Why test your website?
Why test your website?
Testing websites by only focusing on what's right in front of you will not leave you with with clear and accurate results.
Testing can be time consuming, and is therefore one of the many corners often cut when building websites to a tight budget. But that's risky!
Testing websites by only focusing on what's in front of you will not provide clear and accurate results
Testing is like an insurance
Costs of having a website built vary widely, but very often the value of testing your website to make sure that it's error free, user friendly and does what it's supposed to do under all circumstances gets overlooked. And that can be risky and potentially costly.
Testing is like an insurance... Mistakes and errors shouldn't happen, but they do, and even when no errors are made, incompatibility problems can occur between new updates and existing functionality.
But not all website problems are functional. Some problems might be visual, such as page layout, contrast, size, colour, positioning, labelling, and a whole number of things which might discourage potential customers from remaining on your website.
Is it worth taking a risk by not testing your website?
Is it worth the risk?
There are many reasons why a website stops working properly, and a lack of testing is often why website problems slip through the net and your customers find the problems before you do!
Prepared to take the risk?
Following appropriate testing procedures should reveal any problems with your website, and then those errors can be fixed before they become costly errors.
Website testing experience
A depth of website testing experience
In many cases websites are just the front end
of a larger system.
Larger organisations are likely to have websites which interact with back-end systems
which will usually include databases, and APIs to allow different systems to communicate with each other. Those same systems might also serve their customer support or telephone sales teams in addition to the website.
So having an awareness of the architecture of a system beyond the website, and having appropriate testing, reporting and bug tracking procedures in place is vital if you’re to minimise the risk and impact of things breaking.
Targa's founder has spent over 20 years of a 27 year long web career in international e-Commerce, from design, development, management, and of course testing, bug reporting, tracking and diagnosis.
How can you use our services?
Usually the first step is to contact us, by mail or phone. The initial conversation is completely free and without obligation, and allows each of us to understand what your needs are, and whether we’re a good fit.
What is it you need?
This really depends on your specific requirements, and where the start and end points are.
No doubt testing will be involved at some point, and perhaps that’s all you’ll need. But you might require more from outsourcing...
- Typically before testing there will be discussions, planning, reviews of documentation, user story writing, estimates given, and test plans prepared.
- During testing there will be bug reporting. Fixed bugs will need to be re-tested to ensure that they have been fixed, and regression testing is also likely to be required.
- After testing it is normal to have summaries or reports written up, and in addition there may be summary (or retrospective) meetings to attend.
So it very much depends on your own requirements as to how much involvement your outsourced testing resources get involved with other tasks besides the actual testing.
Access, IDs, Promo Codes, etc
Access to test environments
To enable testing to take place, access to offline testing environments may be required. Understandably most organisations don't provide access to just anyone without good reason, and sometimes that access can take a while to be approved and set up. It's therefore worth planning ahead to avoid delays at your end with admin work and access approval.
Test cards and accounts
Testing can often require test credit card numbers to be provided, and possibly access to test profile accounts which may have already been set up for specific customer types or personas.
Promo codes
If offers, promotions and discounts are to be tested, there may need to be discount codes provided which also have their limitations of use made clear so they can be effectively tested.
Remember too that test cards, IDs and accounts access may be different in a development and Qual environments compared to pre-production and live environments.
Bug tracking tool
Access to your bug tracking tool is also likely to be needed. Sometimes a shared ID can suffice, but that doesn't provide traceability if it's used by more than one person.
The range of website testing services includes...
Website Audits & Health Checks ⇨
The purpose of conducting a website audit is to identify opportunities for improvement and pinpoint areas that can be enhanced to optimise your website's performance, improve customer experience, and even boost search engine rankings.
Our comprehensive audits encompass over 380 assessments, and are designed to be flexible, allowing them to address all aspects and variations of bespoke websites. But by their very nature, most bespoke websites have unique features which cannot be adequately tested with a one size fits all approach, so our audits and health checks can be as bespoke as your website requires.
