Testing Shopping Cart & Checkout Process
In the modern world, e-commerce is growing, making it essential to ensure a smooth and error-free shopping experience for users. The role of software testers is crucial in order to guarantee a seamless shopping journey.
E-commerce platforms facilitate online buying and selling of products and services. The specifics of this industry involve complex user interactions, secure payment gateways, inventory management, order processing, and shipping logistics.
With customers’ sensitive information being handled during the checkout process, the system’s reliability and security become critical aspects to ensure a successful user experience.
Understanding User Flows
Before delving into testing, it’s important to comprehend the user flows within the shopping cart and checkout process. This involves mapping out the steps users take to add items to their carts, proceed to checkout, and complete the purchase. Identifying potential user paths helps in creating comprehensive test scenarios and effectively covering all possible interactions.
Let’s outline an example of a typical user flow for the shopping cart and checkout process:
User Flow: Adding Items to Cart and Completing Checkout
1. User lands on the e-commerce website’s homepage.
2. User browses through various product categories and selects an item to purchase.
3. User clicks on the selected item to view more details.
4. User decides to add the item to the cart and clicks on the “Add to Cart” button.
5. The item is successfully added to the cart, and the user is shown a confirmation message.
6. The user decides to continue shopping and adds more items to the cart.
7. The user reviews the cart to ensure all desired items are added.
8. User clicks on the “Proceed to Checkout” button to start the checkout process.
9. The user is prompted to log in or create a new account if they haven’t already.
10. The user provides shipping information, such as name, address, and contact details.
11. The user selects a preferred shipping method.
12. The user is prompted to provide payment details, such as credit card information or PayPal credentials.
13. The user reviews the order summary, including items, quantities, discounts, and total price.
14. The user clicks on the “Place Order” button to confirm the purchase.
15. The system processes the payment and displays an order confirmation message.
16. The user receives an email containing the order details and a confirmation number.
This example of user flow covers the primary steps involved in the shopping cart and checkout process. In this case, our goal would be to test each of these steps thoroughly and ensure that the application behaves as expected at every stage of the user journey. Also, it is important to consider different scenarios, edge cases, and boundary values to validate the application’s functionality, usability, security, and performance throughout this user flow.
In addition to the example above, let’s create test scenarios and test cases based on the user flow:
User Flow: Adding Items to Cart and Completing Checkout
Test Scenario 1: Add Item to Cart
Test Cases:
a. Verify that the selected item is added to the cart.
b. Check if the cart displays the correct quantity of the item added.
c. Test if the total price in the cart is updated correctly after adding the item.
Example of an Edge Case:
a. Add an item with a very high quantity (e.g., 9999) to check the application’s performance and response time.
Test Scenario 2: Proceed to Checkout
Test Cases:
a. Verify that the “Proceed to Checkout” button is functional and leads the user to the checkout page.
b. Check if the cart items and total price are correctly displayed on the checkout page.
Example of an Edge Case:
a. Attempt to proceed to checkout with an empty cart to check if an appropriate error message is displayed.
Checking Boundary Values:
a. Proceed to checkout with the minimum and maximum number of items allowed in the cart.
Test Scenario 3: User Account and Login
Test Cases:
a. Verify that users can log in to an existing account to proceed with checkout.
b. Test if users can create a new account during the checkout process.
Example of an Edge Case:
a. Attempt to create a new account with invalid or incomplete details to check error handling.
Checking Boundary Values:
a. Test the minimum and maximum allowed characters for the username and password fields.
Test Scenario 4: Provide Shipping Information
Test Cases:
a. Verify that users can input correct shipping details, such as name, address, and contact information.
b. Check if the user is prompted to enter mandatory shipping information.
Edge Case:
a. Provide shipping information with special characters.
b. Provide shipping information with very long values.
Check Boundary Values:
a. Test the minimum and maximum allowed characters for the shipping address fields.
Test Scenario 5: Select Shipping Method
Test Cases:
a. Verify that users can select a preferred shipping method
b. Check if the correct shipping cost is applied based on the selected shipping method.
Edge Case example:
a. Attempt to select a shipping method that is not available for the selected delivery address.
