Tech
How to test a website: A short guide
People are spending more and more time on the internet today. The website ecosystem is enormous and it keeps growing steadily. According to Statista, there were 238 million websites in 2009, 969 million in 2014 and more than 1 700 million websites in 2019 online globally and today there are many more Internet users. With such a level of competition, launching a successful site seems to be challenging.
Obviously, the main goal of every website owner is to give a certain value to the visitor: useful content for reading, a functional web service, a physical or digital product for purchase, viewing a news feed, and any other purpose for which a visitor enters the internet. This is the exact reason why software testers are needed. Professional testers ready to check a website for any flaws, including poor user experiences. The next question is how to test a website the right way? Is it possible to do this on your own? How many testers do I need to test my site? Such a mass of questions arises for any site administrator and business owner on the Internet. But the answer cannot be unambiguous for different cases, so the TestFort full-cycle software testing team is ready to provide consulting to everyone who wants to understand testing and eliminate errors even before launching your project. Here’s the list of the important testing techniques that will help any website owner to win a myriad of customers online.
Website functionality testing
One of the most important aspects of website QA testing is functionality. Each page of your site must work properly, regardless of the operating system or the device a visitor uses. Functional tests also show whether all functions of the site work in accordance with the established requirements. The functionality testing, in particular, includes links testing, website forms testing, cookies testing and HTML/CSS check.
Usability testing
Is it convenient for users to interact with your website? You can learn that through usability testing easily. These tests help to verify the efficiency of every attribute on the site the visitors use, such as menus, navigation bars, images, videos, text content, buttons, forms, links, and so on. Usability testing reveals whether the website pages, buttons, fields are easy to use, whether there are any types of errors and is your content well-structured, informative and logically linked.
UI testing
UI tests show whether the graphical user interface contains the required functionalities and whether all specifications are met. With UI tests, you also check the design elements such as layout, colors, fonts, font sizes, labels, text fields, text formatting, labels, buttons, lists, symbols, links, and the associated content. While performing the UI tests it is necessary to test the website on different types of devices, different screen resolutions as well as to check the accuracy of UI elements on localized versions. UI test processes can include both automated website testing and manual website testing procedures.
Performance testing
The term “performance testing” is basically used to summarize any type of software test that verifies the site responsiveness, scalability, stability, reliability, and speed under different circumstances. There are several types of performance tests including stress tests (to check how the site works beyond the limits of its expected workload), load tests (how the site works when the workload increases), stability tests (to check the ability of the site to work well over a long period of time), volume tests (to check the site behavior when the data volume increases), load speed testing, concurrency tests (to identify what happens when multiple visitors are active on your website).
Security testing
The security of your site counts for a lot. If third parties get access to your data it may lead to site failures, sales losses and what is even more important – to the loss of trust. In order to prevent such scenarios, security tests are performed (in particular penetration and vulnerability testing). Those tests are aimed at ensuring that: the access to the data by an unauthorized individual is impossible, the inactive sessions are killed, SSL security functions well, captcha works correctly, restricted files cannot be downloaded without permission, and no one can log into your site with the wrong username or password.
Beta testing
Before the big launch, it is always better to test your website in a real-world environment. With real users being involved, beta testing helps you to get many useful insights, eliminate the bugs and improve your website significantly.
Kenneth is a proud native of sydney, born and raised there. However, he pursued his education abroad and studied in Australia. Kenneth has worked as a journalist for almost a decade, making valuable contributions to prominent publications such as Yahoo News and The Verge. Currently, he serves as a journalist for The Hear Up, where he focuses on covering climate and science news. You can reach Kenneth at [email protected].
