The challenges of automated performance testing for retail apps

Performance testing, also referred to as load testing, is one of the most important types of testing when it comes to retail apps. It is performed to check whether a retail app meets its performance requirements.

With performance testing, businesses are able to determine the performance of their systems with regard to stability and responsiveness in different workload conditions. Over time, the retail apps are tested under different and multiple networks and load conditions.

The time taken by the apps to respond to the different networks and loads determines the effectiveness of the applications. The apps are also supposed to meet their performance requirements even when exposed to varying loads and network conditions.

However, everything does not always go as expected. Testing teams are faced with a host of challenges when conducting automated performance testing on retail apps. Some of these challenges include:

Constant integration

Retail applications are used by customers and businesses for transactions when requesting goods and services and paying for them. 

This means that these applications require integrations from other applications such as payments applications to ensure that customers have everything that they need. Businesses are also able to manage things such as tax calculations and deliveries through these integrations.

Testing these integrations is a challenge for businesses. However, with test automation, businesses can manage different elements of their applications effectively and easily to beat this challenge.

Choosing a testing tool

This is a serious challenge that requires businesses to be careful when choosing the kind of tools to use when testing retail applications. Choosing the wrong testing tool means that you will have many problems testing your applications.

Most businesses have limited budgets to invest in the right tools and do not have the knowledge and expertise to explore the different options available with testing tools.

However, businesses can overcome this challenge by assembling a team that can assess and do research on the different testing tools available then choose the one that meets their requirements.

The right test approach

The first thing that businesses need to do even before choosing the testing tools to use is to look for a test approach that meets their requirements.

Most businesses just jump into testing and investing in tools without even thinking about the processes they are going to use when testing their retail applications.

This, in the end, leads to failures, and the chances of the apps not meeting both the customer and business's expectations are very high.

That notwithstanding, businesses can overcome this challenge by ensuring that they understand every single requirement of their applications and coming up with the right test approach that can handle such requirements.

Changes in data

Retail applications deal with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of customers and try as much as possible to meet the different requirements of each of these customers. 

However, customer data and requirements change now and then, meaning that businesses struggle to test requirements for the changing data.

To overcome this challenge, businesses need to make sure that they are updated at all times on what their customers need and explore the top trends in the retail industry. They can even test data, scripts, and frameworks with test automation to make things easy.

Technology upgrade

As technology advances, there are a host of new changes that affect retail applications from time to time.

This means that developers, as well as testers, have to remain busy all year round trying to upgrade the retail applications to meet the requirements of the current technology.

Testing these upgrades poses a challenge especially when testers use the same test approach and test cases on the applications even after upgrading them.

Businesses can, however, overcome this challenge by setting up a new test environment every time there is an upgrade of their retail applications. They also need to test the applications’ functionality from time to time to ensure that everything works well.

Conclusion

Today, retail applications have grown popular in the market. Almost every other retailer has created an online shop to ensure that their customers have easy access to the goods and services that they offer.

However, a good percentage of them are not doing well due to poor development and testing of the retail applications.

Businesses face several challenges, some of the discussed above when automating the performance testing of the retail apps.