Investment in e-commerce has
probably suffered more than any other sector from the general loss of
confidence engendered by the Stock Market downturn of the last two years.
Nevertheless, more people than ever are accessing the net and they are the
people who count in economic terms. Over 50% of the population of all of the
G7.countries regularly accesses the internet. These tend to be the higher
socio-economic groups, those who have the highest incomes, and therefore the
greatest spending power. The truly phenomenal aspect of the internet is that
it offers a channel through which all kinds of new and traditional goods and
services can be marketed globally at a far lower cost than was previously
thought possible.
The
internet provides a platform from which a message can be sent to the whole
world instantly. It is imperative that the message received is not “We do
not know what we are doing!” Websites which worked well in the past are now
suffering from neglect - links that lead nowhere, out-dated content giving
misleading information, validation routines which reject legitimate customer
data thus losing orders. The list of highly embarrassing and, in many cases,
damaging blunders which have caused corporate misery grows daily. If you get
it wrong on the web, there is no hope of hiding it. Those people who don’t
see it for themselves will read the story, which the press is bound to
report gleefully if not entirely accurately.
The
benefits of the internet can only be enjoyed by those businesses who have
total confidence in the ability of their systems to perform as required.
Comprehensive testing prior to implementation and on-going health checks
will ensure this. The focus needs to be on both functional and performance
testing.
It is the intention of
e-testQA to educate our clients that the cost, in both money and time
to undertake comprehensive testing, is relatively small, when compared with
the cost of failure.