2C environment,
handle a lot of traffic during certain times of the year – black Friday sales,
Christmas sales etc. If their performance during such times of high traffic
goes down the customer experience invariably takes a hit and brands end up
earning flak for themselves. Further, the functionality of such applications
can often be affected by the customer-friendly designs (read rich images,)
which can only be validated through eCommerce
application testing. The testing would confirm whether the functionality
of an eCommerce application performs to its optimum when the traffic is very
high or there are issues related to network or slow server speed. A robust performance testing approach can bring
about parity between customer-friendly designs and performance of the
application during extreme load conditions.
# Fixing glitches: In the
highly competitive business environment of today where customer experience is
arguably the best differentiator, ensuring the performance of an application is
critical. If an eCommerce application is delivered to the market without proper
testing then the resident glitches can play havoc. In addition to affecting the
performance of the application in terms of lowered throughput, navigability,
functionality, or usability, they can cause security issues. For example, any
vulnerability within the application can be exploited by hackers to steal
sensitive financial information like credit card or bank account details. The
customers can end up losing money – a distinct possibility. So, if proper
security and eCommerce performance
testing in the Agile-DevOps mould are implemented in the SDLC, the
glitches can be identified and fixed early.
# Brand equity: A
glitch-prone eCommerce application can discredit a brand when dissatisfied
customers vent their anger in the form of lawsuits or negative reviews. And
when the entire strategy of businesses revolves around popularizing the brand,
such a situation of losing brand equity can come as a big jolt. It is only
through implementing performance
testing that businesses can avoid getting hit in terms of brand equity.
What performance testing strategy should be followed?
Testers should consider the
below-mentioned factors while planning eCommerce
performance testing.
Performance across geographies: Ecommerce applications are accessed by customers across
the length and breadth of a country or even continents. Testers should ensure
the performance of such applications is not affected by the geographic location
of the customers. This involves testing the key workflows and functionalities.
Page loading speed: It is
said that most customers (around 57% as per stats) tend to discard an
application if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. E-retailers should ensure
that the page load speed of their eCommerce applications should not suffer,
especially during peak traffic. Using eCommerce
load testing, QA specialists can validate the performance of an
application by creating virtualized users across geographies, device platforms,
and networks.
The steps involved in conducting performance testing are:
·
Building a test
environment
·
Selecting the performance
metrics to be tested
·
Writing the test
automation script, selecting the tool, and execute
·
Reviewing the test
result
Conclusion
With growing digitization of
enterprises, especially of retail, the usage of eCommerce applications will
only grow further. To ensure their performance remains top-notch and security
intact, they should be subjected to extensive performance testing. This is important to retain customer trust
and enhance brand equity.
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