(Newswire.net — October 1, 2019) — Have you ever imagined how many browsers are there over the internet, or how many devices are available in the market that can be used to browse web pages? If not, then let us tell you that the counting is endless!
And the worst part is, that each of these devices and browser is used by someone in some part of the world to probably access your website. You end visitors can use any browser or device to access your site and it is upto you to perform cross browser testing of your website to make sure that your webpage is compatible with all possible browsers. Now, let’s talk about Ecommerce websites.
Rise of the Ecommerce Websites
The world’s biggest company is primarily an Ecommerce platform. There is nothing else to endorse the importance of ecommerce business in today’s economy and way of life. Though they enjoy significantly higher traffic than average, ecommerce websites are no different than other standard sites in appearance, the only difference is that they are business applications that are used to make a profit by selling and buying products. It allows businesses to sell their products to customers digitally without any third-party interference. And there are multiple business processes involved in an Ecommerce application, such as online fund transfer, inventory management, marketing, supply chain management, etc.
However the high B2C traffic part is the most important aspect to consider when preparing testing strategy for an e-commerce website. What makes an E-commerce website stand out from other web applications is the user interface and design elements. To give your users an enjoyable experience, it is crucial that every feature on your Ecommerce website works appropriately without any lags. Thus, testing your website is a critical factor in Ecommerce development.
But, why cross browser testing?
That’s the most common question often asked by businesses. Today, we will answer why it is crucial to test the cross browser compatibility of your Ecommerce website.
What is Cross Browser Compatibility?
Verifying whether your Ecommerce website is compatible with all browsers and providing the same user experience over various devices or not is known as cross browser testing.
Your targeted audience might be using different browsers, devices, and operating systems to access your Ecommerce website. Now, each of these platforms renders HTML and JavaScript according to their rendering engine, which is usually different from others. Thus, the Ecommerce site must perform consistently across all the platforms.
We will talk about the importance of cross browser testing of Ecommerce websites, but before moving on, let’s give an overview of which browsers and pages of Ecommerce site should be tested.
Browsers to Consider for Ecommerce Cross Browser Testing
An Ecommerce website is integrated with many components that need to run together smoothly to provide great revenue for the business. Therefore, you need to execute cross browser testing for your ecommerce app across the latest versions of widely used browsers. As per W3Schools’ statistics, the most popular browser for 2019 includes Chrome (80.4% usage), Firefox (9.5% usage), Safari (3.3% usage), and Edge/IE (3.6% usage). Based on these statistics, you can easily analyze which browsers you need to test for cross browser testing of your ecommerce site.
Reasons for Cross Browser Testing of your Ecommerce App
If you are a business person, then you might understand that an ecommerce website should be reliable, usable, secure, and maintainable to generate higher revenue. One of the best ways to ensure that is testing the ecommerce app before it goes live. And cross browser testing ensures that your web app is capable of performing in the same way across all browsers for every user. Below we have mentioned a few reasons that describe why you should check cross browser compatibility of your ecommerce site.
- Different Browser Behavior
As mentioned above, every browser has its own ability to interpret things differently, which means the code used in your web app is not understood in the same way by different browsers. So, the developer has to ensure that all the targeted browser must interpret the commands in a similar way to provide a similar user experience for their website. And to analyze whether the ecommerce site is working in the same way across all browser or not, it is necessary to execute cross browser testing of your web app.
- Different Mobile Devices
Being in the 21st century, we have encountered a huge revolution in mobile technology. Thousands of mobile devices are launched every year, which makes it crucial for a web app to open correctly on each device. Thus, performing cross browser testing for an ecommerce site on multiple mobile devices is essential.
- Ensure Website Reliability
Every customer visiting your ecommerce site wants a smooth, reliable, and seamless buying experience. You really cannot afford to lose a potential customer due to some glitches in the web design. So, execute cross browser testing of your ecommerce app to verify that it is providing an excellent experience to all users no matter which browser they are using to access it.
- To Optimize Functional Features
Whether it’s an ecommerce web app or a blogging site, the functionality of a web app is always integral to interact with the customers. It is often noted that most shoppers abandon their purchase due to a slow response from websites. Thus, ensuring your ecommerce site is offering a high speed across all browsers it crucial.
- Generate a Consistent Revenue Stream
An adequately tested web app helps in moving targets through the sales funnel. Developers can easily achieve a great design and excellent features for an ecommerce site, but verifying that it is performing well to generate sufficient revenue is a bit complicated. Thus, ensuring your web app is performing great in all manners is crucial.
- Re-usable Tests
When you are executing cross browser testing for your ecommerce site, there is no need to write and maintain separate browser tests. Some tests can be reused in different supported browsers using test automation technologies and tools like LambdaTest.
- Fewer Bugs, More Efficiency
We all know that testing of web app is performed by the QA team, and it includes a lot of tasks from finding to eliminating bugs again and again. The visual appearance of the browser and other platforms keeps changing, which also affects the website appearance; hence, there are chances that your ecommerce site will look identical in different browsers. And if your web app uses HTML5 and CSS3, it will have backward compatibility issues with the same browser versions. Thus, cross browser testing can help you analyze where your ecommerce site is performing well and where you need to fix it.
Now, you know the importance of cross browser testing, it is necessary to understand how it can be executed.
How to Perform Cross Browser Testing?
Cross browser testing of ecommerce sites is not that complicated if you use the right approach. There are generally two approaches to test the cross browser compatibility of your ecommerce site – Manual and Automated testing.
The manual approach involves creating test scripts for different browser, browser versions, operating system, and devices, and then run them in different browser separately. For manual cross browser testing of ecommerce sites, human intervention is required at every step. Also, the process can be very time consuming depending upon the combination of browsers, operating systems, and devices you want to test.
Automated testing means executing tests automatically with minimal human interaction. With automation, testing can be implemented in three ways:
- Selenium Tests – When custom scripts are created for automated interaction with the browser with the help of Selenium tool.
- Screenshot Tests – When browsers are launched automatically and capture of images of the web page.
- Live Automated Tests – When live testing of web app is performed via API for automated interaction with browsers.
Automated cross browser testing requires a testing framework, which plays a crucial role in the testing process. However, there are multiple automation tools available online which provide all the functionalities that you need to perform cross browser testing, such as LambdaTest – an online selenium grid that is available with Screenshot API, Chrome and WordPress Extension to make it easy for you.
Based on your requirements, you can select which cross browser testing approach is best suited for your ecommerce website.
Ecommerce Web Pages You Should Focus On
Manually testing every web page of your web app for cross browser compatibility could be very time-consuming and hectic, but there are some pages of an Ecommerce site that need proper attention for cross browser testing to ensure higher conversion rates. Thus, you should focus on below-mentioned web pages while conducting cross browser testing:
- Homepage – When users visit your site, they interact with the homepage. So, it’s a top priority
- Cart – Ultimate aim of your website is to let the user add stuff to their shopping cart, and go through the purchase cycle to purchase the stuff. If your payment workflow is not working, then what’s the use of the website.
- All Forms – If a user has any query related to any product, then he will contact you via forms available on your site
- Landing Pages – When users visit your website from any external link, they arrive at the landing page of your site
- Product Category Pages – The products you’re selling are the only reason behind your ROI
- Product Detail Pages – If you don’t tell people what exactly are you selling, then how would they make the purchase?
Conclusion
An ecommerce website must perform consistently to generate higher revenues, which is only possible when it is compatible with all the browsers and devices used by visitors to access it. Thus, cross browser testing of your ecommerce site is crucial. In this article, we talked about the importance of cross browser testing for ecommerce sites, as well as we discussed the approaches that can be used for cross browser testing.