Use a test order to test the shopper's buying experience in your store. When you place a test order, you can mimic certain aspects of the buying experience such as how and where shoppers enter billing and shipping information and the emails they receive when their order is complete.
Placing a test order allows you to:
- Experience how a shopper buys a product in your store from beginning to end
- Monitor your site flow and usefulness
- Test new products or changes
- See how offers work in the store
Knowing how products appear, how offers work, and how the shopper sees and interacts with your store is an important step in optimizing your store for the best shopper experience. You can use this information to locate any problems or confusing areas, including
- How shoppers navigate and find products in your store
- How to complete the checkout process
- Which email notifications shoppers receive when they complete an order.
You can also place a test order to see how the system triggers a marketing offer, ensure marketing offers appear, and ensure the marketing offer provides the expected discount. You usually perform these tests when you create a new offer or before you implement a large marketing campaign in your store.
Other reasons to place a test order include testing:
- The appears of your store
- Your localized content
- Your product pricing
- The issuance of digital rights
See How to preview your store for more information.
Note: There are situations where the test order does not work or requires special handling. These situations include:
- Sites that include APIs for checkout
- Half single sign-on (SSO) that requires the customer to enter their authentication credentials before they reach the shopping cart
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When the client owns portions of the checkout that Digital River cannot access
Example: Digital River cannot test mid-term changes because the client-hosted administrative console is behind the client's firewall.
Understanding design site versus live site
There are two versions of your store you can use to place a test order. The "design" version includes any changes you have made but not deployed. The "live" version shows your deployed products, offers, and so on and is what is available to the general public. Whether you use the live version or the design version for a test order depends on whether you want to test your store as it is now or how it will be when you deploy certain changes (such as new offers or products).
What's tested
When you place a test order, you can select most of the standard processes to run against the test order. This includes shopper email notifications, fraud checks, export controls, and the denied parties list (DPL) check.
Physical products and test orders
Test orders do not trigger physical fulfillment. If you want to test the fulfillment of a physical product, you must place a live order.
Example: Place the order as if you were a real shopper and pay for the order using a real payment method.
Digital rights and test orders
If you use Global Commerce to manage your digital rights, the system issues digital rights for products configured for digital rights. The system issues real codes but does not deduct those codes from the list of digital rights for that product. (That is, the system issues a live code that the system will eventually issue again when a customer places a real order for the product.)
If you use another solution to manage your digital rights, the system may issue digital rights for a test order, but it depends on how you integrate your digital rights solution with Global Commerce. Contact your Store Operations team if you have questions.
Payments and test orders
When you place a test order, you can only use a credit card with a specific credit card number as the payment method to validate the payment and submit the order.
You cannot use other payment methods when placing a test order. However, you can place a real order using any other valid payment method. Note that the system will process the payment as a real order.
1. How to change the preview options on the Preview page
- Click the Show Preview Options tab at the top of the Preview page. See Preview Store attributes for a description of the attributes.
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Choose one or more of the following options:
- To change the look and feel of the store, click the Look & Feel tab and complete the fields.
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To view a product variation (if variations are available for this product), click the Products tab and select the variation you want to view from the Available Variations list.
Note: The system disables the Available Variations list if your product does not have variations and when viewing a product from the Product Details page in your store.
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To view a specific offer, click the Offers tab and complete the fields.
Warning: If you defined offer behavior such as shopper usage limits or coupon codes, those restrictions also apply to a previewed offer.
Example: If you enter a coupon code and place a test order in the preview, the system treats it the same as an active customer placing a real order. The system reduces the usage limits for the coupon code and offer.
- To preview test, click the Offers tab, select the On option for Preview Tests, and select a test and test level from the lists.
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Click Update Preview. The Preview page shows the selected changes.
2. How to add products to the shopping cart
- From a browser, navigate to your store.
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Add products to your shopping cart.
Note: If you want to test specific products, add those products to your shopping cart. If you want to test the overall shopping experience, add any products to your shopping cart.
- If you are also testing a merchandising offer, add the specific products to the cart that should trigger the merchandising offers or apply a coupon code in the shopping cart.
3. How to check out
- Click Buy Now to begin the checkout process.
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Enter your billing and shipping information using the following information as a guide:
Important: When placing a test order, use the credit card and checkout information described below. Digital River has a test credit card number. The test credit card number tells the system that the order is not real and the system then skips some internal billing and fulfillment processes during checkout.
- Complete all required fields to create an account for the store (if applicable).
- Provide a fake address and phone number, as these items are not relevant for a test order.
- Provide the email address associated with your account login.
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Enter the following credit card number: 4444333322221111.
Note: Credit cards are the only payment method supported by test orders.
- Enter today’s date as the expiration date for the credit card.
- You do not need to enter a card security code (also known as a CV2 code).
4. How to select your test order options
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Scroll to the bottom of the page where you see "This order is a test."
- Select the Is the order a TestOrder checkbox.
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Select the Send Emails checkbox if you want to receive the email notifications. The system usually sends these email notification to shoppers when they place their order (such as an Order Confirmation email). The system sends email notifications to the email address you specified in 3. How to check out.
Best Practices: Select the Send Emails checkbox every time you place a test order.
By default, the system bypasses the Fraud, Denied Parties, and Export Controls options. These options test additional aspects of the order process such as the fraud review, the denied parties list check, and the export controls regulations. Bypassing these options speed up your test, but you may choose to test these aspects of your order as well. Digital River runs those tests internally each release so you do not need to test those items but you can if needed.
5. How to finish your test order
Complete the checkout process. The steps to complete checkout vary by site, so follow the prompts until you see the Thank You page. When you submit your order, you will receive an Order Confirmation email (if you chose to receive emails for this test order).