# What to test on an online shop A starter guide for shop owners and e-commerce teams: the journeys that cost you orders when they break, what to check on each, and how often to run the tests. It works the same on Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware, Magento or a shop you built yourself. From €19/month · 7-day trial with 100 runs · no credit card ## Why shops break after an update Most shops don't break on their own. They break when something changes, and the change was checked in one browser, with one basket. - **A theme update**: New templates move or rename buttons, change the cart drawer, or drop something the checkout needed. - **A new plugin or app**: Reviews, upsells, cookie banners and tracking add code to every page. One of them can cover the "Add to cart" button or stop the cart from opening. - **Price, discount and shipping changes**: A new discount rule or shipping threshold can show the wrong total, or block the checkout for some baskets. - **A browser update**: Browsers update all the time. Something that worked last month can break in Safari or Firefox while it still works in Chrome. ## The journeys to test, and what to check Start with the ones closest to the money. Each one is a short test that runs in every browser. - **Home and search**: The home page loads, the main menu opens, and a search for a real product shows results, not an empty page. - **Categories and filters**: A category or collection page lists products, and filters and sorting (size, colour, price) change the list. - **Product page and variants**: Picking a size or colour updates the price and the stock message, and "Add to cart" works for the variant you picked. - **Cart**: The cart or cart drawer opens, the plus and minus buttons change the quantity, and the total is right after each change. - **Discount codes and free shipping**: A test discount code takes off the right amount, and the free-shipping message appears at the right basket value. - **Checkout, up to payment**: The way from the cart into checkout: the address fields accept input, the shipping options show, and the payment step opens. On your live shop, end the test before paying. - **Customer accounts**: Login and order history with a test account. Passwords are stored as secrets and hidden in screenshots and logs. - **Forms**: The newsletter sign-up and the contact form send, and show their thank-you message. ## A worked example: add to cart Start with the journey that earns the money. This test opens a product, picks a size, adds it to the cart and checks the result. Record it by clicking through your shop once, or describe it in plain words and let Forge QA draft the steps for you to check. - Each step is one thing a customer does, or one thing you check. - The checks are what make it a test: the cart count, the item, the total. - One test in five browsers counts as five runs. ## How often to run your tests Two moments matter: every day, because things change without you, and right after every change you make. - **Every day, on a schedule.** Run your key journeys every night or every hour. Schedules can run as often as every minute. - **After every release.** Run them right after you update the theme, add a plugin or change prices. Start a run in the app, or from your deploy pipeline on Professional and Agency. - **As a suite.** Put the journeys in a suite that runs them in order, and stop after the first failure when later tests depend on earlier ones. - **A rough budget:** six tests in five browsers once a day is 6 × 5 × 30 = 900 runs a month, inside the 1,000 runs of the [Starter plan](https://forgeqa.io/pricing). ## Test checkout safely You want to know the checkout works, without placing real orders. - **Don't place real orders.** On a staging or development shop, use your payment provider's test mode. On your live shop, end the test before the payment step. - **Payment pages:** a website setting, on by default, lets runs follow your checkout to Shopify's checkout and to the payment pages of PayPal, Stripe Checkout, Klarna and Mollie. Other sites stay blocked unless you add them as websites. - **Password-protected shops:** record the password page as the first steps and keep the password as a secret. - **Test accounts and codes:** use a test customer account and a test discount code, so real customers and real codes stay out of it. - **Firewalls and bot protection:** runs come from shared IP addresses listed in your workspace, so you can let them in. ## Every browser. A security check on every run. Each test runs in Chromium, Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari (WebKit), on every plan. Many shoppers buy on an iPhone. Safari (WebKit) is the engine inside Safari: it catches most Safari problems, though it is not Apple's Safari app itself. Every run also checks your shop for signs of hacking: visitors sent to another site, scripts that read card details, and scripts from other sites that are new since the last run. Results show in their own "Security" tab next to the test results, and they never fail your test. [How the check works](https://forgeqa.io/security-scan) ## Works with any shop system Forge QA tests your shop the way a customer sees it: in a real browser, from the outside. There is no plugin or app to install in your shop, so it works the same on Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware, Magento or a custom build. Running Shopify? See [testing a Shopify store](https://forgeqa.io/shopify) for the checkout hop through shop.app, theme previews and cart drawers. Everything else: [all features](https://forgeqa.io/features) and [pricing](https://forgeqa.io/pricing). ## Start with one journey this week. 7 days, 100 runs, every browser. No credit card. --- Source: https://forgeqa.io/ecommerce · Start a free trial: https://app.forgeqa.io/#signup Summary: What to test on any online shop, from search to checkout: the journeys, what to check on each, how often to run them and how to test checkout safely. For Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware, Magento and custom shops.