Website testing refers to checking different elements on your website for functionality and performance.
In this guide, we’ll discuss when and why you should test your website, share tips on writing a good test plan, help you choose the right testing tools, and provide examples of how to test specific elements like web pages and mobile apps. By the end of this informative guide, you’ll be prepared to create your thorough testing plan and begin checking all aspects of your site!
What is website testing?
Website testing is the process of assessing the functionality, usability, and accuracy of a website. This process can be conducted manually or through automated means. Automated website testing tools can save time and money by conducting tests quickly and efficiently.
Website testing is important because it helps ensure users have a positive website experience. A well-tested website will be free of errors, easy to use, and accurate.
All these matters are checked during this stage: security of web apps, site’s function, access for people with disabilities, and site’s traffic-handling ability.
Why is website testing necessary?
Website testing is necessary to ensure that your website is functioning properly and efficiently. By testing your website, you can identify any potential errors or issues so that they can be fixed before your website goes live.
Additionally, testing can help improve the overall user experience by ensuring that your website is easy to navigate and use.
Testing a website isn’t easy. There are many factors to consider, like cross-browser compatibility, performance, reliability, user acceptance, security, and performance.
Challenges that come during website testing
Interoperability or Compatibility Testing
Developers used to work only with Internet Explorer in the old days. Nowadays, users have access to many other browsers. Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera are a few of them.
In addition, there are many different types of websites, including e-commerce sites, multilingual sites, portfolio sites, etc.
Several characteristics influence site performance. These include usability, optimization, and security. The teams should also consider mobile, and desktop devices.
Cross-browser compatibility testing is a complex area that needs attention. Fortunately, some tools can assist, such as TestGrid.
Web Services Validation
When testing web services, it is important to remember that messages can be exchanged between the client and server. These include SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web Services Description Language), and REST (Representational State Transfer). All have their own set of challenges when it comes to testing.
Overcoming performance issues
Regarding website testing, QA managers face one of the most common issues: performance. This can be challenging because many factors affect website performance, including server response time, database queries, network latency, and caching.
To overcome this challenge, it’s important to clearly understand how your website works and identify the bottlenecks causing performance issues. Once you’ve identified the bottlenecks, you can work on addressing them one by one.
Security threats
As the internet progressively becomes a part of our daily lives, so do security threats. Websites are continually under attack from hackers who are looking to exploit vulnerabilities. To protect users, website owners must ensure that their site is secure.
UI Testing Challenges
Ensuring that the website’s interface is consistent across different browsers and devices is a challenge every tester faces. Another challenge is finding UI bugs that are not easily detectable.
Testers must also consider the user’s journey when testing a website and ensure that all the UI elements work together seamlessly. Last but not least, one of the biggest challenges in UI testing is keeping up with the constantly changing technologies and devices.
Different types of website testing
Simple Static Website testing
A static website does not have any complex functionality or user input.
To automate the process of checking each page, you can use a tool like TestGrid.
Testing any static website means checking spacing, font size, color, and font style. It also ensures that there are no broken links, contact forms function correctly, images display correctly, and so on.
Dynamic web app or CMS website testing
When testing a dynamic web application or CMS website, it’s important to test the site’s functionality and content.
To test the efficacy of dynamic web pages and applications, the program should ensure the buttons work properly and in a standard format. If something is malfunctioning, the user should get an error message.
Always check if an image works before uploading it to the site. Dynamic websites have included single-page apps in the past, so you must stay on top of session storage.
E-commerce website testing
E-commerce website testing is critical to the success of any online business. Four different approaches can be taken when testing an e-commerce website:
- Functional testing ensures that all the features of the website work correctly. It includes the shopping cart, checkout process, and contact forms.
- Usability testing checks how easy users can navigate the website and find what they are looking for.
- Performance testing measures how quickly the website loads and how well it responds to user input.
- Security testing verifies that the website is secure from hackers and other security threats.
Mobile website testing
Mobile website testing requires checking cross-browser, cross-OS, and cross-device compatibility. The website should be accessible from all devices, OS, and browsers. It is best to test your website directly on a real device cloud to see if it is responsive.
It should fit on every device without horizontal scrolling. Check out important features when testing a mobile website, such as spatial navigation, text truncation, image display, and chatbot.
Animated web applications testing
Like any other web application, animated web applications need to be tested. But because of their unique design and functionality, animated web apps require a different approach to testing.
- Test the overall design and user experience. Ensure the animation is fluid and smooth and doesn’t interfere with the user’s ability to navigate the site.
- The background, shapes, buttons, icons, and text must perform their duty well for the website or web app to respond well to user scroll or gestures.
How to perform website testing
Before launching a website, testing it for both functional and non-functional requirements is important. Functional requirements testing includes ensuring that all the website’s features work as intended. Non-functional requirements testing includes checking load times, scalability, and security.
To test your website, you can use both manual and automated methods. Manual testing involves using real people to test the site, while automated testing uses software programs to do the same thing. Automated testing is generally more efficient, but manual testing can still be helpful in some cases.
To get started, you’ll need to create a test plan that outlines what you want to test and how you will do it. Once you’ve got your plan, you can start testing!
TestGrid is a cross-browser testing platform that lets you test your website on many different browsers, devices, hardware configurations, and OS variations. With TestGrid, you can perform automated browser testing on a more secure, scalable, and reliable automation cloud platform.
For example, with TestGrid, you can upload your website or web app and automatically run tests on up to 300+ mobile and desktop browsers. You can export test results, which are always available for quick reference.
Instead of relying on one type of automated testing, try combining a few different tests to ensure your site works properly across the board!
