E-Commerce Testing: Why Companies Switch to testRigor

Hari Mahesh

E-Commerce Testing

An e-commerce company cannot afford any downtime or major functional issues on its platform. This is why most, even relatively small and new-to-market e-commerce companies nowadays, choose to have extensive testing on multiple fronts. On the other hand, only larger businesses typically succeed in providing extensive automated end-to-end test coverage. Why is that?

The answer lies in the complexity of this particular type of test automation. E-commerce platforms often include many third-party integrations and a lot of dynamic content. Some teams end up testing most of the functionality manually, albeit laborious, inefficient, and prone to human error. We’re not saying every single test should be automated (since it’s likely not the best strategy either), but ideally, at least tedious regression tests should be.

• Functional testing
• UI and usability testing
• End-to-end testing
• Mobile apps testing
• API testing
• Load/performance testing

Depending on what the company’s goals and expectations are, these can be covered by one or multiple automation tools. When searching for the best tool, always make sure that it supports the platforms you need, otherwise it might not be the best choice for you. Many tools will support just one platform, for example, only the web, or only mobile apps.

E-Commerce Testing Challenges

Testing e-commerce has its own unique challenges, as online shopping platforms are very dynamic and complex in nature. Some of the most frequently faced challenges in e-commerce testing are as follows:

Complex User Journeys and Workflows

An e-commerce website has complex workflows, such as browsing, filtering, and adding items to a cart, along with discounts and checkout. Every one of these flows must be tested end-to-end to ensure the customer can complete their journey without any friction. It’s hard to test all of these combinations that users have the ability to perform. With most test automation tools, handling dynamic web page content – such as shadow DOMs or hidden divs – is very challenging and time-consuming. It also involves experienced automation or QA engineers, which smaller companies simply cannot afford.

Many traditional test automation tools find it challenging to support an end-to-end test that covers the whole user flow. Such tests are often extremely fragile because they involve many dependencies on external integrations.

High Volume of Data

E-commerce websites often manage large product catalogs with thousands or even millions of items, each with unique attributes like descriptions, prices, availability, and images. Ensuring all of this data is displayed accurately across different pages and that inventory levels reflect real-time stock availability is essential but challenging.

Dynamic Content and Personalization

Numerous e-commerce sites provide customized experiences based on user activity, location, and interests, such as recommendations, items viewed recently, personalized offers, etc. Personalized content—which brings variations based on user-specific data based on the user account that is logging in each time. This is absolutely something that requires more complex tests and validations, ensuring that users see the exact personalized options every time.

Frequent Updates and High-Release Velocity

E-commerce sites often have to refresh the content for new products, seasonal promotions, and events. Also, these platforms regularly roll out updates to enhance UX or introduce new functionalities. When changes happen too often, the tests start failing (due to broken form/submission), and the cost of maintenance goes up, resulting in delays in delivery. Constantly changing and evolving website content requires rapid test creation. In many cases, QA teams just aren’t able to create automated tests fast enough to keep up with new feature developments. Traditional test automation with tools like Selenium is too slow – both in terms of test development and test maintenance. There are a lot of cases where, by the time the whole feature is covered by automated tests, they are already bound to become obsolete with the next release.

Luckily, testRigor is one of the best test automation tools currently available on the market. It drastically simplifies all the main aspects of e-commerce website and app testing. Let us explain why, and we’ll let you decide for yourself.

What Makes testRigor Different in E-Commerce Testing?

testRigor distinguishes itself by focusing on low-maintenance and high-reliability automation that is specifically suited to the demands of e-commerce. Its generative AI-driven framework, natural language test creation, AI features testing, and visual recognition capabilities offer a unique combination that reduces the time, cost, and complexity of testing.

Key Features of testRigor:

• Natural Language-Based Test Creation: Write or generate tests in plain English, eliminating the need for extensive coding expertise.
• AI-Driven Automation: AI constantly learns from the application’s changes, reducing script maintenance to almost zero.
• Vision AI for Visual Element Recognition: This allows testRigor to understand and interact with visual UI elements for visual testing.
• Integration with CI/CD Pipelines: Enables smooth integration with development workflows, accelerating bug detection.
• Cross-Browser and Cross-Platform Testing: Test across multiple platforms and browsers with ease, ensuring consistent experiences.

Here is a list of testRigor’s top features.

E-Commerce Testing Benefits with testRigor

The fundamental idea behind testRigor was to make automated tests both reliable and accessible to everyone, not just engineers. This became possible with the use of advanced technology, such as a generative AI engine and extensive algorithms that testRigor uses for all test creation and execution.

