We open websites on a daily basis and we open at least 10 of them a day without realization. While one may look great and answers all our questions, there are the others that are hard to navigate, do not make sense and overall do not help our quest. Lastly, it’s the websites with the continuous 404 Errors. Websites are an important and crucial platform for any business.
Nothing exists without a website whether it be to get information, advertise your business’s existence and drive sales. If you do not have a website, you are trapping yourself to a limitation of opportunity. So, once you have created your website how do you know if it is successful and your potential customers are able to locate it?
Functional testing
When you click a tab does it take you to the page it says it should? Are there broken links? Is it slow? These are all the questions that are checked and answered during a functional test. It includes the identification of functions, data entry, the execution of these cases and if any sort of analytical data is allowed to be retrieved. It is the primary test any website should undergo as a study in 2016 showed almost $312 billion of revenue is lost simply due to bugs in a website.
Usability testing
Once you have a website up and running you need to check if it is usable for your customers. This includes developing test strategies which includes navigation and function. For this you will need to getwebsite user testing to see how others interact with the website. Note down their experience and what difficulties they have. Is there room for improvement and do they like the interface, features and functionalities of the website.
Compatibility testing
This is by far the tricky one, a compatibility test checks if your website can be viewed on any device such a laptop desktop, monitor, mobile phone or tab. The size of images, texts and functions should be the same across all platforms.
Some websites look great on desktop but not on a phone. Sine almost everything is now done on a mobile phone having a good interface and combability is important. Your user’s experience will depend on how your website looks on all these platforms therefore getting this right is important.
Performance testing
Analytics insights are the best way to see how successful your performance have been. Have customers purchased products, downloaded your app and overall had a good experience on your website. There are plenty of inbuilt performance testers, however there are other ways to check how well your performance has been.
Security testing
The information customers give you should be safe, that is one of the most basic ethics of having an online presence. Is your customers information safe, how safe if your website? Are your firewalls strong? Constant security updates are needed to protect your website information from third parties to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for your users and customers.