The Future of E-Commerce Automation Testing
The application development market has become so diverse that almost every segment of the industry has its dedicated application. For instance, there are dedicated applications for banking, health, shopping, dating, and many others. E-commerce applications have massively improved the business sector all around the world. This is because with the help of e-commerce applications the end users can continue their shopping habits around the clock. E-commerce apps are very complex as they need to perform multiple actions at the same time. So, these applications can benefit a lot from the introduction of automation testing. Many new automation testers do not know about the scope that e-commerce automation testing has.
So, in this article, we’re going to take a deeper look into the best practices for performing automation testing on e-commerce applications. We will also try to take a broader look into the future of e-commerce automation testing.
Developing an Idea About Automation Testing
It is very simple for the application developers to create a basic idea about automation testing. As the name suggests, the principal function of these test cases is to automate. With the help of automation testing, the developers can automatically execute the test cases with the help of various parameters that are present in predetermined test cases. The automation test files also allow the developers to make principal changes in the test data according to the requirements of the development project. Another major benefit of automation testing is that the developers can store and reuse a massive section of the codebase in future development projects as well. Using automation test cases, the developers can quickly conduct various critical testing processes like functional testing, UI testing, end-to-end testing, and unit testing.
One thing that all application developers must keep in mind is that the initial expenses of introducing automation testing are quite high. Therefore, the companies won’t witness any instantaneous growth or profit with the help of automation testing. So, the most sensible approach to adopting automation testing is to consider it as a long-term investment. Moreover, small companies and individual developers must understand their business perspectives and possible returns on investment before jumping into the world of test automation. Another thing that is worth mentioning is that many new developers think that automation testing has the capability of completely replacing the need for manual test cases. It is a complete myth as technology hasn’t reached that stage where it can eliminate the knowledge and experience of a human developer. Certain testing processes like visual testing and exploratory testing can easily justify this claim.
During the initial years of test, automation selenium was the only way to execute automation testing on web applications. However, with the advancement of technology and the addition of new tools, various other alternatives like Cypress and Playwright have arrived in the market. Therefore, the developers must understand the requirements of their project and choose the correct test automation tool or framework. Various third-party tools play a critical role in improving user satisfaction while performing automation testing. We will learn more about the role of third-party tools and platforms in automation testing in the latter part of this article.
Rise of E-Commerce Apps
The term e-commerce stands for electronic commerce. It is a special category of the industry that allows end users or customers to shop online using multiple applications. The e-commerce applications can be native and also web-based. Although a recent market study shows that end users prefer native e-commerce applications over e-commerce websites. E-commerce applications play a major role in increasing sales for almost every business organization. This is because it allows the users to shop at every point of the time including when they are at a business organization or even attending a special festival. Since its introduction, the popularity of e-commerce apps has risen from 5% to almost 25%. Many market experts believe that this number will reach almost 35% by the end of 2025. Moreover, e-commerce apps have helped business organizations to boost their sales by almost 20%.
E-commerce applications help end customers to browse millions of products available in thousands of different online stores. Moreover, various ad campaigns and marketing discounts conducted by online organizations help to improve the attractiveness of e-commerce apps. All these figures easily justify the importance of creating a stable e-commerce app for a company. This is because an interactive application will not only help the developers to create a positive image for the company but will also help them to create a huge audience base of loyal customers.
Role of Automation Testing in E-Commerce
An e-commerce application consists of different processes that function at the same time to keep the application accessible to common users. To simplify the understanding process, we can define the shopping experience into three different segments. The first segment consists of the end user browsing the product on the website and adding it to the cart. The second segment will consist of the user providing the payment details and checking out. The final step is providing the delivery details and completing the transaction. Now let us improve our knowledge of e-commerce applications by trying to imagine that this process will be conducted by thousands of different users at the same time. So, it is almost impossible for complete manual test cases to verify the functioning of all these elements at the same time.
Moreover, when a company is operating an e-commerce application, it cannot afford any downtime during the application operation. So, the only possible way to complete all the testing processes without stopping the application operations is the introduction of automation testing. The application development companies should also properly plan all the testing processes. This planning stage will help them to keep adequate backup plans in case anything goes wrong. During the planning stage, it is also a great idea for the development testing and business teams to collaborate and synchronize the application testing and development plans.
Understanding the Future of The E-Commerce Testing market
The recent trends in e-commerce automation testing have given rise to certain priorities. Considering these priorities, we can predict that future e-commerce automation test cases will consist of the following:
· The integration of functional testing to ensure that the final edition of the application is functioning as expected. One of the worst nightmares of an e-commerce development company is to realize that the final application is buggy and crashing on the end users.
· The app development companies also have to perform usability testing on the application to ensure that the customers are having a smooth experience. It is very important to maintain end-user satisfaction and keep vital metrics under control.
· The performance of security testing is an important parameter for e-commerce applications as it will consist of financial transactions. The security of your application should also be properly verified as it will consist of several sensitive data regarding your customers.
· Cross-Browser compatibility testing on e-commerce applications will help the developers to ensure that the app is accessible to all segments of the user irrespective of their hardware or software configuration. It is a very important feature to expand your possible audience base.
· Lastly the performance testing of applications will help the developers to ensure that you provide the best to your end users. This is a very important parameter for application development companies to create a positive image for their brand. During this testing process, the developer has to verify the performance on several operating systems, browser versions, and device hardware.
Best Tools and Platforms for Automating E-Commerce Apps
There are thousands of tools and platforms easily available in the market which play a critical role in simplifying the application testing and development processes. However, app developers must remember that each of these tools is meant to serve a specific purpose in the application development lifecycle. Therefore, the testers need to choose the correct tool according to their requirements. Moreover, certain platforms help the developers to integrate additional features for improving the quality of the test cases. For reference cloud platforms help app developers to save a fortune by eliminating the need of maintaining an onsite device testing bench. Onsite device test benches usually help app developers to verify the functioning of their applications on multiple devices.
However, cloud platforms help app developers to achieve this goal by providing the opportunity to test the performance of the application on multiple real devices present on different cloud servers. Cloud testing has a major advantage as it helps developers to perform unlimited test configurations from anywhere in the world. We can learn more about cloud testing by shifting our focus toward LambdaTest:
We can define LambdaTest as a safe platform that helps developers to perform cloud-based cross-browser testing on modern web apps. Cross-browser compatibility testing is an important part of the modern application development lifecycle as it helps companies to provide the best apps to their customers. This is because with the help of these test cases the developers can ensure that their application remains stable irrespective of changes in the OS version or the browser version. LambdaTest also helps developers to ensure proper performance on legacy browsers that are no longer available in the market. While using this platform, the developers can import the automation test cases from multiple platforms like Selenium Cypress and playwright. It is worth noting that while using Selenium test cases the developers can execute them on more than three thousand different browser versions.
LambdaTest can generate highly accurate test reports by combining multiple results from hundreds of emulators, simulators, and real devices present on cloud servers.
The Conclusion
So, we can easily conclude that the future of e-commerce application testing is very bright. It is also one of the fastest-growing industries and has huge potential considering that the online shopping market is growing every day. So many experts believe that it is the best time for application development companies to start transitioning into this new market. However, considering the upfront expenses of automation testing, it is very important for app development companies to properly analyze their business capabilities before making the jump. It is also important for app development companies to spread proper awareness regarding the importance of automated testing on applications. Considering the huge potential of the future app market, developers should start getting themselves updated with all the recent trends.
