Hey, We are rebranding 🥳 Sneak Peak!

Tips for Testing Magento eCommerce Application

This entry was posted on January 21, 2020 by Miloš Jovanović, QA.

Testing Magento eCommerce Apps

Electronic commerce is the trading in goods or services via the Internet. Nowadays, eCommerce is developing by leaps and bounds. According to some statistics, about half of all Internet users purchase products online. In the future, this figure is expected to grow even more. This fact drives the business all over the world to enter the online trading market.

Most organizations are using Magento - a powerful and multifunctional eCommerce platform for building online stores. Due to its modular architecture and flexibility, this eCommerce platform is very popular. It is suitable for all small, medium and large firms since it is flexible and able to grow with business when it becomes huge.

A wide range of functions helps Magento win customers worldwide. Magento is used in all parts of the world. The largest number of users is allocated in North America and Australia.

Advantages of the Magento Platform

Magento has gained its popularity for a number of reasons:

  • A stable system with regular updates that cover issues appearing in the system
  • Possibility to create multiple stores in one control system
  • Multilingual system
  • Marketing & Promotional Tools
  • Free Community Edition that gives the user an opportunity to try Magento before purchasing it
  • Search Engine Optimization Tools
  • User-friendly and intuitive administration interface
  • Effective report system
  • Easily integrated with Google services
  • A huge number of extensions

Disadvantages of the Magento Platform

Like any other system, Magento is not perfect and has some drawbacks:

  • Performance (good hosting is required)
  • Magento customizing is rather complicated
  • Enterprise Edition is expensive
  • Many extensions lead to a great number of bugs

Setting up the Magento Platform

During the setup process, it is advisable to pay attention to:

  • Performance
  • Compatibility of extensions
  • Payment methods
  • Shipping methods
  • Responsive design

Testing Magento eCommerce Applications

The more functions a platform provides, the more vulnerable it is. Therefore, thorough testing is vital for Magento eCommerce applications to prevent end-users from facing defects and errors. It is very important to organize the testing process properly since this will ensure the customers’ ability to make online purchases quickly and easily. 

Following testing tips are pieces of advice to be used:

  • Provide cross-browser and mobile testing (front-end testing on various browsers and mobile devices).
  • Check that every installed extension is compatible with other extensions (make sure that a plugged-in extension works properly, provide regression testing for extensions with similar or connected functionality; one extension can cause a problem in another one).
  • Carry out performance testing (check the application under a heavy load and a large amount of data to be sure that a great number of orders won’t make your online store go down). 
  • Check every payment method (calculation should be correct and the payment process should be clear to the customer).
  • Double-check calculation on checkout and basket pages (especially with vouchers, promotions, and gift cards).
  • Automate typical workflows (recommended to run after every change; helps detect problems in the early stages).

QA and Testing

1. QA and Testing Stages

 

Magento offers a lot of possibilities for starting or growing great online business and satisfying end-users’ needs. A sound approach to setting up and testing will make e-business work right and bring profit. Improvement testing is one of the key goals in Magento. Testing enables the boost of the code quality, finds introduced bugs earlier, reduces release overheads making more frequent releases possible, and so on. 

There are 3 major groups of testing: 

  • Unit Testing 
  • Integration Testing 
  • Functional Testing 

They all have their goals, so you should know their major features to choose the most suitable for your issue. 

The first major software testing method is Unit Testing. Its main goal is to determine if individual parts of source code and different sets of program modules work correctly. This testing method relies on units as the smallest testable parts of an application. A unit could be an individual function, an entire module or an interface. 

A unit test can be used:

  • for finding problems in the development cycle;
  • for allowing code refactoring at a later date;
  • for reducing uncertainty in the units;
  • in a bottom-up testing approach;
  • for sorting a system’s living documentation.

Integration Testing is a continuation of the previous method. Individual software modules (after they have been tested separately) are combined and tested as a system. By performing integration testing, you can find out if the system is ready for validation testing.

The major types of integration testing are:

  • Big Bang Testing – major parts of the system or complete software systems are tested;
  • Bottom-Up Testing – testing starts from the lowest level components to higher-level components;
  • Top-Down Testing – the top integrated modules are tested first and the branch of every module is tested gradually until the end of the related module;
  • Sandwich Testing combines Top-Down and Bottom-Up Testing.

