The eCommerce market is accelerating at a higher pace and does not seem to slow down soon. Customers view eCommerce as a safe alternative to going to a retailer or giving your credit card to a random customer service representative over the phone.
However, eCommerce websites heavily rely upon user experience. An aspiring eCommerce firm cannot afford compatibility issues when they plan to go big.
eCommerce is all about getting your visitors to go to your website rather than one of your competitors. Keeping your e-commerce website competitive and implementing elements that are essential to catch your audience and empower your sales.
Browser compatibility is a crucial element that no eCommerce website owner should overlook.
You may have a lot of questions here, such as;
- How do you test if your website is up-to-the-mark in terms of browser compatibility?
- How do you get started?
- Why is it important?
- Which tools should you use for browser compatibility testing?
Let us find out the answers now.
Why Is Browser Compatibility Testing Important For Your E-Commerce Site?
Browsers have their own features and specific requirements when it comes to web browsing. Therefore, a modern website needs to be able to work with multiple browsers, as the website owner and designer have no idea what browser people will be using to access their website.
It can be particularly challenging to design eCommerce websites because there may be many products displayed on these sites and it’s imperative that images and product descriptions display correctly across all devices and browsers to avoid confusion or an ugly, disjointed display.
The webmaster and owner of an eCommerce website must ensure that their products display the way they intended for them for eCommerce sites to attract customers and make purchases.
It’s likely that if browser compatibility hasn’t been considered in website design, or if the site hasn’t been tested to be compatible with a variety of popular browsers, your business will lose potential customers and income. As an entrepreneur, you want the exact opposite as a result of your eCommerce website.
The term “fragmentation” refers to a situation where a website displays perfectly on one operating system, browser, and device, but does not display correctly in another operating system, browser, or device. The websites need to display correctly across all devices, browsers, and operating systems to achieve the best results.
There is also the subject of screen resolution, since many different screen resolutions are used on different devices, and this, too, can have an impact on how well a website displays.
Pillars of Browser Compatibility
Cross-browser testing assists you in making your eCommerce website more consistent by bringing to light browser-specific compatibility errors that can be addressed quickly. In this way, you can ensure that you’re not alienating a significant part of your target audience with your website simply because it does not offer a consistent user experience across multiple browsers and operating systems.
In order to test your eCommerce website in real-world conditions, you need to render it and see how it behaves on real devices and browsers. When performing Cross-Browser Testing, it is always advisable to use a variety of real devices and browsers in order to maximize coverage
There is a rendering engine for every web browser. Regardless of whether the page is images, text, or video, this is how a browser displays the details of that particular page. All browsers like to differentiate themselves by being different, so their rendering processes are different as well.
In addition to varying from browser to browser, they also differ from device to device. It is necessary to do this in order to ensure that web content displays correctly on a variety of devices.
The rendering of web pages in Chrome will be different depending on the device used, as Chrome will have its own way of rendering web pages.
A browser compatibility test is even more important when dealing with online stores (eCommerce websites). Online shoppers use eCommerce websites in order to shop. Viewing product listings, adding items to their shopping carts, and then completing the checkout process takes place.
If you own an eCommerce site, you want this entire process to be as easy and seamless as possible, free of time lags, errors, or glitches of any kind. Problems will cause consumers to lose confidence in your site and you will lose customers.
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User-Friendliness
A store that is easy to navigate will increase the chances of making a sale from the beginning. Visitors should feel welcome on the homepage, and be encouraged to click on products or categories of products they desire. Visitors should be able to easily find what they are looking for by categorizing the items in a self-explanatory way and subdividing them into subcategories.
Using the search bar, a user should be able to quickly see all items that are currently available for sale, once they type in their query.
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Compatibility With Mobile Devices
A smartphone is owned by 80% of online adults. In many cases, mobile visits now outrank desktop visits. An e-commerce site must be designed and built for all devices, and not just for personal computers and laptops.
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CTAs (Calls to Action)
You should lead your customers through your website with calls to action that are specific to what you want them to do. It may seem obvious to you, but there are still people out there with lives, raising kids or are raising kids, and own or run businesses who don’t spend a lot of time on the web. Your business gains confidence, you show that you care about your customers, and things become less frustrating when you have that extra help. Never make your customer feel stupid for not knowing something. You can assume that they are smart enough to buy from the best company out there if they are visiting your website.
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Pictures and Descriptions
Usually, when a person is looking for a product to buy, they want to know everything about it before purchasing.
Because the items that one looks at online cannot be physically seen or touched, shopping online can be challenging. Consequently, it is important to include high-quality images of your products, including those taken from multiple angles, views, and even from a variety of contexts when appropriate.
It is important to describe all aspects of the product, such as size, texture, uses, benefits, and color orientation. It is evident you want all your customers to be confident about the knowledge of your product while they purchase it, rather than searching on another website.
After understanding the vital aspects of an eCommerce website, let us understand why browser compatibility testing is important for every eCommerce website.
Steps to Perform Browser Compatibility Testing
As soon as you have selected the most popular browser-OS combinations, you can begin your testing.
- Creating the Foundation: You should perform a simple test before beginning so you know how well your website and web app perform in the current situation.
- Preparation of a Test Plan: Develop a test plan for how to conduct the test. You will ensure that all facets of the browser testing are covered by planning. Choose the most popular browsers based on traffic analysis. Among the many aspects, you must address are functionality, responsiveness, responsive web design, and assistive testing.
- Choosing the Right Testing Method: There are two ways to automate the process: manually or automatically. Automating your test cases and executing your tests with Selenium on different browsers and OS configurations is possible using automation tools. In situations where use cases can be described through a single test case, automation testing is a viable option. Using automation, bugs can be identified more quickly.
- Infrastructural Setup: Tests need to be run on different operating systems and devices, which requires a huge infrastructure. You can achieve this by testing on virtual machines, emulators, and simulators. This may not be a feasible option; instead, you should use cross-browser testing tools that are cloud-based. Creating tests for 3000+ browser-OS combinations is possible with LambdaTest, a cloud-based infrastructure. It is possible to perform your tests within a secure environment at a minimal cost.
Conclusion
E-Commerce websites need to focus on the user experience. Considering the variety of devices and browsers that users can access, it is imperative to give them a consistent user experience across the different browsers and variations of each.
Besides HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, websites contain many other components, and the way these components are handled varies widely from one web browser to another. It is important to maintain uniformity across platforms in order to improve the end-user experience.
To ensure your website renders correctly on different browsers, browser versions, devices, and operating systems, you need to test it before launching it.
The cross-browser compatibility testing of your websites and apps enhances the user experience by identifying cross-browser compatibility issues. As a result, the issues can be debugged more quickly. Additionally, this ensures that you do not compromise the user experience.
Author Bio: Vixit Raj is Product Growth and Marketing Specialist in LambdaTest : The Cross Browser Web App Testing Platform. An E&C engineering background & digital marketing domain experience of 5+ years has aroused his interest towards learning more about latest technology advancements, product marketing, coding and testing.