Why Does the eCommerce Industry Need Crowd Testing?

During the last few decades, e-commerce has become an inevitable part of the global retail environment. The fact is that the retail industry faced serious transformations because of the rapid digitalization of the process of making purchases. The number of Internet users is constantly growing, which allows more and more users to do shopping online. 

What is more, according to a recent forecast, the global e-commerce market is expected to reach a whopping $7.3 trillion by the end of 2025. Therefore, the number of e-commerce products will be growing in the near future. To remain competitive in the global market, each company should focus on providing service of the highest quality and making online purchases safe, fast, and easy for all customers. For these purposes, it is crucial to develop an effective eCommerce testing strategy using the most innovative crowdsourced testing solutions. 

eCommerce Crowd Testing: The Basics

Crowd testing in eCommerce is a latter-day way to the quality assurance (QA) process that allows companies to benefit from using both the most up-to-date technologies along with professional human testing. 

Crowd testing is about using the power of a large number of QA experts rather than hiring in-house specialists in quality assurance. This allows companies to test their digital products on real devices with different operating systems, carriers, and features, as well as check the product’s performance in various locations around the world. 

Real-life testing, performed by experienced crowdtesting professionals is currently the most effective, flexible, fast, and scalable solution that always provides detailed testing results.
But what does eCommerce crowd testing service usually include? 

• User experience testing – get true feedback from your real users on their experience while using your site. It can be done by using a survey and getting answers to the most crucial questions you want to ask. 
• Checkout/cart/payment testing – is a crucial step of a crowd testing e-commerce process that verifies whether the customers can make purchases in a fast and convenient way with no issues while using all types of payment methods. 
• Secure transactions – checking this feature is a must for any digital product or service, including any e-commerce project.
• Mobile responsiveness – most customers do online shopping using their smartphones. Therefore, it is important to make sure your product has a flawless interface on any modern device. 
• Usability testing – allows performing an advanced check on how the users interact with the product. Having detailed results of UI testing helps companies build up an intuitive and engaging product or service.
• Functional testing – explore the product’s navigation, user flow complexity, and other necessary features. 
• Load time – it is important to make sure the digital product works in a fast and error-free way with no delays. 

Phases of Crowdsourced Testing

How to test an eCommerce website? There are several basic phases of crowdtesting any commerce project should usually come through. 

Planning

The main objective of eCommerce testing during this phase is to clarify the QA scope, compose test strategies, and work with a budget. 

Configuration

During the configuration phase, it is important to get all the testing scenarios ready. Moreover, the company should provide all the required credentials to crowdtesting professionals before the test execution begins. All the testing environments should be pre-configured and completely prepared for testing.  If you require to test the entire flow, all the way to the actual purchase – need to decide if testers will use real payment methods, get “fake” test credit card numbers from you, or will test only in ‘staging’ environments.  

It is also possible to have a trial testing with crowdtesting experts on this phase to make sure all configurations were successfully set up. 

Execution

All the tests should be performed on the devices that will be used by the target audience. It is better to cover the maximum number of devices of various models, operating systems, and other features. 

Moreover, it is essential to get an app used by people from the required demographics, who represent the website’s clients. For example, an e-commerce product might be focused on elderly people, or customers with particular chronic diseases, views, or preferences. During this phase, the manager monitors the process of test execution.  It is also worth mentioning that payment testing remains one of the key types of testing for any modern e-commerce solution. It is crucial to get your product tested by QA experts with real credit cards, PayPal accounts, bank accounts, eWallets, and other payment methods. This is still the one and only proven way to make sure all the payment processes will perform well.

Analyzing Results 

Arranging all the results achieved during testing includes reporting and prioritizing bugs and issues found in the product. Additionally, the QA experts provide real feedback on using the e-commerce solution. They answer survey questions and offer a true-to-life plan on how to make the product better. 

Final 

Results validation is not the final stage of crowdtesting. To close the test cycle, the crowd testing service provider passes all the deliverable documents to the client together with an executive summary and recommendations.  

Benefits of Crowd Testing

• Crowdtesting is 100% flexible – it is possible to hire as many crowd testers as needed, according to the product requirements and the company’s budget. 
• Protects from expensive failures – crowd testers perform as real users and are able to detect a massive number of bugs/errors a customer might face after the product launch. Detecting issues beforehand allows companies to improve the quality of the digital product and avoid serious losses caused by the website’s or app’s poor performance.
• Reach your specific target market. With crowd testing, you can test specific niche products with specific demographics. For example, you can get your e-commerce solution designed for children of a particular age, people with disabilities or chronic conditions, sports fans, customers with unique hobbies, etc. 
• Has a higher test coverage – testing on multiple devices, carriers, operating systems, and locations is only possible with crowd testers. 
• Significantly reduces costs – there is no need to hire in-house testers or hire expensive 3rd party survey companies, but benefit from using crowdtesting professionals only when needed. 
• Offers efficiency and completeness – crowd testing always achieves real results and will provide you with all the information needed for making the product better based on true user feedback.
• Test the complete purchase process using real payment methods – there is no emulator-simulator that can substitute real-life testing. 
• Use “Mystery Shopper” testing to get full feedback on the entire process – the method also includes the product’s physical delivery experience and returns. 
• Well-proven solution – crowdtesting services are commonly used by thousands of e-commerce companies because it is a reliable service that is always at hand. 

How to Incorporate Crowd Testing Into Your eCommerce Project

You can start using crowdtesting services at any stage of the development process. As a rule, you will need to clarify the following aspects: 

• Define the project’s goals – what is your target audience, what is the main product functionality, and the niche it wants to get. Moreover, it might be good to specify the number of testers you would like to engage and the devices to be used during testing. 
• Set a budget – identify how much money you can spend for testing purposes. 
• Choose a crowd-testing company for your needs – it is better to start cooperation with a trustworthy and experienced company in a crowdtesting field. 

Conclusion

Ubertesters is a professional full-scale crowd-testing company that can help you test any type of e-commerce product. It is an advanced solution that allows testing any website and application on various types of devices, carriers, and locations in real-life environments. This approach will help you ensure you are delivering a modern and user-friendly digital product that perfectly fits all the needs and expectations of your customers. 

Want to explore even more about our advantages? Contact us at sales@ubertesters.com for more information.