What’s the biggest reason online shoppers abandon a website? It’s not always about price or delivery time—nearly half of them leave due to a poor user experience. With over 1.2 billion websites, ecommerce competition is fierce, and customers have countless options. For ecommerce businesses, this means one thing: if your website doesn’t meet expectations, customers are just a click away from going elsewhere.
So, how can you make sure every new ecommerce page on your site keeps users engaged? Running a few key Quality Assurance (QA) tests can make all the difference. In this guide, we’ll look at 3 essential tests you should run on every page before publishing to ensure it delivers a seamless experience.
Why Bother Testing a New Ecommerce Page?
Setting up a new ecommerce page takes time, especially if you have a lot of products to showcase. When you’re ready to launch, it can be tempting to skip the testing phase and just hit publish. But here’s why testing is so important:
- Page Speed and Compatibility: Pages can load at different speeds depending on the user’s location, device, and internet connection. Slow pages can mean lost sales.
- Security: With ecommerce, you’re handling sensitive payment information, so skipping security checks is risky.
- Bugs and Glitches: Even if the website looks perfect, adding a new page can introduce unexpected bugs.
- Plugin Compatibility: Many ecommerce sites use plugins to track conversions or display reviews, and these can break if they aren’t compatible with the new page.
Testing each page ensures it runs smoothly and helps you catch any glitches early. Here are the 3 must-do tests to check the essentials and make sure your customers have a positive experience.
Test 1: Video Functionality
Videos are powerful in ecommerce. Studies show that 92% of people say visuals influence their buying decisions, and a product video can boost conversions by up to 64%. But for videos to help your sales, they need to work smoothly.
Here’s how to check:
- Right Format: Make sure the video file is in a format that everyone can view, not just site administrators.
- Multiple Viewers: When multiple users watch the video at once, it shouldn’t slow down the page. Using a caching tool can help manage this load.
- Compression Rate: Videos should look good but not be so large that they slow down the site. Compress the video if it affects loading times.
- Privacy Settings: If your video is hosted on YouTube, ensure the privacy settings allow anyone to watch it. Videos set to private will appear as blank to users.
Testing video functionality ensures that your product visuals are accessible to everyone, potentially increasing your conversion rate.
Test 2: Design and Font Changes
Updating the look of your new e-commerce page helps keep things fresh for your visitors, and small design tweaks can boost engagement. But design changes, even minor ones, can sometimes break things.
Here’s what to check:
- Unexpected Layout Shifts: When fonts load, sometimes elements on the page move around unexpectedly, which can confuse users. Adding font-display: optional in your CSS can help prevent these shifts. This line of code tells the browser to show a fallback font if the new font isn’t available right away.
- Cumulative Layout Shifts (CLS): CLS happens when the layout suddenly changes, like when a new font loads, and it can hurt user experience. Make sure your fonts don’t change the page structure unexpectedly.
- Font Consistency: Check that fonts display correctly on all browsers. Safari, Chrome, and Firefox handle font-loading differently, so ensure the font looks the same everywhere.
- Loading Speed: Changing fonts can sometimes slow down your page, so test page speed before and after the changes to confirm that everything loads quickly.
Running these design checks keeps your site looking professional and ensures everything works as intended.
Test 3: Product Reviews and Integrations
Product reviews are crucial, with 90% of shoppers reading them before buying, and 83% saying they prefer recent, relevant reviews. Adding reviews to each product page can build trust with new customers, but if they aren’t displayed correctly, it could backfire.
Here’s what to watch for:
- Proper Display: If you’re adding reviews manually, they might display incorrectly. Using a review plugin can help avoid these issues.
- Third-Party Reviews: If you’re pulling reviews from sites like Yelp or TrustPilot, ensure they display correctly on your page. Sometimes ad blockers can prevent these from loading, so check the page in both preview and live modes.
- Redirects: If your site redirects users to a different page (like domain.com/en), make sure reviews still display correctly. Some plugins may not work on redirected pages, so you may need to add manual redirects.
Running these review checks is essential to ensure your reviews are displayed properly, building credibility and trust with potential buyers.
Scaling Your Testing as Your Store Grows
As your ecommerce business grows, testing every single page manually becomes impractical. If you’re publishing multiple new pages daily or weekly, automated testing is your friend. Visual testing tools can automatically check hundreds of pages at once, saving time and catching UX issues early. Automation lets you keep up with the demand for new pages while maintaining a consistent, high-quality user experience.
Avoiding Common UX Pitfalls with Regular Testing
Ecommerce sites need regular updates and maintenance. Even if a page works perfectly when it’s launched, over time, things like outdated plugins or new integrations can cause issues. Testing helps you stay ahead of these problems, offering your users a smooth experience. The more often you test, the faster the process gets, especially with automation.
Conclusion
Publishing a new ecommerce page without testing is risky and can lead to lost customers. Running these 3 essential tests for an ecommerce page—checking video functionality, design consistency, and review display—can help you deliver a seamless experience that keeps users engaged. Testing might take a little extra time, but it’s worth it to avoid glitches that could hurt sales.
But you don’t have to do it alone! Unified Computing is here to help you build, test, and manage your ecommerce site, so you can focus on growing your business. Let’s make your site stand out—reach out to Unified Computing today!