The third software testing method is Functional Testing. It is a process of quality assurance based on the specifications of the software component that is being tested. This type of testing consists of two major parts: feeding the input and examining the output. It describes what the system can do and rarely considers the internal program structure. 

Functional testing consists of:

  • functions identification;
  • input data creation;
  • output determination;
  • test case execution;
  • expected and actual outputs comparison;
  • troubleshooting.

JavaScript Tests

Apart from these major groups, there are plenty of tests that should be done. JavaScript in websites started small but has grown into large scale libraries. JavaScript is a programming language, and so testing of JavaScript is equally as valid as other tests.

Automated Test in Magento

An eCommerce entrepreneur must follow the changes in the market in today’s competitive retail industry and they have to make regular modifications to the website. These smaller changes make it possible for the online store owner to react based on the latest trends and keep up with competitors. These modifications may be new products, offers, discounts, shipping methods, payment methods, and many other things. The companies must ensure a ‘flawless’ user experience even during the regular modifications. Otherwise, these may lead to negative and undesirable results. For this purpose, the QAs must continuously check the website and make sure to remove all the errors. Web development companies work according to an agile methodology where the ‘sprints’ are quite short and it is necessary to run comprehensive regression tests after each modification. Unfortunately, when changes are made too often, manual testing may become monotone and may take a lot of time. Sooner or later you will have to apply some sort of ‘facilitation’. This may very much facilitate the life of testers because the tests are developed quickly, but still in an optimal way, and this can be quite cost-effective.

The introduction of automated tests has countless advantages. Some of the advantages of introducing automated tests are:

  • The possibility of repeatedly replaying the test cases
  • Test cases can be performed simultaneously
  • Tests can be run without supervision
  • Increased accuracy and greatly reduced errors generated by people
  • Test automation can save time and money

Software Testing Pyramid

2. Software Testing Pyramid

 

Tips for Testing Magento Extensions

Make sure to prepare test scenarios. Write test scenarios for:

  • the installation process
  • functionalities of the features mentioned in the documentation

Installation Testing

We have to install the extension with the various Magento 2 versions supported by the extension provider as mentioned in the installation instructions.
The installation should pass as a root user as well as a non-root user. After installation, we need to configure the settings as mentioned.

Functional Testing

We have to test the features as mentioned in the features list. Test the positive scenarios first and confirm the extension is working as expected. Test the negative scenarios and confirm if the extension is able to handle various scenarios with appropriate alert messages.

Integration Testing

Once the extension passes installation and functional testing, integration testing has to be conducted. Integration Testing is crucial to confirm if the extension’s functionality affects the site’s core features like Product listing page, shopping cart, checkout flows as well as any third-party APIs and custom modules specific to the site.

Automated Extension Testing 

Write automation scripts for the functional flows. This will help test the extension in different Magento versions and reduce the testing time.

Scripts should cover the following aspects:

  • The business scenarios of the extensions.
  • Confirm if the integration of the extension works as intended. For example, based on the configuration, the feature in the admin back end should be reflected in the site’s front end. Similarly, when we perform the transaction in the site’s front end, it should be stored in the admin.
  • The Magento 2 site’s default varnish caching mechanism should not be affected by the addition of the new extension. That means the cacheable pages like CMS pages should appear from the cache.

Test Documentation

Upon the project completion, the following test artifacts should be provided:

  • The Quality Report with the description of all defects by their priority, devices, and functional modules of the application in which they were detected
  • Detailed issues listed in a bug-tracking system, including screenshots and video clips
  • Report on the performance testing results
  • Structured recommendations on the system environment and app quality improvement

Conclusion

Hopefully, you will find these tips for testing Magento eCommerce applications useful. In case you have some questions or concerns regarding this or any other aspect of Web and Magento development, feel free to contact us at [email protected]

This entry was posted in Magento 2 and tagged Magento, Web Development, SyncIt Group, Magento 2, Web, eCommerce, eCommerce Apps, QA, Magento eCommerce Apps, App Testing, Testing Tips, Magento App Testing, Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Functional Testing, Automated Test, Test Documentation on January 21, 2020 by Miloš Jovanović, QA .