Browser Compatibility Testing

Retail companies are seeing a significant portion of their revenues generated online.

Customers access these online “storefronts” via the browser and the entire interaction between the customer/retailer is a “data stream”, which is a very challenging proposition for retailers. Forrester Research estimates 2007 online retail sales at $157.4 billion and expects this number to grow to $271.6 billion (or 9% of retail sales overall) by 2011. Retail companies are seeing a significant portion of their revenues generated online. These online “storefronts” are delivered to the place they cannot see — the browser of the customer. Online customers expect a superior user experience every time they access a retail site regardless of their choice of browsers, browser settings, plug-in, security options, operating systems or hardware. This challenge has led to high levels of customer complaints and massive business impact.

Essentia is the leader in Customer Experience Testing for large complex sites. These sites are characterized by frequent updates, high traffic, large number of pages and short test windows due to high uptime requirements. Essentia has expert teams, proven process and tools for automation, analysis, identification of problem pages, focused automation for compatibility and statistical QA methods to build and execute a high confidence QA process for customer experience testing.


Recent Harris Interactive survey [2] has shown:

• 85% of users expected their online experiences to be the same as offline

• 40% of those users said that the action they took after experiencing an issue was to simply switch
away— permanently — to a competitor, either online or offline.

• 9 out of 10 users have experienced some sort of application obstacle forcing them to abandon a
transaction.

• Key issues encountered are listed below. This represents nearly $50 billion in consumer transactions
at risk through the remainder of this decade — in just retail and travels alone.


Key Problems Encountered

• 40% Received Error message

• 37% The website was difficult to navigate.

• 31% unable to complete an action or transaction due to an endless loop.

• 31% Difficulty checking in/logging on to the website

• 31% insufficient, incorrect, or confusing information on the website.

• 22% Search function on the website was not functioning properly.

• 22% were automatically kicked off the page.

In the extremely competitive online retail business, running an online channel forces rapid releases that might not often have the opportunity to be fully tested and not totally ready for deployment. Use cases become "best guesses" as customers use the web in unstructured ways. And testing is insufficient at best and when users access the website from their own unique combination of browser, plug-in, security settings, operating systems, computer and internet connection the customer experience is significantly compromised. Our studies reveal that a company could minimize customer abandonment and improve sales conversions noticeably thereby increasing revenues and margins.


Our Solutions

Online customers expect a superior user experience every time they access a retail site regardless of their choice of browsers, browser settings, plug-in, security options, operating systems or hardware used like laptop, desktop, Mac or iphone. Essentia is pioneering a new class of Customer Experience Testing solution specifically targeted at online retail to minimize this risk and enhance customer retention. Companies using EssentiaBCT to streamline their online channels will minimize customer abandonment and improve sales conversions noticeably thereby. The EssentiaBCT suite is a comprehensive experience framework comprising of key functional modules like Link Checker, HTML Validator, WebRunner, Image Compare, Auto Test Generation, URL DB and multilevel reporting.

The world’s largest online retailers rely on EssentiaBCT to improve their online customer experience and see significant business benefits.

» HTML VALIDATOR

As with any programming language there is an accurate way to write HTML. HTML codes must comply with web standards for your web pages to look alike across multiple browsers. Therefore, it becomes all the more important to validate HTML syntax against standards published by the worldwide web consortium. Our tool, HTML Validator validates your web page HTML code against precisely-specified machine languages. After validation, the necessary corrections can be made to produce pages that are compatible across multiple browsers, thereby resulting in happy customers.


» LINK CHECKER

The link checker tool basically comprises of a program that tests and reports the validity of the links in the web pages. If your web pages contain broken links, it could force away regular customers to your competitor’s website. Moreover, this prevents spiders from indexing your website. Our link checker tool will help you to spot the broken links which you can rectify.


» IMAGE COMPARE

Web pages may look different across different browsers & platforms depending upon the user’s computer configuration. This includes operating system, browser, virus protection software, screen resolution of the user’s computer etc. Testing websites by downloading different browsers and running OS on multiple systems
is very tedious. Essentia’s Image Compare tool allows web developers to view web pages across multiple browsers/platforms and identify rendering errors.


» WEBRUNNER

Webrunner is an automated browser testing tool that allows you to test the functionality of web applications. This will eliminate the need for writing complex java scripts to test web applications. Webrunner does that for you, by recording all the actions that you perform in any browser. Screenshots of every action of the recorded script will be captured, which will enable you to visually identify where the error has occurred.


Overall benefits of EssentiaBCT

• Provide a great customer experience.

• Increase ROI and gaining more customers.

• Increase customer satisfaction.

• Keep up and strengthen your branding and reputation in the market place.