So, how exactly is testRigor different? Here are the main aspects:

Plain English Tests

Traditional test automation often requires expertise in scripting languages, creating a dependency on specialized testers. testRigor breaks this barrier with its natural language test (NLP) processing capability. With testRigor, e-commerce teams can create complex test scenarios in plain English, empowering non-technical team members, such as product managers, SMEs, BAs, or customer support representatives, to participate in the testing process.

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Faster Time-to-Market

In the competitive world of e-commerce, quick releases are critical for capitalizing on trends, seasons, or specific market demands. With testRigor’s efficient test creation and parallel execution capabilities, companies can test new features faster, accelerating time-to-market. Since test creation doesn’t rely on coding, tests can be written quickly and adjusted easily, reducing the overall time spent on testing.

Additionally, parallel testing allows e-commerce companies to run multiple tests simultaneously, saving time on test execution and giving developers immediate feedback. Faster tests mean that e-commerce companies can confidently launch new features or updates without risking bugs that might impact the user experience. Read more about Parallel Testing.

Visual Testing with Vision AI

E-commerce platforms rely heavily on visual elements such as images, buttons, banners, and icons to guide users through the shopping experience. testRigor’s Vision AI capability enables it to recognize visual elements, making it ideal for testing e-commerce applications that frequently update their design and content.

For example, if a promotional banner is added to the homepage, Vision AI helps testRigor recognize the banner visually. Even if it is a new addition, the scripts adapt to the UI changes. This feature is especially useful for seasonal promotions or flash sales, where visuals change frequently, and traditional scripts typically need manual intervention to accommodate new elements.

Moreover, Vision AI can validate image-based elements, such as product images and thumbnails, verifying that they are displayed correctly across various devices and screen resolutions.

Smooth CI/CD Integration

Modern e-commerce companies operate in an agile environment, where continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) are integral to development workflows. testRigor’s seamless integration with CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab, CircleCI) allows automated tests to be triggered at various stages of development, ensuring bugs are detected and resolved early in the cycle.

This capability enables e-commerce companies to maintain a consistent testing regimen and release reliable updates without interruptions. By integrating with CI/CD pipelines, testRigor also helps teams avoid the last-minute rush for testing before production, improving the stability and quality of releases.

Cross-Browser and Cross-Platform Testing

With a large segment of e-commerce traffic coming from mobile and desktop browsers, ensuring cross-platform compatibility is crucial. testRigor allows e-commerce teams to test across various devices and browsers effortlessly, ensuring that the shopping experience remains seamless and consistent across different touchpoints.

For example, companies can automate tests for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, and mobile browsers simultaneously, ensuring a reliable experience regardless of user preferences. Additionally, this cross-platform compatibility reduces the need for device-specific manual testing, saving time and resources.

Scalable for Growth

Scalability is essential for fast-growing e-commerce companies. As the platform expands, so does the testing scope, especially with the addition of new products, features, and integrations. With generative AI capabilities, testRigor can generate new test cases just by mentioning the test description of the new feature. This helps the testing team not to waste time creating new programming test scripts. Also, testRigor will identify and update the test case accordingly for any change in the requirements or UI. Read about Self-healing tests.

AI Features Testing

For an e-commerce app, you might also need to test the chatbot or user intentions during the chat. If there is any negative customer feedback, a human support representative can be quickly assigned, and they will assist the customer in their user journey. Here is how you can test AI features such as negative/positive intentions, true/false statements, sensitive information, etc.

Cost Saving

Additionally, by automating repetitive and high-maintenance testing tasks, testRigor also helps companies reduce manual testing costs, allowing efficient work allocation to team members. As a cost-effective solution, testRigor eliminates the need for specialized automation skills, further reducing testing expenses over time. Know How to Save Budget on QA.

E-Commerce Testing Future with testRigor

As e-commerce platforms evolve, so will the testing needs. Generative AI-driven tools like testRigor are setting new standards for test automation by simplifying test creation, minimizing maintenance, and improving reliability and scalability across platforms. E-commerce companies that adopt such innovative tools will be well-equipped to deliver high-quality, bug-free customer experiences, no matter how quickly their applications change. Read more about the Future of E-commerce and Automation Testing.

Conclusion

The complexity of e-commerce testing requires a powerful, scalable, and adaptable solution. testRigor’s unique features and benefits make it the preferred choice for e-commerce companies looking to streamline their complex testing process, reduce costs, and improve the overall quality of their applications with ease. By adopting testRigor, e-commerce businesses can focus on what they do best—delivering exceptional shopping experiences—while testRigor takes care of all testing needs.

“We spent so much time on maintenance when using Selenium, and we spend nearly zero time with maintenance using testRigor.”

Keith Powe VP Of Engineering - IDT