4 SFCC Testing Techniques For StoreFronts to 10x Customer Experience

If you're running an online store with Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), you already know how powerful this platform can be.

However, we also know that working with an online store can be extremely challenging.

Payment errors, slow-loading pages, and numerous technical issues can create frustrating first experiences for your customers; and financial losses for you.

In this article, I will explain a few testing strategies to help eliminate these problems and ensure your SFCC-based application runs smoothly.

But first, let's summarize some of the most common issues businesses face.

4 Most Common Issues in SFCC-based Online Stores and How to Fix Them

• Payment system errors. This is one of the biggest problems I’ve seen. If customers can't pay, it leads to direct financial losses for a business. To fix payment system errors, thoroughly test your payment system before launching. Use test credit cards to simulate real-world transactions and verify that the payment gateway is correctly integrated with your website. You can also use a third-party payment processor that specializes in secure online payments to ensure your system is reliable and secure.
  
• Login issues. Customers should easily be able to log in and access your site accounts. Ensure easy access to site accounts to avoid poor user experience and loss of trust due to login issues. Fix these issues by making the login form visible and easy to find, setting password strength requirements, and regularly testing the login process.
  
• Product display errors. Incorrect product sorting, sizing, or even incorrect pricing are common issues for online stores. To prevent product display errors, thoroughly test your product catalog before launching. Verify that all product information, including pricing and sizing, is correctly configured and displayed. Use real-world scenarios to ensure that all sorting and filtering options are working correctly.
  
• Slow-loading pages. Slow pages can be a significant issue for customers. By identifying the lagging pages or sections of your site, you can optimize them for a better user experience. Use website performance tools to analyze and identify the root cause of the issue(s), then optimize images, reduce server response time, or use a content delivery network (CDN) to improve page load times.

In other words, a lot can go wrong when you run an online store. Your website may crash when too many people try to shop at once. Perhaps your categories don't work properly, or your store looks weird on phones. All these things can cause problems for your customers, which translates into lost sales. This is why it's crucial to test your online store thoroughly and systematically. With the proper testing methods, we can detect and fix bugs before they become a problem for shoppers. Let's analyze these techniques and see how they can help maintain your SFCC-based application functionality.

Common Testing Techniques: What They Are

It’s necessary to test many things for an online store that uses Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This includes checking the user interface (UI), the API, the ability to handle lots of traffic, and how well it performs.

Let’s go over each of these in more detail.

User Interface (UI) Testing Technique for SFCC Storefronts

When running an online store on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, UI testing is crucial in ensuring that the store functions as expected and provides a positive user experience. UI testing is an automated technique that simulates user actions to verify application functionality.

Automating these tests allows potential errors to be identified proactively, minimizing the risk of issues going unnoticed. This can help detect problems with payment and login systems and product display and sorting issues.

UI testing includes testing all visual elements of the store: buttons, forms, links, and product displays, as well as the interactions between them. If the UI is not good enough, it can seriously affect customer satisfaction and sales.

To get the job done right, professional testers and automation engineers use different testing techniques:

• Functional testing. This technique involves testing the functionality of each UI element and verifying that it works correctly. This includes testing navigation, forms, buttons, and links. Functional testing ensures the store is easy to use and the customer can easily find what they want.
• Usability testing. This technique involves testing the ease of use of the store and how easy it is for the customer to navigate. It can help identify areas where the store can be improved to provide a better user experience.
• Compatibility testing. This technique involves testing the store on different devices and browsers to ensure it is compatible with various configurations. This is important because customers may access the store from different devices and browsers.
• Performance testing. This technique tests how the store handles a large number of users and its response time. This can help identify areas where the store can be optimized for better performance.

