It will tell you if the server will be slow, or if it will be accurate. It will tell you exactly what the user will experience trying to sell 100 shares of IBM stock. But today's e-commerce applications introduce many new elements into a system that are hard to test properly. For example, each time you update your e-commerce site with news or graphics, you must test the whole system over again to make sure these new elements have not played havoc with any of your applications, says Conley. Traditional testing methods may give you a glimpse of what a specific application is doing at a moment in time.
Constant testing is especially important in online trading, where the stakes are enormous.
But testing is also becoming critical in all kinds of e-business applications. But small companies need to focus their attention on it too. Instead of going to the mall, you have 10,000 people hit your site for Polo shirts. It's all in the testing and with so many systems working together, it's a complex matter. Today, Segue is just one of a handful of companies offering live testing solutions for e-commerce.