Web Application Testing – What, Why and How?

What is Web Application Testing?

Web application testing is a software testing practice to check for potential bugs, functional issues, loopholes in the design and performance issues in a website or a web application. Such an application should undergo end-to-end testing before it goes live to the public. This testing practice ensures that the web application works the way it was intended to be and has the potential to be accepted by real-time users.

Why should Web Application Testing be done?

• Broken links, submission forms not working, and the search panel not responding are some of the small glitches that needs to be addressed before releasing the product. These basic errors can have huge repercussions in the future. Therefore, you must make sure that the website works efficiently before releasing it to the public.
• Your website should have a good UI when used through a mobile device. With millions of users now switching to their smartphones and tablets for online shopping or to gain access to any kind of web applications, it is necessary to test whether your website’s UI is compatible with the small screens of a mobile device.
• You need to ensure that your website works the way it is supposed to across all browser platforms. Furthermore, browsers keep updating their own UI, so you need to make sure that your website looks the same even with those updated versions of the browsers.
• A website with slow loading speeds for its pages is a big red flag in today’s times and as a result, it is imperative that your website performs efficiently with acceptable load time.
• Cybersecurity is on the rise and the need is the same for all organisations, be it small or large. Web application testing is the only way to ensure that your website is safe from any security threats in the world of internet.

How is Web Application Testing performed?

Here we have listed six of the top testing techniques or processes that are used to ensure that a fully functional, secure and a highly-responsive web application is released to the public.

1.     Functional Testing

This testing technique ensures that the website functions the way it was intended to. For this, the testers first test the UI workflows by writing test cases for different scenarios and then setting success criteria for it. Post this, all the hyperlinks on the website are checked, be it the alternate, archives, external, help, search, icon and so on. There should be no dead link on the website, as it will lead to malfunctions in the application.

If your website has input field forms, then it is absolutely necessary for you to make sure that all the input fields work the way they are supposed to. Some fields are not mandatory to fill while some are and some already have certain pieces of information beforehand – all these small features should be tested to see if the user is able to submit the form easily or not.

Another test that is done during functional testing is to test whether the cookie gets cleaned every time a browser history is deleted or cleaned. Finally, the tests should be done to check if the website has clean HTML structure or not. It should have optimised CSS and unique XPath, because if not, the workflows disrupt and it directly translates to a bad user experience for the customer.

2.     Usability Testing

It is used to test if the website provides a soothing user experience for the end user. Developers, designers, project managers and end users all participate in this testing phase. There are three sub-parts to this testing process. Comparative usability testing analyses the web application with another product of similar kind to understand how good your website is in terms of your peers’.

Explorative usability testing is a test used for different end-to-end scenarios so that the flaws in the design of the application are addressed. Lastly, a usability evaluation test is conducted when there is an update to an existing app before it is launched to the public. All these tests ensure that the user can comfortably use the application on their own.

3.     Interface Testing

Interface testing is an important testing technique in both old and new testing practices, be it the waterfall method or the Agile or DevOps method. It basically checks if the user has a positive user experience while interacting with the web application. In general, an application can give access to people through the USI or APIs and hence both the features have to be checked thoroughly under different user-case scenarios.

Then one needs to check the web server, which processes all the client requests. Specific test cases are created to check if all the client requests are met or not by the server in the required manner. Finally, the third and a very important player in the setup is the database. It should respond to all the queries made through the UI and API, without violating the integrity of the data. Test case scenarios are created to check how the database interacts with other elements of the web application.

4.     Compatibility Testing

As mentioned above, compatibility of your web application across different platforms is absolutely necessary. For this, there are two major tests that take place – browser compatibility test and device compatibility test.

Browser compatibility test checks whether the application works across different browsers like Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Internet Explorer and others or not.

Device compatibility test checks if the application runs smoothly on devices of different shapes and sizes. One of the best ways to indulge in compatibility testing is through crowd-sourced testing.

5.     Performance Testing

Response time, load time of pages, and the performance under varying amount of traffic on the website are just few of the many aspects that performance testing helps with to ensure that only a robust web application is released to the public. Load testing, stress testing, endurance testing and spike testing are the four main test cases build in performance testing.

Load testing is performed to see how the web application works under different loads of traffic. It checks how it performs in terms of response time and the capacity of database and server. Stress testing checks for the maximum amount of load that the web application can handle before reaching the breaking point.

Endurance testing checks for how long the web application can work under high-load conditions. It helps you understand how it uses the CPU and memory of the system to its benefit. Finally, spike testing, as the name suggests, checks the application for its performance when there is sudden spike in the volume of users.

6.     Security Testing

Security testing is the key to ensuring that your web application does not fall under any cyber-attacks. SQL injection is one of the most common ways to attack a website by taking undue advantage of the loopholes in the system. Input text boxes are the most prone to such attacks. You need to stop allowing the use of special characters or use them properly to avoid such attacks.

Furthermore, servers or networks can lead to leaks in data and hence test cases should be made to test for any lapses in this aspect as well. Similarly, denial of service, identity spoofing and vulnerability scanning are some of the other ways in which your web application can be under a security threat.

To avoid all these, full-proof test cases should be created in order to check for all these possible threats. Only if the application passes all those tests should it be released to the general public.

Web application testing is absolutely necessary to ensure that everthing works the way it should. The consumer-centric demands and the increase in cyber threats demand the website to undergo high-level test cases, created by expert testers. To hire such skilled testers from the around the world, get in touch with TestUnity.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.