“Put yourselves in the customer’s shoes” is popular in the selling world. This holds true for the Digital Commerce space as well. Digital commerce is also about leveraging technology to sell and deliver products and services online. Making online buying seamless is important to every e-commerce business as any loopholes can result in consumer dropouts which ultimately results in revenue loss.
Conversion is an important aspect in the digital commerce space. It is about 2% on an average for digital commerce. Companies measure conversion on various goals/parameters – they could range from a sale to e-mail signups, users adding product/s to the shopping cart or making a wishlist.
Attributes that impact conversion
- Page Load Time: The average amount of time it takes for a page to show up on your screen. Reasons such as inefficient code, server location, server performance, redirects from one URL to another, broken images can cause delay in page load. Conversion increases by 2% if the website load time improves by a second.
- Bounce rate: Percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site. Bounce rates higher than 40% is a big cause of concern to any online portal. Some of the common reasons for high bounce are visitors seeing something unexpected and unrelated to what they came for, making visitors dig for what they came for with content that’s not skimmable, pages that are difficult to navigate and mobile unresponsive pages causing visitors to leave.
- Session drop: The number of sessions that are abandoned due to certain reasons/hurdles in the checkout flow. 95% of shoppers abandon their online shopping when they come across an unstable site or a site with insufficient, vague or inaccurate information.
- Clicks/Tap on a particular banner/ menu: This includes the ease of access, visual flair of menu and banners for convenient clicking. Companies must ensure that the menu and banners are updated regularly, displaying the correct information and have no broken links.
- Average clicks to buy a product: This measures the number of steps a user needs to follow to buy any product. Too many steps can lead to confusion and ultimately cart abandonment. The ideal user journey is that it takes 4-6 clicks to complete purchases.
- Drop-in ATC%: Percentage of visitors that add items to the shopping cart. Drop-in ATC% ratio could be due to page load issues, high pricing & shipping rates, static pricing strategy, targeting wrong customer group, payment decision or inconvenient return policy.
Bringing improvement through Intelligent Test Automation
With an Intelligent Test Automation in place, companies can put into place a robust, comprehensive process that tests the above discussed attributes in order to flag off issues and help rectify them in real-time. The various components that you need to consider for Intelligent Test Automation are Test Coverage, Test Accuracy, Speed of Testing and 24/7 monitoring to ensure that conversion is superior.
Test coverage: Amount of testing performed by a set of test cases. An important indicator of quality and effectiveness, test coverage needs to be comprehensive and a 100% to provide consumers a quality online experience, right from start to finish.
Test Accuracy: Test accuracy ensures testing with precision. It also ensures that consistency is maintained that converts visitors into satisfied users who finally become potential buyers.
Speed of testing: Testing uncovers errors and issues that need to be rectified before the application is used by the user. Speed of testing is critical to ensure that the application/portal is up to the mark at all times.
Ability to monitor 24/7: Monitor the application round the clock and catch any real-time page loading issues, products that went out-of-stock, and other product discovery and checkout issues.
The Big Takeaway
While application testing is seen as a cost, this definitely is an integral part of ensuring a smooth functioning website. When error rates are kept low and a quality application is presented to the consumer, it offers a great experience and this converts into loyalty and repeatability. With Intelligent Test Automation, you can test various aspects of your website to ensure a 360-degree coverage.
