How to carry out UAT: A step-by-step guide for your Shopify migration

When making the move to a new platform, user acceptance testing (UAT) is your final opportunity to catch issues, ensure everything works as expected, and deliver a flawless experience for your customers. It’s the moment to put your store through its paces, simulating real-world scenarios to uncover any hidden problems before launch.

For retailers migrating to Shopify, UAT is especially important. With so many moving parts - data, design, integrations, and more - it’s easy for small oversights to slip through the cracks, but with a structured approach you can ensure your store is polished, performant, and ready to convert. 

To get you started, here we walk you through the key steps to carry out thorough testing, so you can be confident that your new store is ready to go live.

Start with a clear vision

Before diving into testing, be clear on what you’re trying to achieve, and make sure that vision is communicated to everyone that’s chipping in as part of the UAT process. This type of testing isn’t just about finding bugs - it’s about ensuring the store meets your business requirements and delivers a great user experience.

Start by outlining your goals. Create a scope for your UAT, include the key areas that must be tested, and define what good looks like for each of the areas, spanning everything from on-site search capabilities to your checkout process.

It’s also useful to involve stakeholders from different teams - such as marketing, merchandising and customer service - to ensure all perspectives are considered, helping you avoid wasted time and overlooked issues.

Build your blueprint

A test plan is your roadmap for UAT. It outlines what needs to be checked, who will do the testing, and how results will be recorded. Without a plan, you risk missing critical areas or duplicating efforts.

Start by breaking your test plan down into manageable sections. For functionality, test features such as product filters, add-to-basket buttons, and payment gateways. For design, check that the store looks and feels right, is on-brand across all devices, and responsive too. For performance, test loading times, and for content, verify that product descriptions, images, and blog posts are displayed correctly.

Think like a customer

The best way to ensure your store is ready for launch is to test it from the perspective of your customers. Think about the most common user journeys, such as browsing products, adding items to the basket, and completing a purchase.

Create test scenarios that mimic real-world behaviour, such as finding products using the search bar, applying discount codes, and adjusting quantities in the basket. Be sure to also check if email notifications - such as order confirmations or basket recovery prompts - are triggered correctly.

Don’t forget to also test edge cases, such as entering invalid payment details or navigating back and forth between pages, as these scenarios often reveal hidden issues that could frustrate customers or disrupt their shopping experience.

Log and prioritise

As you test, keep a clear record of every issue you encounter, no matter how small, and use a tracking tool such as Trello, Jira, or even a simple spreadsheet to log bugs, their severity, and steps to reproduce them. This info is vital to help your Shopify partner to quickly resolve identified issues, and can be useful for future reference.

It’s also recommended that you prioritise issues based on their impact to ensure that major problems are addressed first. Showstopper bugs, such as a broken checkout process, should be fixed immediately, whereas minor design tweaks can potentially wait until after your store is live. Share your findings with your Shopify partner, and ensure they provide timelines for fixes.

The final countdown

Once all identified issues have been fixed, always carry out a final round of testing to be sure that everything works as expected, and that no new bugs have crept in during the fixing phase. 

Take extra time to double-check your store’s high-traffic areas including its homepage, product pages, and checkout, and test on different devices (desktop, mobile, tablet) and browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox) to ensure compatibility. The easiest way to do this is via a simulator or emulator such as BrowserStack, which allows you to test your store across multiple devices, browsers, and operating systems without needing physical hardware. 

Where possible, you might want to consider involving a small group of real customers or beta testers to get feedback before the official launch, as their insights can provide valuable perspectives you might have missed.

Want more tips for a smooth Shopify migration? Download our free guide below, Switching to Shopify: The retailer’s guide to a stress-free migration, for a step-by-step roadmap to success.