This article is the second part of a two-part series designed to guide you through the process of submitting your product to the Woo Marketplace. In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into the tools and criteria used during the review process, including the Quality Insights Toolkit (QIT). To learn more about understanding the marketplace, preparing your product, and navigating the submission process, check out the first installment, Getting to know the Woo Marketplace: A developer’s look.
What is the Quality Insights Toolkit (QIT)?
The Quality Insights Toolkit (QIT) is a testing platform designed to help WooCommerce Marketplace developers validate their extensions. QIT runs a variety of automated tests to ensure extensions meet our quality and compatibility standards. These tools help you to identify and resolve potential issues as part of the submission process, as well as catch any potential issues early in the development process.
Why do we use QIT?
- Preemptively catch issues before merchants do.
- Ensure compatibility with WooCommerce and WordPress core updates.
- Run automated and custom tests to verify extension behavior.
- Validate an extension meets baseline requirements, ensuring a consistent experience for our users.
Who can use the QIT tool?
If you have submitted your product for review or currently have a product in our marketplace, then you can run the QIT suite against your plugin.
We currently only offer this tool for users with a vendor account.
The tools we use
When an extension is submitted to the WooCommerce Marketplace, we assess it using QIT and a structured review process. Here’s what we check:
1. Activation & compatibility tests
QIT performs an activation test to confirm that your extension installs and activates properly without fatal errors or conflicts:
- Activates without issues on a fresh WordPress and WooCommerce install.
- Does not cause fatal errors or warnings.
- Properly registers settings, hooks, and scripts.
2. Security & code quality checks
Security is a priority for WooCommerce. QIT analyzes your extension for common vulnerabilities and ensures adherence to coding best practices:
- Uses proper data validation and sanitization.
- Avoids storing sensitive data improperly.
- Complies with WordPress and WooCommerce coding standards.
3. End-to-End (E2E) and API testing
QIT runs the end-to-end and API tests written by the Core development team. This ensures that:
- Core extension functionality behaves as expected.
- Compatibility with WooCommerce’s latest version.
- Integrations follow WooCommerce’s API standards.
You can even create and run custom E2E tests using QIT, ensuring your workflows continue to function on upcoming versions of WordPress and WooCommerce.
Testing compatibility with paid Woo extensions
A common question from developers is how to test compatibility with the top Woo extensions listed in the pre-submission checklist, as many of these are paid add-ons. QIT includes an extension set that allows you to run the Woo E2E, Woo API, and Activation tests. This allows you to install the extensions included in the compatibility extension set in the test environment, along with your extension. Your test results will then:
- Report any PHP errors or warnings.
- Provide screenshots of any failed steps that indicate a compatibility issue.
For more details, you can refer to our documentation on managed tests and extension sets: QIT Managed Tests – Extension Sets.
Best practices for using QIT
To get the most out of QIT, we recommend:
- Run tests early and often: Don’t wait until your extension is “finished” to test it
- Pay attention to all warnings: Even minor issues can impact user experience
- Stay up-to-date: Check the WooCommerce Developer Blog regularly for updates to our standards and QIT capabilities
- Test across environments: Use QIT to verify compatibility with different server configurations
Tell us what you think
The Quality Insights Toolkit represents our commitment to helping developers create high-quality WooCommerce extensions Using QIT isn’t just about getting your extension approved, it’s about creating better products that provide real value to WooCommerce users worldwide.
Have questions about using QIT or the marketplace submission process? Drop them in the comments below, or join the Woo Community Slack and head over to the #marketplace channel.
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