OLX Delivers Seamless Experiences for a Localized Global Audience

THE CHALLENGE

Delivering cross-platform compatibility across browsers, devices and locations

Every day, millions of people post ads, buy and sell items at negotiable prices on OLX. The classifieds platform facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer trade in 30 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

What makes OLX so successful is a commitment to delivering great user experience everywhere. OLX ensures that customers across multiple locations, devices and browsers are able to access the website and mobile app seamlessly.

Take, for instance, OLX’s payment funnel. “If people from certain countries can’t pay by credit card, they can’t pay us,” says Sven Kroell, Senior Software Engineer for Quality and Test Automation. But there’s more at stake. “While one side is revenue, the other is reputation: people trust us with their payment data. If there are issues in processing payments, people lose trust, which is even worse than losing money—because then these people won’t want to use OLX in the future.”

OLX engineering must safeguard every release and test that everything works perfectly for users in every browser, device and location.

THE SOLUTION

Adopting a cloud automation platform for scalable testing

Today, every release goes through rigorous quality assurance with end-to-end automated testing on BrowserStack. This is part of the acceptance criteria, and it helps OLX decide which releases can or cannot be deployed.

But testing wasn’t always this smooth, recounts Kateryna Glushchuk, Senior Product Manager for the Payment Solutions team. Engineers had to manually verify and test purchase flows on different browsers and devices. As the codebase and user base grew, so did the number of user flows and environments to test on. This became a release bottleneck, ultimately driving the move to automation.

To fast-track implementation, the team decided to automate on the cloud, instead of building test infrastructure on-premise. They wanted instant access to a variety of browsers and devices, along with the reliability of deterministic results. “Tests are about trust,” says Kateryna. “You can’t trust test results when there are false positives.”

The team found that BrowserStack met all their requirements, was easy to adopt, and made test automation convenient.

THE IMPACT

OLX runs 550 tests an hour on BrowserStack, and they’re looking to accelerate

Within a year, the Payment Solutions team changed how they test. Today’s releases are shipped with speed and confidence. Testing is no longer a bottleneck. Developers get instant feedback from tests and move faster. They can replicate bugs in exact user conditions on BrowserStack, identify the root cause and fix it instantly. Team productivity and release quality have improved.

OLX is now scaling this new process across other teams. This includes moving teams to automation on BrowserStack, optimizing the framework, and transferring best practices. Part of the initiative involves implementing ‘shift left testing’ and moving ownership of test creation to developers. Developers don’t have to worry about device lab maintenance and updates. They just focus on quality—from developing great features to writing deterministic tests.