Continuous Performance Testing for Retail Mobile Applications

The retail marketplace has been actively embracing digital transformation to offer a better user experience. Going by the latest trends, the dependency on digital channels has been immense, making them stand at the center of all major online retail activities.

Mobile sales grew by 68% in 2020 and are expected to overtake other channels to become the leading source of all sales by the end of this year. Can you spot the actual reason behind growing sales through retail mobile applications? The answer to this is- Digital Confidence.

Simply put, it means you are confident that you are developing and providing the most satisfactory possible experience for your customers. This can include how your web and mobile apps look and work exactly as intended by the users. When customers’ needs are met, they get a seamless shopping experience on your digital platform.

To match expectations, keeping up with innovation is a vital aspect. Continuous testing throughout the SDLC is an excellent option to strengthen digital confidence among customers. It supports testing the omni-channel retail model, which is a proven advantage to organizations managing their business using online technologies.

Challenges within the Retail Industry

The last thing a business wants is for a shopper to abandon their cart halfway through shopping simply because of poor speeds, and mobile app testing companies can help avoid this.

As more and more processes are getting digitized, the retail industry is experiencing regular challenges, pushing businesses to figure out new ways. These challenges are primarily associated with both application and business-grade. Hence, it becomes imperative to introduce continuous testing to sort out the mess within the retail industry by streamlining issues that hamper the performance of retail apps.

Some of the commonly faced challenges include:

Ensuring the branding of the retail company along with customer loyalty
Retail app’s ability to handle interruptions like incoming calls, background music apps, etc
Quickly adapt to new product launches without letting any impact on app features and user-experience
App’s response to fluctuating data speeds across different network regions

To resolve all of the above problems and concerns related to retail apps, it is better to bring along reliable mobile app testing companies who have the expertise to avoid such situations.

Why is Load Testing Important for Retail Mobile Apps?

Load and performance testing is the most effective way to identify faults with an application that could jeopardize its performance under different traffic conditions. Load testing identifies problems by simulating spikes in online traffic and further testing the app’s performance and ability to handle the load. Such measures are essential for online retail systems which deal with high loads at the time of key sale days.
Continuous performance testing is useful to get rid of potential bottlenecks. For instance, every customer transaction strikes multiple technologies with plugins, modified API services, and third-party integrations. It is vital to examine the performance of interconnected backend systems such as CRM, invoicing, warehouse, shipping, etc.
The app is constantly evolving; hence, stretching the limits becomes crucial to strengthen confidence in the overall capabilities of the retail mobile app. In addition, software testing experts are well aware of tools that can easily automate the process during the SDLC.
When transitioning to a multi-cloud or hybrid environment, retailers must ensure that performance does not suffer and that scale does not take the place of high-quality code. This is because scalability always comes with a cost.
To ensure an Omni-Channel experience, the concept of digital transformation is brought into action. It is critical to provide a consistent experience across all platforms, whether in-store or through an app. Performance testing, functional testing, and regression testing can all be used to ensure that applications and software are working correctly. Having an Omni-Channel experience is crucial; otherwise, turmoil and company loss might follow.

How to Achieve Continuous Improvement using Test Automation?

To keep the retail business moving forward and profitable, innovation and constant improvement are required. This is impossible to achieve without Continuous Testing and Development, which cannot be fulfilled without automated testing. Teams can use test automation to check that the application is producing the intended outcomes. This also includes making improvements along the way derived from continuous automated feedback related to examining what truly works, and what is required to be done. Such actions help to speed up the testing process and allow experts to reduce their testing efforts.

Test Automation is also required to maximize test coverage and ensure that every part of the application is thoroughly tested for speed, quality, and faultless performance.

Additional Ways to Boost Retail Mobile Apps

Address Test Data Challenges

One of the exclusive features of retail applications is the complex and dynamic nature of test data.

Service virtualization can aid in the resolution of test data issues
Configure and collect current relevant test data using Rest APIs

These two methods will assist ensure that test data is always accurate and that time spent analyzing testing difficulties is minimized.

Test for Specific Scenarios

Personalization, localization, and dynamic reach data are some of the distinctive scenarios introduced by online shopping applications that are unique to the retail industry and are not very frequent in other industries.

Personalization is the most difficult to test of those situations because it is frequently backed up by machine learning algorithms.

In order to differentiate the visual layer testing from the functional logic layer testing, our customers test their retail-specific scenarios first. Instead of employing single cases, test the functional logic layer (the algorithm) statistically.

Test in the Cloud

QA is a difficult undertaking in and of itself. Furthermore, due to the application’s and the environment’s complexity, testing in a retail context poses extra obstacles. The good news is that, despite some security concerns, testing on the cloud can eliminate many of the “IT” issues associated with managing a lab of devices.

Keeping an on-site lab of gadgets running is a difficult task. A SaaS system enhances scale, time to market (particularly for supporting new device modules and versions), and device availability service level agreements (SLAs).

For retail companies, the functionality and performance of their mobile app should be the foremost priority. To conduct continuous testing in a thorough manner it is always better to associate with a reliable software testing partner.

For all such needs you can book a consultation right away!