Making eCommerce customer experiences better by debugging your website
Although not nearly as costly as NASA’s 1962 Mariner One’s self-destruction due to an error caused by a missing hyphen in the data-edited program, website code errors can cause significant headaches for eCommerce business owners. More than a quarter of developers say they’ve lost a considerable number of users because of website errors. Additionally, the same share said that software errors damage their company’s reputation and ability to attract investors. Website debugging can isolate and correct these errors, but missing data points can be costly, leaving vulnerable gaps in your eCommerce site.
In this article, learn what website debugging is, how manual debugging costs your eCommerce business, and where automation tools can help.
What is Website Debugging?
Website debugging is a process that includes identifying and isolating a problem and either resolving or finding a workaround solution. The final step is testing the resolution or workaround solution for continuity with the rest of the website. Therefore, debugging is an integral and continuous part of the testing process for eCommerce website developers.
First coined by American engineers over a century ago, the term “debugging” became standardized in 1947 after Admiral Grace Hopper and her team of engineers found and removed a moth, “the first actual case of a bug being removed,” from a computer component while working on the Mark II computer.
While debugging doesn’t typically involve live insects, it can cause complications for the virtual infrastructure. And while it can be difficult for developers to pinpoint specific codes, a handful of common coding errors can often be attributed to causing mischief on an eCommerce site.
12 Common Coding Errors
- Syntax errors
- Runtime errors
- Logic errors
- DNS lookup failures
- Semantic errors
- Calling the wrong function
- Skipping error return checks
- SSL certification failures
- 50x errors across scaled applications
- Inserting a bad variable name in the wrong location
- Timeouts or connectivity failures between two applications
- Forgetting to include a variable in a mandatory location
How Manual Website Debugging Costs Your eCommerce Business
Manual website debugging consumes valuable developer time and could reduce your eCommerce return on investment. Read on to learn the five steps involved in Monolithic Method reproduction workflows developers use to debug websites and how resolving every error code could cost your eCommerce business more than you realize.
Replicating Faulty Bugs Monopolizes Developer Resources
According to the Tidelift Managed Open Source Survey findings cited in this article, website developers invest over a third of their time in maintaining, testing, and securing existing code, including fixing shopping cart issues. For comparison, this is a more costly time allotment than writing new or improving existing code.
To debug website errors, developers must first isolate and replicate them; This lengthy manual process, often involved in a monolithic method reproduction workflow, can easily stretch hours into weeks. The Monolithic Method, often shortened to “monolithic,” refers to a traditional method of testing and debugging website errors.
5 Steps for Debugging Using the Monolithic Method
- Reproducing the bug
- Writing a unit test
- Checking the hypothesis
- Verifying the fix works
- Writing a regression test
Moreover, the testing process does not help the developer figure out the coding mistake; It simply reveals the coding error’s effects on the program. Once the mistake has been identified, debugging helps the developer determine the cause of the error so it can be fixed.
A High-Level Overview of How Developers Debug a Code
- Go to the line and add a log statement
- Run a quick local test
- Push and open a Pull Request (PR)
- Wait for Continuous Integration (CI)
- Receive supervisor approval
- Wait for build
- Deploy on the next window
- Wait for the data
- Search for the data
Debugging Every Website Error Reduces ROI
Interestingly enough, not all website errors need to be debugged. Missing data points could have developers wasting hours debugging pages with a low return on investment, or ROI for short. Alternatively, building a new page, directing traffic there instead, and archiving the faulty page could have a much better ROI. That’s why knowing all the data can substantially impact how much time developers spend fixing shopping cart issues and debugging websites.
Are you curious how much revenue you could miss out on because of shopping cart issues and website bugs? Webeyez’s Lost Revenue Simulator uses hundreds of thousands of data points across our customers to provide benchmarks from eCommerce brands similar to yours and quantify the most common conversion and revenue killers in the online funnel. So, check out our Lost Revenue Simulator.
Where Debugging Website Tools Can Help
So, is there a better way to debug your eCommerce website and fix shopping cart issues? Suppose you’re not focusing on the complete picture of your website date. Unfortunately, this significant oversight could cost your developers hours that they could be dedicated to writing new code and improving existing code.
The only way to effectively debug eCommerce websites is by leveraging time-sensitive granular data across your database. Unfortunately, manually tracking this data type can be time-draining and leave vulnerable security gaps. But leveraging a website debugging tool, such as Webeyez, can help you quickly recover lost revenue.
How This Website Debugging Tool is Saving Developers’ Hours
Webeyez is a leading eCommerce monitoring and analytics solution that recovers lost revenue by resolving all operational and technical issues. Webeyez is the secret weapon online eCommerce businesses use to fix leaky funnels and grow revenue immediately. Our unique platform illuminates every step of the onsite consumer journey. It uses machine learning to surface and prioritize hidden friction points, giving revenue leaders a heat-seeking missile to identify issues causing conversion drops and revenue loss instantly.
Webeyez offers single-click integrations with the following digital retail platforms:
- Magento
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud
- Shopify Plus
- SAP Hybris
- Big Commerce
- WooCommerce
- Prestashop
- Homegrown
- And custom integrations
Webeyez Bridges the Gap for Finding and Correcting Site Bug Issues
Imagination Media (IM) was founded a decade ago as a two-person Magento dev shop. Over the past ten years, IM has grown into a full-service digital agency working with B2B and B2C clients. During that time, IM noticed that there’d been an explosion of low-code and no-code website-building tools. As a result, more eCommerce companies have been building websites without seeking external help from digital agencies. A lower barrier to entry has led to an even greater need for monitoring and troubleshooting all of the bugs and errors that come from using third-party tools with limited expertise.
IM needed to adapt to this new digital age and transitioned its offering from site implementations to full web services and active monitoring by effectively acting as an in-house digital team for its clients. However, they soon found themselves with more business than they had the staff, so they needed to find a tool to bridge the gap. Specifically, IM was searching for a site monitoring tool to help ensure their team could proactively catch bug issues before their clients and customers and maximize team resources.
IM partnered with Webeyez to expand its offering and scale its business fast. Without missing a beat, IM was able to provide its team and clients with a cutting-edge digital experience analytics tool to offer comprehensive recommendations to clients and help prioritize which site issues need debugging. In addition, with Webeyez in its toolkit, IM reduced its dedicated digital analytics staffing needs by an impressive 78 percent. Read more about this case study.
Leverage Webeyez’s Debugging Solution
Dubug your eCommerce website with a monitoring and analytics solution like no other. Prioritize which site issues need debugging, comprehensively understand your site analytics, and maximize your developer resources. Book your free Webeyez demo to get started today.
