The biggest sales days – Black Friday & Cyber Monday – are right around the corner. Both days showed record online sales last year, and there’s no reason to suspect that this year will be any different. That being said, it’s pretty clear that QAs need to adapt their testing strategies to get their apps ready for Black Friday ✅
Many retailers worry that their apps or websites might run into technical issues during Black Friday. To prepare for this, it’s a good idea to focus on the following areas 👇
Functional testing
The main thing you should test is that the application works as expected. The most usual scenarios can be easily automated to ease your work, such as:
- Filtering items
- Sorting items
- Adding to cart
- Applying promotional codes
You can use tools such as TestProject to record some of the most common tests, then re-run them whenever the need arises. You can also try a data-driven approach to cover multiple cases, without having to re-write the tests.
Usability testing
Another valuable type of testing is usability testing. Make sure that the application is easy to use and that the interface is intuitive enough to not leave the users guessing on how to find the products they need, or how to complete an order. If the website is too hard to use, this might convince them to look elsewhere.
Useful features can be things like auto-populated fields (such as city and state after users enter a ZIP code) or having existing users’ addresses saved 💾
Performance testing for Black Friday
Chances are, your website or app will see a lot more “foot traffic” on Black Friday and the days leading to it, than in the rest of the year. This means you need to make sure that it will handle all the visitors it gets without any unexpected failures, and without being too slow.
The first thing you need to check is that the pages of your application load fast enough. Studies show that most e-commerce visitors will wait no longer than 2 seconds for a page to load, before abandoning the site.
You can also check the loading times under various network conditions and make sure that the important information still gets loaded – for example, that product information such as price is visible and adding items to the cart works 🛒
Next, you can also perform some load testing with tools such as Flood.io, which means simulating multiple concurrent users of the pages. You should use a realistic number for this type of test. For example, if you expect tens of thousands of users to connect simultaneously, you should target this range for your tests.
Testing with too few concurrent connections will not prevent the website from crashing or not loading in real life.
UI testing
Many websites put special banners for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and have specific icons displayed on the discounted products. Take some time to make sure that to preform UI testing on various resolutions, browsers, and devices.
Validate data
If you work in e-commerce, many of the products in the app will most likely have various prices, promotions, discounts, and so on. And it’s really important to the business that the data is correct on the big day.
Data-driven testing works well in this situation too – you can perhaps use a CSV file with all the products, before and after prices, and the promotions.
Payment / security testing
Pay extra attention to the payment process testing. Your Black Friday testing should cover all possible payment methods 💳 Test them on various devices, too.
Try to emulate the users’ behavior, by going back or forward in the browser during the check-out and payment phases of a purchase.
It’s not a bad idea to include some load and stress testing on the payment scenarios, either, as this may be a bottleneck you most certainly don’t want to have – clients might lose their trust in your business if the payments don’t go smoothly.
I would also emphasize security testing on the personal information the users enter. For any physical items, people will need to provide an address, perhaps a phone number, or other personal details. This data needs to be stored securely, and hidden from other users.
Localization testing
If your application is used globally, or in multi-cultural languages, take some time to test its localization 🌎 This means checking that if some products should be available only in certain areas, they can be purchased in the intended areas, but hidden to the rest of the users.
Also, the currency is a big deal. The prices should reflect the selected culture, and the payment should be available in the country’s culture. Also, the payment provider is likely to differ depending on the country, so the redirects should also work accordingly.
Conclusions
Black Friday is a big day for online businesses of any kind, and testing will aid in providing a good user experience, earning potential loyal customers. Take your time to devise a good test plan and don’t miss any of the important points mentioned above ✨
