There are several e-commerce platforms available and choosing the right one becomes a tedious job. Among the top platforms, Shopify has been growing exponentially mainly because it is easy to start, manage, and keep growing the online business. The aspect of hosting a store to customization has made it a preferred product among retailers. In this blog, we will focus on the testing challenges that Retailers face with Shopify and what testing solutions should adopt in order to provide the best experience for end-users.

Why Retailers Choose Shopify?

There are more than 800,000 stores powered by Shopify. By holding the top position in the e-commerce business, the platform has a cutting-edge technology that supports multiple layers of the business and empowers them to play from a single habitation. With all these advantages, launching a Shopify website is a breeze for startups as well as bigger establishments; with more revenue models, a plethora of themes, and customization available, it comes with several competitive advantages.

Some of the benefits Shopify offers are:
  • Ease of Adaptation
  • Reliability
  • Customization
  • Integration with other applications
  • Pricing

Despite being a preferred product, Shopify needs more attention to its quality to provide a flawless product experience. Along with multiple areas of integration other third-party tools, opting for SSL and PCI compliance to accepting credit cards, the layers that Shopify contains are plenteous. So it’s extremely important to understand the application from a user perspective and give it a quality twist that would satisfy the need for a defect-free product.

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Why Testing Shopify Is Challenging?

As the consumers become more savvy online shoppers, their expectation to treat them with a better experience is high. So it is very important that we spend time to know them better, understand their needs, and their shopping behavior/patterns. This will considerably increase the confidence between sellers and customers thus increasing their retention rate and reduce abandoned carts. Few key challenges that Retailers face from a testing perspective are:

Customization 

Since Shopify can be dynamically customized, the probability of having a loose layer at any part of the application is possible. This may alter the way the entire functionality of the application works. It is mandatory to have the application tested with an overall perspective of the business to ensure that every functionality is said to work the way it should.

Domain Test

The application interacts with a lot of plugins to pull data and add ‘experience’ to the current workflow. The information may be just data-related or some custom plugins that help to enhance the user experience; its mandatory to see if the entire application landscape works together in a unified manner rather than working in silos. Therefore, it is essential to quality check the product to ensure it is cohesive to run the business.

Browser Compatibility Test

It’s important for the product to function the same way across all platforms, devices, and browsers. Since millennials are more inclined towards mobile shopping it is necessary to make sure the product is built and customized in such a way it gives a unified experience across devices and browsers. Testing different devices with different OS versions and also checking for multiple browsers will ensure that the product is the same across platforms.

Dynamic Data Tests

Usually, a select set of data is validated and made sure that it works fine for the applied business scenario. But many times there have been reports that keys products have failed to work the way it should in production. This brings us to test an elaborate set, predominately products that comprise 80% of the business to make sure there is no discrepancy at any given time in production. This can only be achieved using a strong distinct automation framework that would help test more in lesser time giving retailers a faster time to market with a better product.

Third-Party Application Test

Since Shopify can be customized and sized with third-party tools to make it a better product, it is mandatory to check these tools do not alter the functionality of the application. For example, it is necessary to make sure that payment works seamlessly and interaction between the product and the vendor shouldn’t modify the existing way of business. Validation of API calls would be a mandate to be sure these applications are intact.  

Performance Test

Not a single user would be happy with long waiting loading pages. The performance of the application decides the number of users who would want to return to be a customer. During the holiday season, it should be mandatory for retailers to give it a thought of having a performance test done on the application so that they can foresee the user load and make sure that the application doesn’t break at any given point of time.

How to Test Shopify Effectively?

To provide a better customer experience, the functional, security, and performance aspects of Shopify need to be extensively tested. The functional testing should start from creating the website using the Shopify admin screen, customization of different themes, adding products till setting the payment gateways. A sound test strategy is important to understand the domain and the application to build in better functional and non-functional tests.  Below are a few scenarios that might need a different test approach:

  • Themes, banners, menus, order management, checkout – A/B testing
  • Payment and wallet information – Security testing
  • Checkout procedure fast enough to make your customer smile – Performance testing

These examples would imply that there is more to test than you think in the application. Implementing Hyper-Testing kind of methodology, which is a unified approach towards designing and executing a test strategy that would cover end-to-end testing of all application layers as well as the non-functional requirements, would ensure faster time to market with better quality.

How Test Automation Can Help?

Having a framework can help achieve complete web automation for a Shopify site with 35% of ready-to-use reusable components. The pre-defined libraries for browser actions and assertions can be used extensively in Analytics testing. When the framework is accompanied by AI components, it would be able to test up to 90% of the entire product set available in the application giving a better quality platform for end-users.

DCqaf (Digital Commerce quality assurance framework) is one such test automation framework developed exclusively for testing e-commerce platforms. DCqaf framework has machine learning-enabled components that provide an interactive dashboard (live) which enables retailers to make better-informed decisions on the performance of the application.

Using DCqaf, the Shopify e-commerce platform can be efficiently tested for its functional and non-functional features and thereby create a better online shopping experience for the customers. This helps retailers to have a healthier and higher tangible benefit with faster time to market.

To know how DCqaf can help test your e-commerce platform? : Email us  Or  Click Here

FAQ 

  • Customization
  • Domain test
  • Browser compatibility test
  • Dynamic data tests
  • Third-party application test
  • Performance test

  • Have a framework which can help automate with 35% of ready-to-use components
  • Pre-defined libraries for browser action
  • Better quality platform for end-users

Aspire's DCqaf (Digital Commerce quality assurance framework) is one such framework which has machine-learning enabled components with an interactive dashboard for retailers to make better decisions. To know more click here.

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