Video screen recording with commentary can really help you to understand where some of the problems are, and make it easy for you to follow the steps and replicate problems so they can be respolved and re-tested.
Website Usability Testing ⇨
Have you ever wondered what your customers actually think about your website? Are they satisfied with it? Is your website user-friendly and engaging enough for them to stay, keep using and hopefully become customers?
Usability Testing is the process of testing a website from a users perspective, and reporting back to you based on user experience.
Video screen recording with commentary can really help you to understand what people like or dislike when they visit your website, and how easy or difficult they found carrying out specific tasks to be.
Cross Browser Testing ⇨
Don't cut corners on cross browser testing!
Browsers such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, Edge, Firexox, Opera and Safari are commonly used, and in addition mobile phone manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung and Huawei have their own operating systems and browser platforms as well.
To ensure optimal user experience and compatibility across different browsers and devices, comprehensive cross-browser testing is necessary.
Website Functional Testing ⇨
Functional testing covers many areas...
There are common things across all websites such as whether the navigation works correctly on all devices, and that all links on each web page work and access their intended target. But many websites have very specific features and functionality which not only need to work without error, but work in accordance with business requirements and of course work on all browsers and devices.
These bespoke requirements might apply to product search and selection, pricing and payment options, account creation and management, order tracking and so many more aspects of modern day eCommerce.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) ⇨
For most web projects, business requirements should be clearly defined, discussed, documented and communicated to the development team and any other individuals involved in the project's implementation and testing.
User Acceptance Testing should be carried out to ensure that the project meets the business acceptance criteria before it goes live.
Regression Testing ⇨
Regression testing, sometimes referred to as sanity testing, should also be performed to ensure that features and functionality that worked correctly before the latest coding updates still work as intended afterwards.
In addition to coding updates, regression testing is also necessary when bugs are fixed. It involves rerunning previous test cases to verify that the issues have been resolved and that no new problems have emerged as a result of the fixes.
Whilst regression testing can be conducted manually, certain aspects of functional regression testing can be automated using testing application tools. This allows for quicker execution of regression tests, especially for repetitive tasks.
Mobile Device Testing ⇨
With very few exceptions, all websites should be compatible with mobile devices as well as desktops, laptops and tablets.
More than 50% of internet users use their phones to access websites, so it's essential to make sure that websites are mobile friendly.
Mobile App Testing ⇨
Testing a website on a smartphone and testing an app on the same device are distinct processes due to the differing characteristics and capabilities of apps compared to websites.
Apps can make use of some of the features of individual smartphones, such as location information, ID security and other information which may be used and stored in the user's profile.
In contrast, websites generally rely on web browsers and typically have less access and direct integration with device-specific features.
Tablet Testing ⇨
Designing websites to ensure proper display on tablets requires consideration of both landscape and portrait orientations. While the landscape orientation of a tablet may resemble the proportion of an average laptop, the vertical orientation in portrait mode can present challenges, potentially leading to poor display of web pages.
It's important to optimize web page layouts and responsiveness to accommodate the taller and narrower aspect ratio of tablets in portrait mode. This ensures that the content is presented effectively, regardless of the device orientation.
Also remember that browsers can differ between Android and iOS (Apple) tablets.
Price and Cost Calculation Testing ⇨
If your customers discovered pricing anomalies on your website before you did and instead of reporting them to you, started publicising it on social media, it could reflect badly on your business.
In some cases customers might feel that they're being ripped off and complain, but on the other hand calculation errors could lead to customers getting incredibly cheap bargains before you realise that your products are selling for a fraction of the intended price!
It very easy to find examples of pricing discrepancies on social media. Don't be amongst them... Have as many scenarios tested as you need to, and fix any errors you find.
How can Targa help with your website testing?
How can Targa help?
If bugs reach the customer, it's either because the QA team missed it, or you didn't have anyone test it properly. Outsourcing website testing has many benefits, so don't risk letting your customers find errors on your website before you do... Get in touch to see how Targa can help with your website testing.
Get in touch...
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