How to Test a Website for Session Timeout Errors?

November 21 08:08 2016 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Website testing is a special type of checking which usually includes many stages. Manual testing commonly goes slightly into automated testing, and then, vice versa.

A website, as a communication channel, may contain many sorts of functional errors, user interface defects, and so on. One of such mistakes which may be stumbled upon by a user is an unexpected session timeout. It means that a system has a time limit for one site session and the proper notification should appear when the user does not utilize a webpage for more than the stipulated time.

If so, then a user needs to log in once more again. If not – a user still has an opportunity to easily go on with the system and data – the testers have a problem with the session timeout. This is exactly the part that should be checked deeply and differently.

4 Ways to Check a User Session Timeout:

• The native webpage updating. A tester should check how the website, contained special automatic refreshes (for example, sliders), behaves after a tester compulsory stopped a user session.
• The non-complete user forms (functional checking). It is required to test the website adequacy at each step of the user’s form completing under the session timing conditions.
• The sitemap and navigation. It is of great importance to check how the system will behave in the case, when the logged-in user and unregistered user try to navigate the webpages after the session time is expired.
• Automated timeout messages. The timeout prompts and messages, that warn the users about the logged-in time expiration (mainly, on financial platforms), should be also checked for the work correctness at each page.

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