A retail mobile app is the new storefront – which requires modern software practices emphasizing rapid development and deployment. Continuous testing throughout the software development lifecycle can help you build your digital confidence to keep pace with demanding customers and innovative competitors.
What is digital confidence? It means you know that you are creating and delivering the best possible experience to your customers, that your mobile applications look and function exactly as intended before your users ever interact with them, and that your customers know they will have a seamless experience with every interaction.
Continuous Testing for Retail
A flawless digital shopping experience is no longer a competitive edge—it’s the foundation for successful business – not to mention the expectations of their customers.
Today, 70% of consumers reach for mobile devices to shop for clothes, furniture, food, and home supplies. As retailers promote shopping via their retail mobile apps thanks to better user experiences, higher engagement, and stronger conversions, it's no surprise that 60% of consumers now prefer shopping on apps over mobile sites. However, digital shoppers are extremely fickle and will abandon an app after just 3-4 bad experiences. For brands, this isn't just a lost customer - it's a direct hit to their bottom line.
With retail mobile apps contributing more to the bottom line each year, having a thoughtful testing strategy and process is critical to delivering great shopping experiences in order to compete in the market.
Digital confidence starts with continuous testing. However, retailers who are used to legacy testing practices may struggle to adapt to the continuous testing processes that are more typical to software companies. If continuous testing is new to you, here are four reasons why you should consider incorporating it into your retail app testing process.
1. Manual testing isn't enough
Retail technology is like a beloved, cozy sweater—pull a single thread on one sleeve, and you could easily create a hole somewhere else. Because every change you make in your mobile app can lead to unforeseen side effects, you need to test in a way that is truly comprehensive.
With continuous testing, you can test earlier in the SDLC so that any poor-quality code is fixed long before it can create other issues down the road. And by running tests continuously throughout development, the overall testing process is significantly reduced. This eliminates bottlenecks for delivery while freeing up time to create better quality code to improve the customer experience.
2. Your retail mobile app needs to constantly evolve
Many retailers are used to thinking months in advance (like planning for peak shopping events such as Black Friday) so they can carefully plan their sales strategies, store layouts, marketing campaigns, and product mix. However, your mobile app is a living, breathing product that adapts to new data, changing customer demand, and actions taken by your competitors.
Few industries require innovation and rapid iteration like retail. Customers have little loyalty, and will quickly abandon their cart at the first sign of friction. Not only does the app need to perform at its best, but it must stay current with cool new features, such as loyalty points, the latest payment methods, and the hottest UX experiences to attract shoppers and keep people coming back.
Once your test system is set up to run tests with every change, your developers will become more confident that they can push changes faster. By getting immediate feedback on whatever new changes they introduce, they can reduce bottlenecks and push their ability to innovate further and faster–something that is impossible when waiting for human QA later in the development lifecycle.
3. The customer experience needs to be guaranteed
The key advantage of your retail mobile app is that it lets your customers shop anytime and anywhere. As a result, you need to be able to deliver a shopping experience that is always ready to deliver a high-quality browsing, selecting, and purchasing journey.
In addition, your mobile app plays a critical role in delivering a winning omnichannel experience that extends to your physical location, your website, your social media channels, and every other customer touchpoint. By ensuring quality at every step, you’ll be able to maintain shopper loyalty and attract customers who don’t receive that same level of consistent quality from other retailers. The better your user experience, the more likely they’ll continue to shop so you can drive revenue and profitability.
4. Time and resource savings from frequent bug detection
With traditional software development, the bulk of QA happens once there is a release candidate. The release must then be held up while corrections are made—corrections that may be difficult or impossible due to multiple, concurrent feature changes.
By leveraging continuous testing to run tests earlier and often, you can detect bugs before bundling new retail technology solutions together. Developers can see what changes are required, or that a feature even needs to be redesigned before they invest time and resources trying to make the change.
Continuous testing in action
Continuous testing is already being used by leading retailers to test more so they can improve the customer experience. For example, Walmart used to struggle with legacy testing practices that couldn’t keep pace with the demands of their mobile app development goals.
Once Walmart began continuous testing, they were able to go from manual testing to running 50,000+ automated tests per day. Furthermore, they were able to eliminate testing infrastructure maintenance, accelerate their deployment cycles—and save one million engineering hours in 12 months.
Ready to deliver seamless digital shopping experiences? Learn more about how to transform your retail software quality strategy with continuous testing.
