The growing digitization of the retail world is pushing boundaries of eCommerce worldwide and the market is estimated to grow at $224 million in the US by 2019. Contrary to popular belief, this increased e-retailing rate has driven more customers to the physical stores- a staggering 71% of them use online research when they are scanning the store.

As the technologies to bridge online and offline worlds unfold, the logical progression is driving retailers to invest more into automated solutions- from payments to product purchase history analysis- as indicated by a Gartner report that reported a 60% increase in retail technology investment in 2016.

With great power comes greater responsibility

Testing is the backbone of any technological progress. It is thus imperative for the retailers, who are marching towards the digital future, to ensure that they have a solid testing system to back their innovations.

Aspire’s revolutionary DCqaf is a robust automation testing framework that has been designed to combat complex retail challenges. With powerful, best-in-class tools integrated, the DCqaf framework addresses difficulties that retailers face with intelligent methodologies to push them ahead of their competitors.

Digital Commerce quality automation framework (DCqaf)

DCqaf is a flexible and secure automation testing framework built to empower retailer’s eCommerce and PoS systems. From collecting test data to generating custom test reports, this framework ensures that the entire testing process is rigorous and accurate to suit every operation in retail. Apart from the in-built arsenal of powerful automation tools like Jenkins, TestComplete, TestLink, etc., DCqaf allows effective integration of third-party tools thereby allowing customization to the very last piece of code for the customer.

DCqaf

Retail testing, with its high customer-interaction rate and exponentially increasing competition, has ensured that this field has a very low-appetite for risks. Therefore the systems associated with it should be tested to ensure there is just a negligible scope for errors.

Irrespective of the nature of the system, here are some of the most prominent retail testing challenges and DCqaf’s solution for the same.

  • Time to Market: This is the most important metric of the business world and a low turnaround time is an unspoken rule in the testing arena. DCqaf’s usage of pre-automated scripts has reduced the test automation design time by 40%; the architecture’s design to support 90% shorter regression cycles and Continuous Integration capabilities ensure no room for error and will perfectly suit the ever-evolving retail scenarios.
  • Multi-Platform Integration: DCqaf has been designed with multithreading core to improve resource utilization and has a proven record of improving test coverage across browsers and devices by 90%. Its multi-browsing and mobile adaptability will ensure reduced cross-browser complexities and can be integrated on demand anywhere. Needless to say that this high flexibility will direct enormous process and operational efficiency.
  • Minimizing Testing Costs: Even though testing is an integral part of any project development, retail testing has to mandatorily be multi-dimensional owing to the industry’s demand and their customers’ needs. This leaves retailers with no choice other than to invest in the best tools and methods in the market resulting in increased spending. DCqaf aims to bring down the testing expenditure by allowing module-level customizations with easy 3rd party tool integrations thus wielding the ultimate power to the retailers.
  • Improving Reusability: DCqaf has been designed using best practices in test automation which offers more than 100 reusable components. It contains pre-automated workflows for eCommerce sites to help jumpstart script development in the test automation phase. This flexible solution has shown a 15% reduction in maintenance efforts and 30% improved returns on test automation for the customers.

Growing evidence points to us that the future of the retail world is an all-encompassing horizon with the customer at its center and seamless Omnichannel systems as the medium.  In a highly competitive environment like this industry, a solid testing framework is what differentiates the winners from the others. DCqaf framework’s one-for-all solution has ensured that retailers, irrespective of their size, worth, or geography, can manage a fully functional integrated testing system.

To know more about DCqaf and Aspire’s other testing services click here.