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Matt Wyman on How Businesses Lose Money with Poor Code
Earlier this week, Sauce Labs Chief Customer Officer, Matt Wyman, sat down with journalist Marko Velimirović of Website Planet. The pair discussed the release of the consumer report Every Experience Matters as well as the state of DevOps, trends in testing and the increasing need for developers to deliver exceptional quality at velocity. To read the full interview, head over to Website Planet. A selected portion is included below.
MV: Please describe the story behind the company: What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
MW: When co-founders Jason Huggins (creator of Selenium), John Dunham, and Al Sargent formed the company in 2008, they came up with the name as an acronym for ‘Selenium Acceleration Using Cloud Execution’, and so Sauce Labs was born.
In the intervening years, quality has grown up immensely. In 2008, transforming from pure, laborious, manual testing into regularized functional browser test automation was every advanced software team’s goal. Today, the world of consumer experience is far more complex with multi-device experiences that span browsers, phones, watches, and more. What’s more, the adoption of cloud services and the pace that has come with that has created a new wave of thinking in the test.
In a world where every experience matters, user expectations can make or break a transaction – which means bad code directly relates to a brand’s success and revenue stream. According to our Every Experience Matters Report, nearly 1 in 5 (18%) users say they won’t wait any length of time for an error to be fixed, they’ll simply go somewhere else. Only 23% are willing to wait more than 4 hours for a resolution, and the majority of site users (64%) say they’ll only reload a page 2-3 times before giving up.
Further, once they’ve had a bad experience, it weighs on a business’s bottom line. A quarter (25%) of users have written a negative review of a company after a bad experience, and 20% have abandoned shopping with the brand altogether. Close to half (49%) have shared a bad experience with friends and relatives — meaning that errors and challenges can spread to potential customers via word of mouth.
Businesses lose money with poor code, and that’s not acceptable. To help companies develop with confidence, Sauce Labs automates testing at every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). In 2022, Sauce Labs is focusing on pipeline velocity, test depth, test debugging, and the test collaboration necessary to support a team-building modern multi-device and multi-dimensional applications with high customer experience standards. After all, software teams now need a toolchain that accelerates the delivery of user value by providing capabilities to manage quality risk throughout the software lifecycle.
MV: What services does Sauce Labs offer?
MW: Sauce Labs gives developers the ability to test at every point of their development journey – regardless of the industry, from gaming to banking and beyond.
We offer a range of features and tools, including cross-browser testing; cross-OS browser testing; mobile app testing with real and virtual device clouds for Android and iOS, test automation with multiple frameworks to choose from; visual testing; low code testing for software as a service (SaaS) apps; mobile beta testing with real users; API testing; and error reporting all under one roof.
Further, our portfolio of products includes Live, Visual, Browser, Android/iOS Mobile Device, Android Emulator, iOS Simulator, API, Mobile Beta, Error Monitoring, Error Reporting, and Pattern Analytics.
MV: What separates Sauce Labs from other similar companies?
Sauce Labs gives developers and companies the ability to test from top to bottom across all aspects of the product life cycle. This ability allows each product to give the product to consumers, while also continuing as a service to ensure stability and quality with each update and improvement. Oftentimes, a company will have to choose between quality and speed, but with Sauce Labs’ portfolio, you can do both. Competitors don’t have the breadth of test signals nor the depth of capabilities to help software teams build and deliver to their customers quickly and confidently. At Sauce Labs, we have best-in-class ML Analytics, Accessibility, Pre and Post Production Error Management, Mobile Beta Testing, and a world-class cloud with thousands of combinations of operating systems, machines, devices, browsers, and locations for testing.
MV: What are the plans for Sauce Labs for the near future?
MW: Currently, Sauce Labs is integrating a phenomenal product suite including API, Visual, Beta Testing, Error Reporting, Device, and Browser testing into a single holistic experience to help you ensure a flawless digital experience. In addition, Sauce Labs is innovating new means of improving test performance and efficiency with many coming capabilities from analytics and platform speed to alternative approaches to managing risk. And finally, Sauce Labs is bringing secure low-code testing to any team that wants automation regardless of technical prowess and application type. Stay tuned for more as Sauce Labs delivers on the first truly integrated DevOps test toolchain.
