Web Testing is an important part of running a site, helping you catch bugs before the site (or new feature!) goes live.
Here’s everything your test needs to cover.
Functional Testing
This process asks, ‘Do all the features of my website function as expected?’
Think about:
Core Feature Testing
Test the navigation of your site by testing how easy it is to do a series of tasks.
Ask real users if they find your site easy to navigate. A/B Testing is a great way to make sure that you’ve chosen the optimal version of your site.
It’s important to keep an eye on the following features:
- Forms and landing pages
- Do they load quickly?
- Are they easy to read and fill in?
- Are they mobile-optimised?
- Buttons and links
- Is it clear which images are buttons?
- Are buttons you’ve definitely disabled?
- Do links work properly?
User Flows Testing
User flow testing determines how people use your website, and whether they use it the way expected.
Test users should look at a mockup of your website and try to complete certain tasks. Does anything cause confusion?
You can be in the room watching how they work or use heat maps to see where users scroll, pause, and click.
People should complete tasks on your site without really knowing they’re doing it. It’s all down to clear instructions and UX writing.
Error Handling
You also need to know how your website handles things when things go wrong.
Does it:
- Deliver a 404 error page?
- Validate that the information in the forms matches the requirements?
- Tell users what to do and what to expect when there’s an error?
It’s not a crime to have loading difficulties or server errors. But you need to give users clear instructions when things do go wrong.
Performance Testing
Performance testing is like functional testing: you go over the functions of your site. But, where functional testing is about saying, ‘yes, this feature works’ or ‘no, this feature doesn’t, performance testing focuses on speed and stability.
Load Time
Run tests to see how fast your website loads.
Keep an eye on images, videos, GIFs, links, resources, and files.
A good metric for responsiveness is ‘Time to First Byte’. It measures the time from a person interacting with your website (clicking a button, searching for something, etc), to the first byte being received by their browser.
Stress Testing
Your website will have to function under a variety of circumstances, so you need to test that it can handle it. For example, does it work on a mobile, on unstable wifi, or with high traffic?
You can use tools like MS Web App Stress Tool or Loader.io to simulate high traffic, and see how your website manages.
Resource Optimisation
Resource optimisation involves testing your website’s efficiency, so user experience can be as slick as possible.
Big image files can add an extra barrier to loading experience, so compressing images is the best fix.
You can also offer lazy loading, where the website defers resources. It’ll only load resources as and when they’re needed, storing others for later, which makes loading more efficient.
Finally, caching optimises resources. A ‘cache’ is a storage unit for your website’s data. It stores it until the data expires or the hard drive gets full. Caching your data during testing will allow data to be stored in the computer itself, helping with loading speeds.
Compatibility Testing
Compatibility testing involves showing your website can adapt to all the different ways your viewers might look at a site.
We’re talking:
Browser Compatibility
Quiz time! How many browsers can you name?
Here are some ideas: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Bing, Edge, Internet Explorer, DuckDuckGo.
Viewers could use any one of these to open your site. You need to check that your site will open on all of them. Is it compatible with each browser?
Device Compatibility
How many different screens do you use every day?
From desktops to mobiles and tablets, your site needs to load smoothly on any size and shape of screen, so make sure it’s compatible with each.
Operating System Compatibility
Be it Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, a constant churn of updates, different devices, and the human urge to press ‘Later’ on system updates means that websites need to be fully compatible with all operating systems.
Security Testing
Security testing is paramount. All websites are at risk of attack and infiltration from malicious sources. Be it a hacker, bot, or system instability, software vulnerabilities can cause real problems.
Vulnerability Scanning
Scans detect and analyse problems with your site’s security.
Set up vulnerability scans to run automatically and check in regularly.
SSL Certificates
A ‘Secure Sockets Layer’ (SSL) certificate allows you to use HTTPS, as opposed to HTTP, adding that extra layer of protection.
SSL certificates are data files containing: your domain name and owner, and other things like the public key. This key is a looooooong bit of data encryption code that helps avoid domain spoofing and data breaches.
Authentication and Authorisation
Authentication verifies users’ identities before allowing them to use the site. On banking apps, facial or fingerprint scans are examples of authentication.
Authorisation is similar, but you have to verify how much access they have to different aspects of your site. For example, if they have certain levels of membership, they’ll be granted access based on these permissions.
