Why Do You Need Software Testing for Your Retail Business

Friday, July 15th, 2022

E-commerce websites are the flavor of the season due to their extensive product selection and ease of use. However, for every Amazon and BestBuy recognized, there is an equal number of forgotten ones. Websites often do not take further steps to test well before the intended sale time and ensure consumers have a consistent online buying experience. 

Aside from product information and delivery information, e-commerce websites have several interconnected features that connect to diverse consumers. Every eCommerce website’s worst fear is a website crash or payment gateway problem during a transaction or when consumers complete their purchases. 

The practical strategy to prevent your e-commerce websites from cyber-attacks or crashing over during the peak load is to leverage a robust software testing services company. An independent quality engineering company can help e-commerce businesses mitigate several risks including performance, security, functionality, accessibility, and more from the application. 

1.   Cloud-based testing

Cloud testing is essential to prevent abrupt application crashes especially during peak load conditions. It can also help in eliminating maintenance and hardware update requirements. Cloud testing also enables test engineers to simulate multiple connections simultaneously. These connections are also accessible at all levels and at any point in time. 

Cloud testing is one of the most credible methods to model network traffic and denial of service attacks. It is also cost-efficient and more accessible. You can also leverage features like real-time analytics and build a visual test environment for more efficient testing of a retail application. 

2.   Functional testing

Delivering flawless customer experience has become one of the top priorities for online retail businesses. Sluggish applications and unnecessary UX components can ruin the overall customer experience instantly. 

Functional testing can identify critical glitches and UX gaps to enhance customer experience reliably. It can help an e-commerce application fix critical functional areas including: 

• Search, filters, and search result pages 
• Login system 
• Order details page 
• Order confirmation page and tracking 
• Shopping cart 
• Deals and promotional offers 

Also, e-commerce businesses need to offer seamlessness in their online sales channels to ensure their platform is compatible with any kind of device that a potential customer might use for shopping. Online shopping websites are also intrinsically dynamic and are always buzzing with new products, offers, and promotional schemes leading to constant change. Compatibility with every device needs to be tested to ensure all functions are available and uniform. Also, methodical eCommerce application testing is taken up to control and balance the unique UI and functional differences of each browser. 

3.   Load balancing

It is business critical to ensure that the website is available constantly and accessible at an acceptable speed. Test engineers can use server load balancers to enhance the reliability and capacity of the website. Load balancers are classified into two types software-based and hardware-based. 

Efficient load balancing can help the application efficiently manage the capacity without compromising on performance. Load balancing can also mitigate the risk of a server failure by routing the traffic to another server. 

4.   Safe payments

It is business-critical for a retail business to offer a safe and secure online payment gateway. An inefficient or insecure payment gateway could lead to more cart abandonment and loss of business. E-commerce businesses need to ensure that all personal and financial data of customers is always secure and stored as per regional compliance. 

Payment gateway testing involves functional, integration, security, and performance testing of the payment gateway. It includes testing several use cases through dummy payment data. Testing validates the accuracy of transaction flow, security of users’ financial data, the performance of verification code, and more. 

Here are the 6 major vulnerabilities that can be fixed through robust payment gateway testing: 

• Interception of transaction data 
• Manipulation of software updates 
• Weak password exploitation 
• Attacking data at rest 
• Interception of data in motion 
• Breach of intra-bank network payment information 

Aside, it is the basic norm for every eCommerce website to stay PCI DSS compliant to ensure secure financial transactions. It is also a basic requirement from all major credit cards and internet banking providers. PCI DSS compliance helps in a significant reduction of financial fraud while improving the security framework of the eCommerce platform. Testing of encryption with RSA20148 of ECDSA 385 should also be done to ensure strong cryptography. 

5.   Auto scaling

Auto-scaling helps in managing the optimum performance of a website during peak load hours. It is like load balancing that manages the required number of servers to deliver flawless performance to an increased number of users. It can also scale down the number of servers during decreased application load to save on resources. 

Testing of auto-scaling is a complicated process and should be done judiciously by leveraging multiple virtual IP addresses. Complex test scenarios are used to ensure auto-scaling is working as efficiently as possible. Autoscaling can also help in protecting against the network, hardware, and application by identifying and replacing unhealthy events without affecting the availability and resiliency of the application. 

6.   Protection against DDoS attacks

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) refers to the inability of the network to function efficiently or access the website. DDoS attacks can interfere with the performance or service of the website. The attacks could lead to poor user experience and eventually loss of business and brand value. These attacks are executed to retrieve sensitive user and organization data from the website. 

DDoS mitigation testing can help in identifying and fixing weak spots in the network in advance. It can help in identifying unnecessary drainage of server resources, memory, or CPU. The efficiency of system defense can keep attackers at bay and offer a more secure customer experience. 

Conclusion 

With increasing competition and evolving technology, e-commerce applications have become more feature-rich and complex. This has also led to an increased number of vulnerabilities and performance bottlenecks. Businesses need to leverage robust software testing for retail to mitigate risks and ensure a robust customer experience. Robust quality assurance can help businesses achieve scalable quality at speed and cost-efficiently.