Poundland have built a network of over 850 stores in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, offering top brands and great quality own brand products that provide customers with amazing value every day.
Opening a new chapter in its history, variety chain store and high street favourite Poundland came to WebDepend for e-commerce testing. Within a tight timescale, we addressed rebranding, functionality, and cross-device compatibility challenges to ensure the newly rebranded site was fully tested, with any bugs eliminated, before the website relaunch.
With the rise in consumer e-commerce across the UK retail market, in March 2022, Poundland acquired the Poundshop.com online platform. By incorporating Poundshop.com into its existing operations (which we tested in several prior projects), the high-street giant could expand its range and offer its loyal customer base more homeware products and brands.
This acquisition would see Poundland shut down its existing online activities and relaunch Poundland.co.uk to incorporate Poundshop.com, complete with a full Poundland rebrand, ready for a September 2023 launch.
With development work finished by the Poundland team on the updated website, it was over to us to thoroughly test the site and its functionality to find all the bugs that could impact a user's ability to make a purchase from the site.
Alongside this, we were tasked with testing and validating the new Poundland website's brand alignment and cross-device compatibility. However, the biggest challenge was timing – we only had a tight three-week period during August 2023 to complete all the testing before the relaunch in September.
We started by focusing on a comprehensive testing programme that covered the entire e-commerce functionality, verifying all areas, from product browsing to checkout, for seamless operation. This testing was followed by examining the rebranding elements to guarantee alignment with Poundland's brand guidelines, ensuring a cohesive and professional online presence.
With a diverse landscape of user devices, we rigorously tested the new site across a range of web browsers and desktop, mobile, and tablet devices to identify any compatibility issues. Alongside our testing, we also worked closely with Poundland's project management team and other service providers.
This collaboration helped uncover over 150 bugs across the site during testing. But we had a proactive approach to this, communicating efficiently with the development team and a third-party provider who then worked on bug fixes. Each bug fix underwent a new round of retesting with us to verify the issues had been fixed to guarantee an error-free user experience.
We also completed a regression testing phase as part of our QA strategy. This critical step would confirm that integrating Poundshop.com into Poundland.co.uk and the new rebrand hadn’t introduced any further issues. This thorough process allowed us to identify and resolve any potential regressions before they could impact the site's launch.
Despite the tight deadlines and extensive challenges, the completed project was a success. While the rebranding was seamlessly integrated, the extensive testing process ensured the core e-commerce functionalities operated flawlessly. Both areas presented online customers with a unified Poundland brand and a reliable user experience.
With the new Poundland website going live in September 2023, we met the project timelines, exceeding expectations and highlighting our commitment to delivering a high-quality testing service to ensure a smooth transition during a high-stakes e-commerce project.