Test that both of these security features work as they should, to avoid frustration down the line and to keep your site safe.
Data Protection & Privacy Compliance
Your website stores private data, including users’ addresses, bank details and names. You’ve got to test that it can do that safely.
How you test depends on the type of site you have and GDPR laws.
You’ll need to consider:
- Anonymising data
- Hacking capabilities
- Access and authentication procedures
- Backup technology that secures data, regardless of issues
Usability Testing
But safety testing is no good to anyone if the site isn’t usable.
User Feedback And Behaviour Analysis
The thing is, you’re too close to the website to see what’s confusing, so it’s good to ask a trusted third party to play around with your site and report back.
Monitor feedback through surveys or watch their behaviour as they engage with your site.
Pay attention to:
1. Navigation And Layout
Ease of navigation? Does the layout make sense? Are buttons clear?
2. Readability And Content Accessibility
Is your website readable by human beings and by devices? Does everything load? Is ALT Text in place for accessibility?
Accessibility Testing
Usability applies to everyone who uses your site, regardless of their accessibility needs.
WCAG Compliance
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) were developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. They’re not a law, but they are an important consideration for your site’s functionality.
You must ensure:
1. Inexcessive form time limits – some people take a bit longer to sort things out
2. Easy navigation – this comes into navigation and usability testing (see above!)
3. Mouse-free navigation – with a screen reader or a ‘tab’ button
4. Screen readers optimisation – visually or via description
5. Accurate contrast ratios – options for ‘dark mode’
6. No flashing designs that might cause seizures – nothing should flash more than 3x/second
These protect the people who use your site and make your website as welcoming as possible—if people miss out on your cool site, you miss out on their custom. It goes both ways!
Screen Reader Testing
Run your site through a screen reader: this technology is used by the visually-impaired to navigate websites. It will describe the site to them and help them navigate verbally, instead of visually.
If the screen reader cannot understand the site’s layout, your users will struggle to understand it too. So, include subheadings and ALT text and think about navigability.
Keyboard Navigation
Those with mobility difficulties might navigate your site using the tab or arrow buttons.
Navigate your site that way. Can you do it? If not, think about why.
SEO Testing
Help search engines find your content and think about SEO.
Focus on:
Meta Tags & Titles
Are these formatted right? Have you included keywords in your meta tags and titles?
Sitemap & Robots.Txt
Technical SEO is important.
The Sitemap lists all the pages on your site, helping search engines to understand it.
Your sitemap should be at the root of your site and 10MB. Your website and all its pages should be part of the same domain, too.
You can use Robots.txt to validate your website and see how search engine crawlers understand your site.
Structured Data And Schema
Search engines use structured data (‘Schema’) to understand site content. Identifying errors in your schema improves SEO performance by ensuring people and robots can read your site.
Common issues include:
1. Schema applied to misleading content – for example, if you’ve put the wrong product name
2. Reviews applied to all products, instead of individual product ratings
3. Schema applied site-wide, without specific page considerations
Post-Launch Monitoring & Maintenance
Once your site is live, it needs constant maintenance. It’s just how websites roll.
Here are some post-launch things you’ll to consider:
Error Log
Error Logs show what’s gone wrong.
Errors are broken into four categories: syntax (code-related), runtime (unexpected events), logic (algorithmic), and external (network failures, etc).
Look for patterns in the error logs to see anything that occurs regularly—something to focus on!
Performance Monitoring
To monitor performance, think about speed, responsiveness, and stability. You should pop your site under different conditions and see how it manages.
Are all parts of your site doing what they should? Make note of when they don’t, and fix it to get the best out of your site.
Regular Security Audits
Conduct penetration testing to find any vulnerabilities your site has.
You’ll need to audit all your file uploads and databases, checking everything is where it should be, and that there aren’t any data leakages.
You’ll also need to check for new vulnerabilities, such as authentication failures that allow external attackers to pounce.
Finally, keep an eye on who has access to your site. Your team will change over time. You don’t want to give old employees access to your site once they’ve left; update the list regularly to keep it fresh.
Make Like A Spider And Test Your Web
That was a lot of information… Well, we did say it was a ‘Complete’ checklist!
If you need help, we have an expert team of devs on hand to give you some support. Just let us know what the problem is!
