How quality of your website defines its success
The digitalization of markets transforms a website into a business card of every company and service. Apart from that, as the end users’ requirements become more demanding, companies are developing more sophisticated software. But the more complex the system is, the bigger number of issues it may have. Moreover, users pay attention not only to functionality and reliability of web software but to its usability and GUI (Graphical User Interface). So, a website should overpass comprehensive and precise testing.
Why to test a website?
The matter is that a properly working website attracts more visitors and potential customer, thus, increases sales. Beside that, a secure and well-functioning website adds credibility to the company. Testing activities are called to detect any issues that may affect the user experience, for example, long response time, layout issues, functional errors, poor usability, etc. A high-quality website with wide functionality, intuitively clear navigation and useful content makes visitors come back to the website again and again. Also, website quality influences on its search engine ranking of websites.
Rather often a testing stage is omitted in order to save time and reduce expenses. But this may cause poor user experience, low website traffic, and loss of customers and clients. Quick click-around testing is not a way out as it will not detect all the severe issues. Besides, a type of web browser, screen resolution and speed of Internet access also affect user experience.
It is better to apply to the specialists who are aware of web software specifics and can ensure detailed and thorough testing. In such a case, developers will not provide an objective evaluation of software quality taking in account the end users’ needs. They focus more on technical aspects paying less attention to usability and design.
Also, in digital agencies, managers can perform testing activities by themselves. Sure, they will detect bugs and provide rather a wide test coverage. But testing is not among managers’ responsibilities, and they have to work overtime to complete testing on time and fulfil their main tasks. Thus, the quality of both testing and management activities may suffer. To avoid any risks of issue missing and ensure precise testing of websites, it is better to engage a team of professional testers.
When to test?
One more tricky question is when to perform testing. If a website is not large and complex, then it is better to verify the whole product at once. In such a way, the general quality of a final product will be available. But if a website is large, then page-by-page or section-by-section checking will be more effective. Besides, such an approach will save time on bug fixing in case of severe issues detected. Also, page-by-page testing reduces the risks of side-effects appearance after bug fixing.
But to ensure thorough testing, activities should base on the requirements for website functionality, design, structure, load capacities, expected compatibility, business logic, information about target users and location, list of required web browsers and mobile devices and other parameters. All that influences on testing results, and the mentioned points should be specified and discussed before testing activities start. This will ensure a high effectiveness of a testing procedure. Moreover, a testing team should get website mockups, the credentials to dev and prod environments, and access to bug tracking and task management systems.
How to test?
Website verification includes the following testing types:
- functional testing
- the verification of the work of a content management system if any
- user interface testing
- layout verification
- cross-browser compatibility testing
- usability checking
- verification of performance capacities
- and security testing.
Having testing activities done, a QA team prepares the test results in a form convenient for a customer. A team prepares bug reports for a development team to be able to reproduce and fix the bug. A bug report includes a description of the discovered issue, steps to reproduce, actual and expected results, details on testing environment where the issue was detected, for example, type and version of a web browser, build version and other details necessary for a development team. Beside that, testers add screenshots and video records of issues.
To manage and track bugs, QA teams use such issue tracking systems as Mantis, Jira, Trello, and others. Using such systems, testers can add bug priority and severity, assign bugs to a particular person and monitor the status of every issue. The use of Word documents or Excel files for bug tracking will only confuse both testers and developers.
Also, test documentation includes test summary report, results of checklist and test cases execution, separate reports on performance testing, etc. Basing on previous experience, a QA team is able to prepare feature requests and provide a customer with the recommendations on improvement of website quality.
Proper functionality, strong security, good usability and high compatibility of the website will ensure the increase of sales and establishment of new business relationships. QATestLab, an independent QA provider from Ukraine, can help you to verify the quality of your website.
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