Website Testing Guide: How to Test a Website?

More and more websites are being generated these days. And with each line of code being written, the potential for defects arises.

Generally speaking, the prices of fixing defects increase exponentially the later you find them.

That is where website testing happens. It is a fundamental part of web development and assures that an app is running properly before its release.

What is website testing?

Website testing usually consists of various steps that assure that an application is fully functional and runs easily and securely.

Website testing may be a special sort of software testing that caters to finding bugs in websites exclusively. Though the basic concept of testing is quite the same, there are few differences in the way testing ensures.

Reasons to check your website

• Testing your website is extremely important and here are a couple of reasons to convince you about that:
• Websites can face several issues like broken links, search functions not operational, images not loading, forms not submitting properly, etc. To assure your website doesn’t face any such issue, it’s vital to conduct website testing thereon.
• There are various browsers available within the market; your audiences could be using different ones. So it’s vital to check that your website functions well on all the commonly used browsers.
• According to Statista, the number of mobile users is estimated to reach 4.68 billion by 2019. With such an outsized population using mobile devices, it’s important to check that your website is well-tuned to varied mobile devices.
• Testing for web standard compliance is additionally vital as these sites are more user-friendly, more accessible, and have more chances to rank higher on Google.
• Website testing helps in judging the accessibility of your website.
• It helps to check and monitor the performance of your website.
• Website testing also can assist you to improve your conversion rate through A/B or multivariate testing.
• SEO testing is another major part of website testing that helps your website rank higher on various search engines.

Website Testing Checklist

Before you start together with your website testing, be ready with a checklist to not miss any part of it.

For Functional Testing

• Check whether usable HTML is employed or not.
• Validate different fields like dropdowns, text boxes, checkboxes, radio options, links, Combo box inputs, etc.
• Verify CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
• Validate that internal links are appropriately linked to anticipated pages of your websites.
• Validate that internal links are appropriately linked to anticipated pages of external websites.
• Ensure the proper functioning of Email links.
• Validate that there are not any broken links generated in your website.
• Validate that the online forms are consistent and hold the essential input and output controls. Also, validate that the info is correctly captured.
• Validate the database for effective processing .
• Cookie testing shouldn’t be missed for enhanced security of your users.
• Check your website for appropriate error messages
• make sure that the specified and optional fields are properly handled.
• Counter-check the safety measures for correct storing of sensitive data.

For Performance Testing

Test your website for attributes like Speed, Responsiveness, Stability, Scalability, etc. under various load conditions.

For Web Usability Testing

• Validate that Site Load-time is cheap.
• Inspect font size and spacing between lines are definitely readable by the users.
• Ensure the use of Flash & Add-ons.
• Validate the right usage of ALT Tags for all images.
• In case of internal link breakage, the right error message should be displayed.
• Check the right placement of the website logo.
• Check tagline.
• Validate the contact details.
• Validate the navigation system is straightforward to know for the users.
• Make sure that the navigation labels are clear and concise.
• Validate the right usage of buttons and links for straightforward navigation.
• Validate that the corporate logo is linked with the house page. (Not mandatory, but is usually practiced)

For Compatibility Testing

Validate your website with:

• Browsers and their versions.
• Operating systems and their versions.
• Hardware configurations.
• Network environments.
• Screen resolutions.

For Web Security Testing

• Validate your website for password cracking.
• Test your website for threat exposure.
• Validate your website for URL management.
• Validate SQL injection.
• Validate your website for Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).

Types of Web Testing

Website testing is often broadly divided into various parts:

#1. Functional Testing

Tests the functionality of the website and ensures it works as per the needed specification.

#2. Browser Compatibility Testing

Your users could be using different browsers and supply a smooth browsing experience to make sure that you simply conduct a vivid round of browser compatibility testing. It ensures that your website works fine on various different browsers.

#3. Usability Testing

Your website should be easy to use for the users, it should provide easy navigation, usage, and appearance and feel to the users.

#4. Accessibility Testing

Accessibility testing is often called a subset of usability testing, where testing is completed whether your website is often easy to use by disabled people. It specifically tests if your website is meant to consideration with people with disabilities.

#5. Performance Testing

Your website has got to bear some load on each day to day basis. Considering a mean load condition, you ought to make sure that your website works fine under this load condition. Hence, performance testing of the website is completed to check its stability and its responsiveness under a specific load.

#6. Stress and cargo Testing

Your website can sometimes be subjected to undue load conditions and it should be fairly designed to figure properly under such heavy load conditions. Hence it’s important to conduct stress and cargo testing to check website stability under heavy load conditions.

#7. Site Monitoring

Regular downtimes can lessen the trust of your users on your website. Hence it’s important to automatically observe your website to check for downtime.

#8. Conversion Rate Testing

Dealing with the testing of the way to convert more visitors into customers, this has become the favorite website testing of this day world.

#9. Security Testing

Websites are susceptible to hacking; hence testing their security is at the most important.

#10. Spelling and Grammar Checking

Spelling and grammar mistakes can have a nasty impression on your brand, so thoroughly check your content for spelling and grammar errors.

Techniques to scale back your website testing efforts

Some of the techniques that you simply can imply to scale back your testing efforts are:

Automated testing

With automated testing, you’ll save tons of your time manually executing every test suit and may further spend that point innovating better ways to reinforce your testing efforts.

Mobile emulators and simulators

Since there are huge chances of individuals browsing your website through mobile devices, you would like to check your website on various mobile devices and operating systems.

This can be a really tiring task to check your website on many available mobile devices, operating systems, and combustion of both. And hence a simple answer is to use mobile emulators and simulators.

Live web testing

Live web testing allows you to debug an internet site on various browsers and OS combinations instantly available within the Cloud.

Website Testing Tips

Here are some website testing tips to urge better results:

1) Integrate Exploratory Testing with Conventional Testing Techniques

Exploratory testing features a few shortcomings. you’ll simply overcome these by assimilating exploratory testing with other testing methods. It helps in producing more reliable test results, and significantly reducing the time for testing.

2) Don’t miss on Sanity testing – it’s important!

Sanity testing can immensely assist you in validating the functions and features of your website in reduced time.

3) Validate All Third-Party Applications, Plug-ins, and Extensions

Test if the extensions and plug-ins are completely compatible with the online application and also detect the defects in them. Remember they will adversely affect the performance of your website.

4) Automate the chatbox testing

Chatbots testing has got to be wiped out in different testing environments and also the coordination among the bots must be rigorously tested. this will be a painstaking task and hence it’s better to automate chatbox testing efforts.

 5) Keep URL String Unalterable

Hackers have the capability to change URL strings to hack sensitive information or to redirect your site to some malicious link. attempt to keep your URL string unalterable to avoid any chances of malicious activities.

6) Test with a hacker’s IQ

Try testing your website with the intent of a hacker and check out finding to hack an internet site with minimal resistance for best results.

7) Be a neighborhood of the Development Team

With the increasing adaptation of Agile methodology and DevOps learn to figure in coordination with developers, business analysts, and customers.

Also Read: Compliance Testing: Why Does Your App Require It?

Conclusion

Websites are different from desktop software, so treat them differently and follow website testing methodology to urge the simplest testing results. they’re seamlessly integrating and interacting with other software around the globe. So testing is vital as a lot is at stake.

Need to implement website testing? Think no more! TestUnity provides the testing services on-demand, serves with projects of any scale, and is ready to start with a few days’ advance notice. Choose to team up with a QA services provider like TestUnity. Our team of testing experts specializes in QA and has years of experience implementing tests with different testing software. Get in touch with a TestUnity expert today.

TestUnity

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