During our website builds, some of our clients have asked about our quality assurance process. We commonly get questions like “What do you check during testing?” and “What should our testing include?” We can give answers to the first question during the course of the project. In response to the second question, we recently wrote a document that provides an initial set of answers. A primary factor that influenced the direction of the document is that we’ve found that a merchant tends to focus on the features of a site that are unique to them, while overlooking aspects that are standard or only lightly customized. And having a published procedure which we can give to clients means they can get started sooner with their testing because they have a roadmap to follow. A benefit of an earlier start on user acceptance testing is more available time for changes and bug fixes prior to launching.

The first version of the procedure guides a merchant through testing a “happy path” through the site. A “happy path” is a path through a system or site where given normal, expected inputs, everything works as expected without errors or exceptions. Using a “happy path” approach doesn’t ensure that a site is bug-free since things do go wrong in the real world. Our internal testing process is much more comprehensive and detailed, and hopefully, we have delivered a nearly defect-free site to the client. Our intention with the procedure is to achieve two objectives during user acceptance testing:

1. To prompt user acceptance testing when there’s enough time to act on the client’s feedback without delaying the launch.
2. To ensure that the client sees what most of the site looks like, and experiences how the key features of the site work.

The Scenario

The scenario we chose to emulate with the test is that of a first-time guest user of the site. We thought about the actions that a first-time visitor would most likely take, and created a diagram depicting what that user might do.

Note that the above diagram isn’t a rigorously correct process flow diagram. It was sufficient for the purpose of guiding the writing of the test procedure. And it probably includes more actions than a typical first-time guest user would actually do. It can be thought of as a “happy path with detours”. We wanted to cover those behaviors that were highly likely to be done by first-time visitors, although any single user is unlikely to do all of them.

Test Coverage

The procedure covers the following aspects of testing the store as a first-time guest user.

• Testing with both desktop and mobile devices.
• Visiting the homepage.
• Adding a product to the cart from a “featured products” or “hot sellers” block.
• Navigating to a category page and adding a product on it to the cart.
• Searching for a product and adding a product to the cart from the search results.
• Adding a product to the cart from a product details page, including at least one product with options.
• Viewing the minicart and using its features.
• Viewing the shopping cart and using its features.
• Checking out.
• Reviewing the order confirmation.
• Opening an account.
• Using account page features.
• Viewing the 404 page.

The Document

The document includes step by step instructions and many screenshots so that it is usable by testers who are new to Magento-based sites. It is available as a PDF file.

Classy Llama’s clients will be provided with the document at the appropriate point in their project and may also obtain it by contacting their project manager and requesting a copy of User Acceptance Testing a Magento 2 Site.