Several Useful Tips for Testing Website Correctly

According to statistics, people spend more and more time on the Internet. The website ecosystem is huge and continues to grow steadily. The number of existing websites has increased from 238 million in 2010 to over 2 billion in 2024 and continues to grow today. With such a level of competition, launching a successful website seems like a daunting task.

The main goal of every website owner is to provide a visitor with some value: useful content to read, a functional web service, a physical or digital product to buy, to browse a news feed, or any other purpose for which the visitor goes online.

This is exactly what software testers are for. Professional site and application testing engineers are ready to check the site for any shortcomings, including poor user experience and non-obvious errors. The next question is how to test a site correctly? Can you do it yourself? How many testers do I need to test my site? And what if it is a huge site? Any online business owner has a lot of questions. Here the answer cannot be unambiguous for different cases, the best option would be to get advice from a specialized site testing team with 23 years of experience TestFort. An experienced team is ready to provide support to everyone who wants to understand site testing and fix errors before launching their project or during the update process.

Tips for Testing Website Correctly

Before Start Site Testing:

A solid test plan is the basis of any successful website testing strategy. It outlines the specific tests that need to be conducted, the methodologies and the expected outcomes. This plan should be meticulously crafted to ensure that all critical aspects of the website are thoroughly examined.

By creating a detailed test plan, you can efficiently allocate resources, track progress such as identifying potential risks. It serves as a valuable reference point for the entire testing team, ensuring consistency and clarity throughout the testing process. A well-structured test plan will help you achieve a higher quality website and ultimately enhance user satisfaction.

Here’s the list of the important testing techniques that can help any website owner to win a myriad of customers online.

1. 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 includes links testing, website forms testing, cookies testing and HTML/CSS check.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Compatibility testing

With the help of compatibility tests you can assure that your website works well on every operating system (Linux, iOS/Mac OS, Windows, Android, etc.), every browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, etc.) and every database (MySql, Oracle, DB2, etc.). Compatibility tests also help measure the mobile friendliness of your website. This includes (but not limited to) such criteria as simple navigation, fast loading time, convenient buttons, the right image size, readable content, easy to find contact forms, etc.

5. 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).

6. 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. 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.

7. Beta testing

Before the big launch, it is always better to test your website in a real-world environment. With real users involved, beta testing helps you to get many useful insights, eliminate the bugs and improve your website significantly.

8. Collaborate with cross-functional teams

Website testing works best when everyone on the project pitches in together. If devs, designers, QA testers and product managers communicate and collaborate well, the testing process will be smoother and more effective. Keeping regular meetings, sharing docs, and keeping the lines of communication open are key to making sure testing lines up with the project goals. By bringing in people with different viewpoints, you can spot any potential problems right from the start.

9. Ensure accessibility compliance

Making sure your website is accessible is pretty important for people with disabilities. Following guidelines like WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), you can open your site up to more people. This means checking things like how well it works with screen readers, if you can navigate using just a keyboard, whether the color contrast is good etc. Focusing on accessibility not only makes for a better user experience but also boosts your brand’s image and helps you stay on the right side of the law.

10. Analyze test results

After the testing phase is done, it makes sense to check out the test results to spot any issues or places that could use some work. By going through the test reports, you’ll get some great insights into how the website is doing, how easy it is to use and its overall quality. With what you find, you can focus on fixing bugs, make improvements and tweak the testing plan for next time.