How to launch digital products that customers love
A practical guide for ecommerce and digital product managers on hitting launch deadlines without compromising the customer experience — and the eight testing priorities that protect conversion while you innovate at pace.
In an age of digital opportunity and agile development, ecommerce and digital product managers are deeply aware that securing the first-mover advantage and continuous improvement are essential strategies for outpacing the competition. It’s an omnichannel world where nothing stays still — websites and apps are moving targets for functional and usability issues, and as release cycles shorten, customer expectations only get more sophisticated.
With so much change and pressure to innovate, testing and resolving issues can become a firefighting activity for damage limitation. Lack of resources, knowledge, processes and tools makes it challenging to impose a systematic, preventative testing regime — and hitting a pragmatic balance between rapid progress and high product quality is a constant challenge. It’s a realm we’re well-acquainted with here at Digivante.
In this guide, we review the key challenges digital product owners face in hitting launch deadlines without compromising the customer experience, set out the key User Acceptance Testing priorities for sustaining strong conversion rates, and suggest ways to improve your current testing approach in line with your business priorities.
Digital quality challenges for leading retail ecommerce brands
Seven forces are working against a smooth, stable launch — and each one raises the stakes for testing.
Usability challenges
A high-profile website relaunch a few years ago promised a new era for online shoppers — but shipped rife with usability problems, forcing millions of registered customers to recreate accounts and blocking others from checking out entirely.
£150m rebuild · 8.1% sales drop
Peak outages
High-profile brands lose business every year through system crashes, because websites remain untested and un-optimised for the traffic surges that are business as usual in modern online retail — from Thanksgiving outages to Black Friday PR disasters.
$11m+ lost in a single outage
New functionality is complex but vital
Hyper-personalisation, voice commerce, AI-driven service and immersive experiences drive loyalty and conversion — but each relies on complex algorithms and integrations, introducing new risk into QA and user acceptance.
Territory expansion means adapting to local norms
Distant markets are tantalisingly close, but can your site really convert in the regions you’re targeting? Optimising for cultural and linguistic difference — and unfamiliar customer behaviour — is an ongoing challenge.
Mobile is growing bigger than ever
More customers transact only on mobile — always on, always to hand. Testing must keep pace across the full range of devices, OS versions and territories, as new hardware ships constantly.
Desktops aren’t dead yet
Mobile may be the headline growth area, but plenty of customers still buy on desktop, laptop and tablet. Product managers can’t afford to sacrifice testing on these devices as browsers and operating systems keep evolving.
Agile development is relentless
Sprints are shortening, and testing has to keep step — surfacing high-impact issues earlier and faster, and finding resource that can run at the speed the development lifecycle demands.
Brands who want to cut through in new markets need to know their offerings are working on the ground — with the ability to continually tweak and optimise for unfamiliar customer behaviours.
Conor Whelan, CEO Digivante
Visibility into why customers are quietly leaving, when testing only reacts to obvious issues — in a reactive testing scenario, identifying the root cause of customer leakage, drop-offs and conversion dips becomes genuinely difficult. Live customers disengage and shift loyalty elsewhere, often without a clear signal of what prompted it.
Protecting and optimising customer experience and conversion
How do you tackle these challenges and keep conversion on target? We recommend eight areas of testing focus for ecommerce and digital product managers, to validate user acceptance, sustain high-quality CX, and keep pace with ongoing development.
Exploratory testing
Gives qualified, professional testers the freedom to follow their hunches, creativity and product knowledge to uncover bugs and usability issues — replicating real-world decision-making beyond a script.
Usability testing
Flags illogical, confusing or unclear elements, and identifies reactions to different journeys and design choices — assessing the impact of change on ever-evolving, feature-rich sites and apps.
Regression testing
Ensures stability and reliability by detecting and preventing the reintroduction of previously resolved issues, safeguarding against unintended consequences of updates or enhancements.
Post-release testing
Identifies defects that only emerge once a site or app is live. Rapid testing in the live environment uncovers overlooked issues fast, protecting conversion and brand reputation.
Accessibility testing
Ensures a seamless experience for all users regardless of ability. With around 15% of the global population living with a disability, accessibility gaps mean excluded users, legal risk and reputational damage.
Localisation testing
Real testers with real local knowledge — including local currency and payment testers — spot issues that impact conversion, from clumsy translation to culturally inappropriate content.
Cross-browser testing
Confirms a friction-free experience across the full range of devices, operating systems and browsers your customers actually use — rather than assuming everyone matches your test environment.
Payment testing
Nothing deters a customer faster than a failed transaction or clunky checkout. Payment testing catches the discrepancies that cause cart abandonment before they hit revenue.
Exploratory testing helped Etsy get ahead of fluctuating sales
Flash sales from sellers and unexpected interactions between hardware and software caused sales fluctuations worth millions of dollars for Etsy. Without a clear way to account for the impact of those changes, the team couldn’t optimise fast enough to protect revenue and UX.
Etsy moved to continuous deployment, built around constant regression and exploratory testing — giving developers the fast, reliable feedback loop they needed to prioritise fixes.
Approaches and tactics for successful UAT execution
Maintaining focus across all eight priorities is demanding for any in-house team. Three tactics make it manageable.
Scale and speed through test outsourcing
Outsourcing to professional testers gives challenger brands access to the size and quality of resource that hyperscale companies keep in-house — with the international reach, 24/7 capacity and device coverage to deliver the equivalent of hundreds of days’ testing in 24 hours. Look for a partner who matches testers to your target audience and signs an NDA for every project.
More hands on deck with team augmentation
Testing demand rarely stays consistent across releases. A full in-house team risks going under-utilised; too lean, and you’re exposed when quality needs attention. A team augmentation partner adds specialists on demand, exactly where you need them, without carrying the permanent overhead.
Make the most of automation with blended testing
Automation reduces time to market for new features — used selectively, where it genuinely saves time and money. The best results come from balancing automation with manual and crowdsourced testing, applied wherever each delivers the most value.
Never wonder where your customers went, or why
Successful digital and ecommerce stories are built on continually refining experience, features and conversion from deep customer insight. Pair your existing testing resource with an expert UAT partner, and you’ll always have a clear view of what to do next to maximise sales, revenue and conversion.
