E-commerce has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years. Around 2.77 billion people worldwide now shop online – roughly one third of the global population. Global online sales are growing rapidly and are expected to reach $6.86 trillion in 2025, which is almost 800% more than in 2010. Accordingly, the share of online purchases in total retail sales is rising steadily: in 2021, it was just under 19%, and in 2025 it will be over 21%, while in 2010 less than 5% of all purchases were made online. These figures illustrate how much the industry has changed – and how high customer expectations have become. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Change and Rising Expectations in E-Commerce

E-commerce is particularly influenced by technological progress and changing customer behavior. Around 20 years ago, online retail was still in its infancy. A famous example from the dot-com era is Boo.com, an ambitious online fashion retailer that failed spectacularly in 2000. The company burned through over $135 million in venture capital in 18 months and had to close down – one reason being a website that was far too slow and cumbersome for users at the time. Boo.com relied on technologies that were advanced at the time but heavyweight (JavaScript, Flash) and high-resolution images, so that pages sometimes took several minutes to load – at a time when many customers only had 56k modems. This early failure already showed how critical a good user experience is for success in e-commerce.

In the years that followed, new technologies made online shopping more convenient and commonplace. Powerful smartphones and mobile apps enabled shopping from anywhere; fast deliveries and services such as one-click purchasing became standard. The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst: in 2020, online sales skyrocketed as many consumers turned to e-commerce as a safe alternative to brick-and-mortar stores. However, this development has also led to higher customer expectations. Today's shoppers expect convenience, speed, and reliability. If a page loads too slowly or errors occur during the ordering process, users are becoming less and less patient—after all, the next competitor is just a click away.

An overview of customer expectations of online shops today:

• Seamless Shopping Experience: Websites and apps must be intuitive to use and function smoothly on all devices (mobile, desktop, tablet). Customers will leave if navigation or search functions are frustrating.
• Performance & Availability: Long loading times or even downtime are detrimental to conversion. One hour of downtime can cost an online retailer millions. In addition, users expect short loading times—every second of delay increases the bounce rate.
• Trust & Security: The checkout process in particular must run smoothly and securely. Slow or cumbersome payment processes frustrate customers and lead to abandoned purchases. In the worst case, this undermines trust in the brand and has a direct negative impact on sales and profits.

The checkout process in particular must run smoothly and securely. Slow or cumbersome payment processes frustrate customers and lead to abandoned purchases. In the worst case, this undermines trust in the brand and has a direct negative impact on sales and profits.

When the Customer Experience Suffers: Revenue Losses Due to Errors

No one feels the increased demands more keenly than the e-commerce management, product owners, and developers behind online shops. Even minor flaws in the user experience can have a major financial impact. Marks & Spencer (M&S), one of the UK's largest retailers, provided an example of this when it relaunched its web shop in 2014. Problems with the new website—complicated navigation, technical bugs, and, above all, the requirement for all existing customers to create a new password—caused M&S's online sales to fall by 8.1% in the following quarter. The relaunch angered many regular customers; instead of the previous 6 million registered users, only 3.2 million re-registered after the changeover. As a result, sales figures plummeted by over 8%. This shows how much a suboptimal user experience immediately impacts business figures.

Other incidents also impressively demonstrate the risks lurking in e-commerce: At fashion retailer J.Crew, a five-hour website outage on Black Friday 2018 led to an estimated $775,000 in lost sales. Walmart lost around $9 million in 2019 due to just 150 minutes of downtime on a Black Friday weekend. Such mishaps are now discussed publicly on social media, which further damages the company's reputation. Companies not only lose immediate revenue, but also risk their customer base in the long term: according to surveys, 91% of customers never return to an online store after a bad experience.

These examples—whether a failed relaunch, technical collapse under load, or slow checkout—make one thing clear: errors in the shop cost money. In the highly competitive online market, they can even threaten the very existence of a business. This makes it all the more important to prevent such problems before real customers are affected.

This is where crowdtesting comes into play.