API Testing Technique for SFCC Storefronts

Online stores based on Salesforce Commerce Cloud use the Open Commerce API (OCAPI) or other compatible frameworks. These solutions allow external web applications to interface with core e-commerce functionality like cart, checkout, search, and data object access to entities like products and catalogs. API testing is crucial for online stores to ensure that everything is functioning correctly and that there are no data transmission and storage issues. This type of testing doesn't involve an interface - instead, experts send requests to the backend, get responses, and check that they are correct.I use various techniques to perform API testing for online stores based on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud:

• Integration testing. This technique tests how the API integrates with other systems, such as payment gateways and third-party apps. This can help ensure that the online store operates smoothly and that all systems function correctly.
• Security testing. This technique tests the security of the API by checking for vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. This helps ensure that customer data is securely protected.
• Functional testing. This technique tests the functionality of each API endpoint and verifies that it works correctly. This includes testing requests and responses, error handling, and authentication.

By using these techniques, I can ensure that the APIs for online stores based on Salesforce Commerce Cloud are functional, secure, and perform well. This can help improve the customer experience, increase sales, and protect customer data.

Load Testing Technique for SFCC Storefronts

Load testing involves simulating heavy traffic to evaluate the application’s responsiveness. This type of testing is essential for identifying potential bottlenecks in the system and ensuring that the application can handle many concurrent users.

Load testing results help measure response time during high traffic. I evaluate the speed of responses and check essential scenarios, such as the speed of navigating category and product pages, the effectiveness of the search engine, the accuracy of the UI, and the correct placement of all elements.

Furthermore, I verify the proper display of products added to the cart, including the accurate quantity and size, and ensure that the order creation process and payment system work correctly. These measures ensure that online stores can handle heavy traffic and function properly, providing a seamless customer experience.I recommend Gatling for load-testing because:

• More efficient than alternatives. This open-source solution simulates hundreds of thousands of requests per second and uses machine resources more efficiently than other tools like JMeter, making it ideal for continuous testing. This tool speeds up load testing for e-commerce applications, requiring fewer resources.
  
• Accurate reports. Gatling provides objective metrics and dynamic reports with easy-to-understand tables, making it easier for QA engineers to identify bottlenecks in the system.
  
• HTTP support. Gatling offers great HTTP protocol support and eases work with different testing scenarios and automation due to its code-like scripting.
  
• Ease of creating custom protocol support. The core engine of Gatling doesn't depend on a protocol, allowing engineers to create custom protocol support.

Testing, diagnosis, and conducting stress and functionality tests regularly helps me to identify critical bugs and make necessary adjustments based on the results. With Gatling integrated into a CI/CD life cycle, I can ensure that online stores can handle heavy traffic and function properly, providing a seamless customer experience.

Performance Testing Technique for SFCC Storefronts

Performance testing for SFCC-based online stores is critical to ensuring the website delivers an optimal user experience. One open-source tool that businesses can use for performance testing is Google Lighthouse. It evaluates website performance across various metrics and provides detailed actionable recommendations for improving website speed and accessibility.

Here's why testing the speed of online stores is so important:

• Improve user experience. A slow-loading website can frustrate users, leading to increased bounce rates and decreased sales. Testing website speed helps businesses identify areas that need optimization to improve website speed and accessibility for users.
• Increase website traffic. Website speed is a critical factor in search engine ranking, with faster websites ranking higher in search results. Businesses can improve their website's search engine ranking by optimizing website speed.
• Optimize website performance. Google Lighthouse evaluates website performance across various metrics, including page load time, time to interact, and total blocking time. By identifying areas that need optimization, businesses can improve website performance.

In combination with load testing, performance testing provides businesses with a comprehensive understanding of their website's performance. It identifies areas that need optimization in order to improve website speed and accessibility for users.

Conclusion

Running an online store is no easy feat, and ensuring that your customers have a positive experience when interacting with your business is essential. Luckily, testing techniques such as functional testing, usability testing, compatibility testing, and performance testing can help to ensure that your Salesforce Commerce Cloud-based application runs smoothly and provides a seamless customer experience.