Test Scenario 6: Payment Processing
Test Cases:
a. Test different payment methods (credit card, PayPal, etc.) for successful transactions.
b. Verify that payment failures (e.g., invalid card details) are handled appropriately.
Edge Case:
a. Test the application’s response when an incorrect CVV number is provided during payment.
Test Scenario 7: Review Order Summary
Test Cases:
a. Verify that the order summary displays accurate details, including items, quantities, discounts, and total price.
b. Check if the user can modify the cart items or quantities from the order summary.
Edge Case:
a. Check the order summary when the cart contains out-of-stock items.
Boundary Values checking:
a. Test the order summary with the minimum and maximum number of items in the cart.
Test Scenario 8: Place Order and Order Confirmation
Test Cases:
a. Verify that the “Place Order” button initiates the order processing.
b. Check if the user receives an order confirmation message after successful payment.
Edge Case:
a. Attempt to place an order with a payment method that is currently not supported.
Test Scenario 9: Email Notification
Test Cases:
a. Verify that users receive an email containing the order details and confirmation number.
b. Check if the email content accurately reflects the order summary.
Edge Case checking:
a. Test the email notification system with an email address that contains special characters or is exceptionally long.
These are some examples of QA documentation relevant to the user flow of adding items to the cart and completing the checkout process. Remember to adapt and expand this list based on the specific requirements of your e-commerce application. Also, remember that each test case needs to have preconditions, steps to reproduce, and expected result.
While thinking of the user journey, it is important to pay attention to success and failure paths.
In the context of shopping cart and checkout testing, success paths refer to the scenarios where users flawlessly complete their purchases.
These scenarios include
a. adding items to the cart,
b. applying discounts,
c. selecting payment methods,
d. receiving order confirmations.
Ensuring a smooth success path is vital to prevent user frustration and cart abandonment.
Failure paths encompass scenarios where users encounter issues during the shopping or checkout process.
This includes
a. errors in adding items to the cart,
b. payment failures, security vulnerabilities,
c. system crashes.
Uncovering these failure paths through rigorous testing is essential to safeguard users from undesirable experiences.
How to Test Shopping Cart and Checkout Process?
To effectively test the shopping cart and checkout process, a structured approach is necessary. Use a combination of manual testing and automation to achieve comprehensive test coverage. Manual testing allows testers to emulate real-user interactions and identify UI/UX issues, while automation enables repetitive tests, performance checks, and regression testing.
During testing, focus on the following crucial aspects
- Assess the app’s user-friendliness, ensuring intuitive navigation and clear instructions throughout the shopping and checkout process.
- Validate that sensitive user data, such as payment information, is transmitted securely using encryption protocols.
- Test the application across different browsers, devices, and operating systems to ensure a consistent experience for all users.
- Analyze the system’s response time, ensuring it can handle peak traffic without slowdowns or crashes.
- Verify that appropriate error messages are displayed for invalid inputs, guiding users to correct their actions.
- Integrating test case management tools can significantly streamline the testing process.
TestCaseLab, as an example, provides a user-friendly interface to create, manage, and execute test cases.
With features like test case reuse, status reporting, and defect tracking, TestCaseLab enhances collaboration among testing teams and increases efficiency.
Short Checklist for Shopping Cart & Checkout Process Testing
- Verify that the shopping cart updates accurately upon adding or removing items.
- Test various payment methods to ensure successful transactions.
- Check for secure SSL connections during the checkout process.
- Validate discounts and promotions are applied correctly.
- Assess the application’s responsiveness on different devices and browsers.
- Confirm the order details are correct in the confirmation email.
- Test for error scenarios, such as payment failures and network interruptions.
- Ensure proper handling of out-of-stock items during checkout.
- Validate the system’s behavior during peak traffic.
- Perform regression testing after any changes or updates to the application.
Testing the shopping cart and checkout process is vital to deliver a seamless and satisfying user experience in the competitive e-commerce landscape.
Stay updated with the latest testing trends and best practices to continually improve your testing approach and provide users with a glitch-free online shopping journey. Join us on Linkedin!
