A QA process that catches the real bugs

Hi there,

Let me be honest about how most testing goes. Someone clicks around for ten minutes, nothing obvious falls over, and it ships. Then a customer finds the bug you didn't look for, in the checkout, on your busiest day.

QA doesn't need to be heavy. It needs to be deliberate.

Test the journeys that matter

You can't check everything, so don't try. Protect the paths that make you money and cost you customers when they break.

• The full purchase, from landing to confirmation email
• Adding, editing and removing items in the basket
• Payment, including a card that gets declined
• The mobile version, on a real phone, not just a narrow browser window

If those work, you've covered most of what customers actually do.

Make it repeatable

The value of QA is in doing the same checks every time, so nothing quietly regresses. A short written checklist beats a good memory.

1. Write down the key journeys once, and reuse the list
2. Check on real devices, not just your own big desktop screen
3. Test the unhappy paths — declined cards, empty baskets, wrong postcodes

Your customers will test the parts you skipped. Better you find them first.

And test as you go, not just at the end. A bug caught the day it's written costs minutes. The same bug found after launch costs a stressful evening and a bit of trust.

None of this asks for a big team or fancy tools. It asks for a list, a phone and the discipline to run the same checks each time. That's a QA process, and it'll save you from the failures that actually hurt.

If you want a checklist built around your store's real money-makers, book advisory time.