Why should I hire a professional tester if I can test my e-commerce store myself?

There are several reasons why you may want to hire a tester rather than testing it yourself:

1. Cost-effectiveness: While hiring a tester may seem like an additional expense, it can actually save you money in the long run. Professional testers can identify issues early on in the development process, reducing the cost of fixing these issues later. In the long run it allows for better time management in the project, since time that developers would spent on testing can be used to fix errors or implementing features, especially when taking into consideration that tester rates are usually several times lower than those of developers.

2. Time: Testing an e-commerce store can be a time-consuming process, especially if you are not familiar with the testing process. Professional testers can complete the testing process more efficiently, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. When included in early phases of the project, testers can help with requirement gathering, further improving the development process and allowing for more task-oriented and robust testing.

3. Expertise: Testers have specialized knowledge and expertise in testing e-commerce stores. They are familiar with the various aspects of e-commerce stores such as user interface, user experience, security, payment processing and logistics, and know how to test these aspects effectively.

4. Objectivity: Testers can provide an objective assessment of the quality of your e-commerce store. They can identify issues and provide recommendations for improvement without being influenced by personal biases or preferences.

5. Improved customer experience: An expert can help ensure that your e-commerce store provides a seamless and positive customer experience. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction, repeat business and positive reviews, which can ultimately benefit your business.

6. Test variety: Testers can perform different types of tests like: integration, functional, end-to-end, acceptance, performance or smoke tests, which provide detailed and useful information to help mitigate errors or possible shortcomings and bottlenecks.

Hiring a professional tester can help ensure that your e-commerce store is of the highest quality, providing a seamless and positive customer experience while saving you time and money in the long run.

For example lets imagine a hypothetical situation: the implementation of a new design which the customer is supposed to check himself. He receives the first pages for testing on Monday but because of the high workload he can't start till Friday. The deadline approaches, he was in a rush and he didn’t catch that in the mobile checkout there’s a bug where the VAT ID is required instead of the apartment number. The changes go live. After a month the sales values drop because individual customers who don't have a VAT ID could not complete their orders and so they abandoned their shopping carts. The situation starts to get tense. Marketing checks promotions but they look great. Traffic on the site don’t show any abnormality. Customer support looks through reports for a cause, however since customers who abandon carts rarely leave feedback, theres’s no clue. The developers don’t know what to look for so they need to check all the aspects of the store, which takes them 10h before finding the culprit. In the end it cost the store owner not only the additional devs time but also all of the lost revenue and brand reputation. And all because of a rather simple error which could have been easily found with the proper testing in place.

Using external testers with the correct implementation of the QA can provide a multi-layer verification and validation of the development process. It helps with creating and maintaining a brand image, since a finely tuned and issueless store has a crucial impact on customer satisfaction.