People make checklists for a wide range of tasks that they do every day on websites.
These include lists for traveling, shopping, camping, etc. As a web designer, you probably understand how daunting testing a web site can be. Making a web testing checklist can help you tick all the right boxes and make testing seamless.
We understand the excitement of launching your first web site. But then, ensure you don’t skip the testing items mentioned in this article. It is the ultimate checklist that will help you get your web site ready for launch. These insights will ensure you don’t miss anything and have negative user experiences.
Let’s dive into it.
- Documentation Testing
This is an important test that you shouldn’t skip during website testing. It forms the preparatory phase of web site testing, and it is where you should start before conducting other tests. Documentation testing mainly looks into the work that the web developer has done so far.
The developer will give you documentation showing what your web site looks like before any tests. It gives you a glimpse of the web functionalities and how the final layouts will look. Checking the documentation helps you verify if that’s what you anticipated from the web developer.
It also helps you create the web testing plan you will follow. You also get to know what you’ll need for the tests, the scope of work, and the test cases you will write. Besides, it helps you pick the software testing tools that you will need for the best results.
- Functionality Testing
It is one of the most critical tests checks for the operational behavior of your website. It also checks if its features match the client’s needs and specifications. Your website cannot deliver client expectations if it doesn’t have adequate and functional features. All your focus should be on assessing the features.
There are several things to check when doing a functionality test. You can click on the links to see if they take you to the correct web pages. Check whether website forms work as expected. For instance, they should be readable, reject invalid input, have a scroll button, and have optional and mandatory fields.
You should also check the functionality of your website’s cookies. You can log in, leave the website, and come back to see if it asks you to log in again. Delete cookies while following a website visit to see what happens. Confirm that search engines can crawl the website by performing HTML and CSS tests.
- Security Testing
A good website should be functional without compromising data security. It would be best if you started by conducting vulnerability tests on the website. This will help you understand the website’s security level and the potential risks. Besides, it will help you launch a website that users can trust.
You can use automation testing software to perform end-to-end testing. The various software available today will make it effortless to find any security holes on your website. Thankfully, there are various AI web testing tools that you can deploy on your website. All you need to do is find the best software tool.
Start with checking your website’s SSL security functionality. The best way to do this is by using an open-source software testing tool. Also, it would help if you tried logging into the website manually. This will help you verify that the website doesn’t accept wrong credentials and prevents unauthorized access.
- Usability Testing
Website usability determines SERPs rankings and the volume of traffic your website attracts. Usability testing checks whether people can easily interact with various features. One doesn’t need any technical knowledge to use features on a website. In addition, visitors should easily navigate every web page.
It would be best to navigate every web page manually. Also, check whether every button a user may need is visible and the main menu isn’t complicated. Also, get deep into the content to ensure it is readable and makes clear sense. Verify that there are no grammatical or spelling mistakes.
Usability testing helps increase the volume and quality of traffic your website attracts. It helps build trust with your ideal audience because the website will look professional in the end. Keep in mind that the best way to perform usability tests is by interacting with the website’s features.
- Beta Testing
Another vital test you must do is one with real website users as respondents. They shouldn’t be your staff members but people who are part of your target market. Beta testing verifies the overall functionality of the website and the effectiveness of its content.
Although the test group may identify a few, this test doesn’t focus on finding and fixing bugs. The focus is on checking how easy it is to use and getting honest user feedback. This makes it easy to correct the issues identified and ensure that your website is clear before you launch it.
You can conduct beta testing while your website is still in active development. Thus, there could be bugs that the development team plans to squash later. However, there’s no problem if you bring them to their attention. This will help ensure that they don’t miss something that could turn costly later.
- Performance Testing
Optimal website performance is vital for rankings and credibility. Performance testing helps you check whether your website is performing well or not. It checks for responsiveness when clicking and navigating specific web pages. It also assesses website behavior under usual and peak traffic loads.
You can load your website with more than the anticipated workload and watch its response. It is best described as stress testing as it seeks to find a website’s breaking point. This kind of test can help you learn how to detect and identify DDOS attacks on your website.
Also, check how your website behaves when you load a gradually increasing workload. This helps check the volume and overall stability of the website. In addition, you can do a concurrency test by logging in with multiple accounts simultaneously. Keep an eye on page loading speeds while doing all these tests.
- Change-Related Testing
There are two main reasons why change-related testing is vital for every website. The first is to confirm that you have affected every intended change on your website. This is because you may forget to make some changes if you had a long list of things to rectify after conducting various tests.
The best way to ensure this is by running the same tests once again. This will help you detect any bugs that you forgot to clear when making changes on the web site. It is usually known as a confirmation test, and you can do it repeatedly until it goes through without a single problem.
The second is to conduct a regression test to ensure the same problems don’t re-appear. You can perform this test regularly, even after launching your web site. You can use software testing tools for change-related testing. These tools will save you time and allow you to focus on more sensitive issues.
- Interface Testing
UI testing focuses on three main aspects of a web site; application, web server, and database server. In application, UI testing looks into request sending and how the output gets displayed. This should be a smooth process, and the result must be correct. Only administrators should see errors if there’re any.
In the web server, UI testing should ensure there’s no case of service denial. This means that the server should handle all client requests. In the database server, UI testing ensures that the user gets the desired output. In short, there should be a seamless connection between these three functions.
You can also try removing memberful alternative plugins to check if the web site functions perfectly. Also, check if functionalities like copy and paste are working as expected. In addition, the system should be able to recover in case of any issue, so try confirming this too. Put some recovery mechanisms in there aren’t any in place.
- Compatibility Testing
Your web site needs to be compatible with different software and hardware. This test helps you determine how easy it is to configure your web site to work with third-party services. For instance, it helps check if you can use it with different operating systems like Windows, macOS, Linux, etc.
This test also checks whether the web site can work with different browsers. Try accessing it on Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, etc. You can also check whether the web site can work well with different databases such as MySQL, Oracle, etc.
Lastly, you can check if the pages on your web site can get printed if the need arises. They should have a font that will appear great on paper, fit the paper size, etc. There are different software testing tools to help you perform various compatibility tests.
Conclusion
Those are the essential elements you need to check when testing your web site. Web testing helps you ensure that you build a highly functional and user-friendly platform. It would be best to keep in mind that the whole point of testing a web site is to ensure that the end-user has a great experience with it.
The good news is that web testing is becoming easier every day, thanks to technology. Various software testing tools are making it possible to automate web testing. You can now perform different kinds of tests, including the user side, to ensure you are launching a high-quality web site.
