25/08/2025
… minutes read
Automated testing might sound like one of those buzzword-heavy concepts, but if you’re serious about building scalable, stable ecommerce systems, it’s absolutely essential. Especially when you're working in environments where features change every three months, and the platform evolves faster than your team can keep up manually.
If you’re still doing manual regression testing for everything, that’s not sustainable. The more complex your system becomes, the more value you get from automation. And in ecommerce, where a broken checkout or search page means immediate loss of revenue, this isn't about nice-to-have. It’s about survival.
Let’s walk through why automated testing matters, what types of tests actually help, and how they impact your business’s ability to grow, adapt, and move faster.
My own journey with automated testing started on a legacy project. We were making small changes, nothing that should have touched core systems. But then, random features started breaking in ways we didn’t expect. You change a button, and the product import pipeline fails. You fix the cart, and checkout goes offline.
It was unpredictable. So we started introducing tests. Nothing too fancy at first. A mix of unit, integration, and API tests focused on the high-risk areas. It wasn’t a full refactor. The client didn’t have budget for that, and we didn’t have the appetite. But those tests gave us something priceless, predictability.
Suddenly, we could test before going live. We could catch issues early, fix them fast, and trust that the system was still holding together. Over time, we hit a point where the platform was stable enough to release without panic.
The alternative would have been rewriting the entire system, which would have cost ten times more.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to testing. You have different tools for different jobs. These are the four types of tests I use the most.
These are the smallest, simplest type. They test individual units, usually a single class or function and check whether the input produces the expected output.
You’re not thinking about how it connects to other systems. Just input, logic, and output. Great for developers who are getting familiar with a system, or for testing isolated logic.
The downside? They don’t tell you much about how the full system behaves. But they’re fast, cheap, and useful, especially in early development.
Now we’re talking about testing how different components work together. This is where you write data to a database, check how services interact, and confirm that changes ripple through the system as expected.
In platforms like Adobe Commerce, integration tests are perfect for checking whether modules interact properly, or whether a business rule is enforced across components.
These tests are slower and require more setup. You’re often dealing with Docker containers, databases, Elasticsearch, and more. But they give you confidence that your core workflows are working, not just your isolated functions.
This is where things start to look like real user behaviour. Functional tests run through your website from the outside, simulating what an actual customer would do.
Click a product, add it to cart, check out. Validate that the right things happen.
I like using Playwright from Microsoft for this. It’s powerful, flexible, and lets you write tests that mimic full user journeys. And here’s the best part: you can run them against production.
You’re not testing in theory anymore. You’re testing the real system, in real conditions. You can even use them for monitoring, making sure that nothing a client changes in the admin panel accidentally breaks something customer-facing.
The only downside? They can be hard to write. Browser quirks, flaky UI, bad selectors, all of that adds friction. But that pain often highlights what your users are struggling with too. If your test can’t click a button, maybe your customer can’t either.
The fourth type I rely on a lot is API testing. It’s exactly what it sounds like. You test your endpoints directly, using tools like Postman or writing scripts in PHP or Python.
These tests are fast, clean, and effective. You’re checking that your API behaves as expected, returns the right data, and handles edge cases properly.
If you’ve invested in building proper APIs and you should, then these are some of the easiest and most valuable tests you can have.
Don’t fall into the trap of over-engineering. You don’t need to test every line of code or every corner of your UI. Start with the most critical parts of your system, the parts that break the business if they go down.
Cover those with reliable tests. Get confidence there first.
If you’re just starting out, avoid trying to cover the whole project at once. Set priorities. Build incrementally. And most importantly, make sure the tests you write are for things that might change, not the pieces of your codebase that haven’t been touched in three years.
Now let’s connect this back to your business goals.
When your system is covered with tests, adding new features or deploying across multiple environments becomes easier. You can spin up multiple instances, run the same test suite, and instantly know which ones are working.
That’s how you scale with confidence. Without tests, every new deployment is a gamble.
Stability comes from knowing that changes won’t break what already works. When tests are in place, you don’t have to cross your fingers before every release.
You also get real-time monitoring. Run your functional tests regularly and they’ll catch things even if someone tweaks something in the admin panel. No surprises.
The more tests you have, the faster you move. You’re not second-guessing everything. You’re not waiting days for manual QA. The tests give you instant feedback, which means faster development, fewer rollbacks, and more time spent building new things instead of fixing what broke.
If you want to go full Test-Driven Development (TDD), write your tests before you write any actual functionality. This approach helps clarify what your code is supposed to do, and forces you to design better systems.
It’s not always possible in agency work, where timelines are tight and specs are vague. But even adopting TDD for certain features or modules can raise the overall quality of your codebase.
If you’re not using automated tests yet, start now. Pick the most important areas of your platform and begin with those. Choose the right tool for the job, whether that’s unit tests, integration, functional, or API.
Build incrementally. Prioritise smartly. And avoid wasting time covering parts of the system that rarely change.
Most importantly, treat your tests as part of your development process, not an afterthought. The earlier you write them, the more value they bring. They make your platform more scalable, more stable, and a lot faster to work on.
We can help you identify the right starting points and guide your team through the process.
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