Testing your Store’s Order Process
Photo by Sarah Pflug.
Have you ever wondered what steps your customers go through to purchase from your online store? To get a better understanding of your customers journey, you can test your store's order process. In doing so, you'll also be able to ensure your inventory, shipping rates, email notifications, and taxes are all correct.
Whether you’re using Shopify Payments, or a third-party gateway, you can easily simulate a transaction by using test mode, or enabling the bogus gateway.
Testing the Shopify Payments gateway
If you’re using Shopify Payments, you can test your order process by enabling test mode in your settings.
When you test the Shopify Payments gateway, make sure not to fulfill any orders as you’ll be charged for any shipping labels purchased. If you’re using an application to automatically fulfill orders, deactivate it before testing your order process. Please note, the test mode feature is not able to simulate transactions using Shop Pay or Shop Pay installments.
You can activate test mode by navigating to Settings > Payments > Manage > Enable Test Mode.
Note: you can only test the Shopify Payments gateway if you have selected a paid plan. Test mode is not available for merchants in France - Instead, merchants located in France can use the Bogus Gateway.
When the test mode is enabled, you can’t use real credit cards to make purchases. Instead, you will need to navigate to your online store to add the desired products to cart. You can then use the following details to simulate a successful transaction within the checkout:
- Name on card: Enter at least two words.
- Expiry date: Enter any date in the future.
- Security code: Enter any three digits.
- Card number: Use any of the following numbers:
|
Card type |
Test credit number |
|
Visa |
4242424242424242 |
|
Mastercard |
5555555555554444 |
|
American Express |
378282246310005 |
|
Discover |
6011111111111117 |
|
Diners Club |
30569309025904 |
|
JCB |
3530111333300000 |
If you’d like to view potential error messages that a customer might see at checkout, you can also simulate a failed transaction. Use the following test credit card numbers to simulate a failed transaction:
- Use credit card number 4000000000000002 to generate a card declined message.
- Use credit card number 4242424242424241 to generate an incorrect number message.
- Use credit card number 4000000000000259 to simulate a disputed transaction.
- Use an invalid expiry month, for example 13, to generate an invalid expiry month message.
- Use an expiry year in the past to generate an invalid expiry year message.
- Use a two-digit security code number to generate an invalid security code message.
Once you have completed testing your orders process, you can cancel the test order and delete the test order from your Shopify store.
Activating the Bogus Gateway
If you don’t have the Shopify Payments gateway available on your online store, you’ll need to activate the Bogus gateway by navigating to Settings > Payments > See all other payment providers.
Note: The purpose of the Bogus gateway is for testing. Shopify will not charge you transaction fees on orders paid through this gateway.
Once you have activated the gateway, you can make your way to the checkout to complete a test transaction and see the order process from a customer’s point of view. Navigate to your online store and select the desired products that you would like to add to cart. The test transaction order amount needs to be greater than the equivalent of 1 USD in any currency.
To complete your test order, you will need to enter the test payment information within the checkout. You can simulate different types of transactions depending on what information you choose to enter:
- 1 - Simulate an Approved Transaction
- 2 - Simulate a Declined Transaction
- 3 - Simulate a Gateway Failure
For the Card Security Code you can enter any three numbers ex. 123 and for the expiration date enter any date in the future.
Once you are finished testing your order process, you can cancel the test order and delete the test order from your Shopify store.
Be mindful that you are testing the order process from your customers perspective. Keep an eye out for any sections that are not filled in, misspellings on products pages. Additionally, you can even make a test transaction for all shipping locations that you are offering your business to.
By testing your store’s order process, you can get a better insight of what your customers' are experiencing. Understanding the customer experience can help you identify and address issues that may lead to cart abandonment. Always remember, satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers.