Crowdtesting: Realistic Tests with Real Users

How can you ensure that an online shop meets the expectations of the target group and doesn't hold any nasty surprises? In addition to traditional QA methods, crowdtesting is becoming an increasingly important approach. But what exactly does it mean?

In crowdtesting, software—such as an e-commerce website or shopping app—is tested by a large number of real users under real conditions. Instead of just in the lab or by internal testers, the testing takes place in the wild i.e., in the real world: on a wide variety of devices, operating systems, browsers, networks, and in different locations. This great diversity reveals problems that are rarely noticed in internal testing.

It is important that the selected testers match the target customer group. A crowdtesting provider ensures, for example, “that testing is carried out with people from your target group” – i.e., with real end users who match the profile of your customers. This allows you to gain practical insights: How do potential buyers experience the shop? Are they able to navigate it easily? Do errors occur on certain devices? Such feedback directly from the target group is invaluable, as it shows exactly where there is room for improvement before the shop goes live.

Another advantage is that crowdtesting can be carried out very quickly and flexibly. Large groups of testers can be mobilized at short notice, for example to put a new release candidate through its paces over the weekend. Fresh eyes often spot more than a well-established in-house team, which may no longer notice certain usability issues.

As Michael Palotas, Head of Quality Engineering Europe at eBay, confirms:

“Crowdtesters can do things that in-house testers cannot. Therefore, crowd testing can be very beneficial as an additional measure to obtain valuable feedback on usability, even after in-house testing has been completed.”

This continuous influx of genuine user feedback is crucial, especially in e-commerce, where constant development and updates are the norm.

In summary, crowdtesting offers the following key functions for online shops:

• Broad Coverage: Tests can be performed on all devices, browsers, and operating systems to ensure that every customer can be reached.
• Realism: Tests are conducted in real-world usage contexts—different network qualities, local conditions, real shopping carts, and transactions. This allows the entire customer journey experience to be tested, including payment and delivery (e.g., end-to-end tests with real purchases).
• Target Group-Specific Feedback: Testers are selected to match your target audience, e.g., based on demographics, region, or user behavior. This ensures that the feedback reflects what your actual customers would think.
• Speed and Scalability: Large tests can be launched at short notice and completed in just a few days, for example to find any remaining bugs before a release. The crowd is available worldwide, ready for action around the clock.
• Addition to Internal QA: Crowdtesting is not a substitute, but rather an ideal complement. It catches the blind spots that internal teams overlook and provides additional security before launch.

Conclusion: Avoid Revenue Losses with Crowdtesting – msg.passbrains Supports You in This Endeavor

The development of the e-commerce industry clearly shows that a high-quality online presence is essential. In light of rising demand and fierce competition, user experience and error-free functionality directly determine the sales and success of an online store. Crowdtesting has proven to be an effective means of ensuring this quality under real-world conditions and preventing costly missteps. Companies that test with real users at an early stage minimize the risk of sales slumps due to technical glitches or usability issues.

msg.passbrains offers a particularly well-designed solution here. As an experienced crowdtesting service provider, msg.passbrains ensures that your e-commerce application is tested by exactly the people who will later buy from you – your target group. Thanks to an international community of testers, projects can be carried out flexibly and worldwide. The tests are supervised end-to-end, from the selection of suitable testers to the implementation and evaluation, so that you ultimately receive clear results and concrete suggestions for improvement. With crowdtesting by msg.passbrains, you can strike a chord with your users and ensure a flawless shopping experience.

For e-commerce management, product owners, developers, and shop operators, this means fewer unpleasant surprises after go-live, higher customer satisfaction, and ultimately secure sales potential. Take advantage of the opportunities offered by crowdtesting to make your digital products a lasting success—msg.passbrains is happy to support you with the right expertise and the right target group.

Talk to us about crowdtesting.

Sources

• Shopify, The History of Ecommerce
• Shopify, The Future of Ecommerce
• TheStreet, Dotcom Failures
• The Guardian, Marks & Spencer sales fall after website launch
• WebsiteBuilderExpert, E-commerce Website Statistics
• Think with Google (2024), Optimizing the Checkout Experience