Testing an e-commerce platform that handles over 30 million orders per year is a potential QA nightmare.
How do you ensure flawless performance across multiple devices and expanding product lines, all while keeping pace with galloping client-base growth?
This was the challenge brought to us by a leading US-based print-on-demand company.
Their platform allows both large corporations and individual clients to create customized products in a few clicks. With over 10 million users globally and more than 26 million annual orders, they needed a robust testing solution that could scale with their success.
The Challenge
To successfully work on projects like this, you need to know the difference between complicated and complex problems.
Complicated problems have clear solutions — they just require more resources. Add more workers, increase the budget, or extend the timeline, and you’ll get there.
Complex problems don‘t have ready-made answers. First, you need to define the optimal result. Then, identify specific pain points and intersecting layers of challenges and find the best mix of approaches to address them.
Our client’s rapidly growing eCommerce platform wasn’t a complicated system needing more testers. It was a complex ecosystem requiring a tailored, adaptive approach.
For starters, we needed to clearly define what we would be working with.
After explorative testing and general QA and business analysis, we have identified the following layers of testing complexity in this project:
Multiple products Over 1,000 physical products with over 1 million design and layout options to test in variations. | Rapid growth Product line grew rapidly. We tested existing features while adapting to new ones. |
Multi-Platform Support The app works on iOS, Android, and websites. We had to test all the platforms, different OS versions, and devices. | High-Volume Transactions Millions of orders pour in every year. We had to make sure the platform wouldn’t crash during busy times. |
Personalization and AI Integration AI-powered personalization was added. We had to test outputs and innovative AI learning capabilities. | Cloud Migration While the client moved everything to the cloud, we had to help with migration while keeping regular tests running. |
Acquisitions and Integrations Client acquired new software. We expanded testing to ensure smooth integration and scaling. | Scaling the Team Rapidly onboarded specialized testers and streamlined communication across tasks and time zones. |
These challenges created a multi-layered testing ecosystem. Each layer demanded specific strategies, but we couldn’t treat them in isolation.
Every test had to consider the entire stack, from basic functionality to AI-driven features. This interconnected approach ensured that improvements in one area didn’t create unforeseen issues in another.