The complete guide to website testing

The choice between an external and in-house team often comes down to the amount of value you want to extract from your website testing strategy.

In many cases, an in-house strategy is a false economy due to a range of hidden costs. For example, by outsourcing your software testing, you don’t need to invest in any high-end testing software and hardware. Your HR costs may also be reduced, as the third-party service providers would take responsibility for the recruitment and training of professional testers.

By using an internal team, you could also increase your indirect and operational costs as you must set up a dedicated quality assurance department to bring the necessary, specialist skills in house. You also become responsible for quality management and could lose focus on your core competencies as a business.

An external website testing team can add value to your organisation in ways internal resources cannot.

There are a huge number of software testing companies out there offering outsourced website testing services – but how do you know which one is best for your organisation?

One of the difficulties of outsourcing your website testing is finding a trusted partner that you are willing to give the responsibility of potentially high value, business-crucial projects. When researching partner companies, ask for recommendations and client testimonials.

Look for external website testing companies with a solid portfolio and who are regarded as QA professionals by their clients.

With the adoption of Agile and DevOps, testers need to collaborate with developers for faster and defect-free build deployments. Your testers will need to learn development skills as well to have good collaboration with the development team.

As a result, you may find your testers helping with some of your web development work and your developers may also end up writing a few test cases.

An agile methodology can help developer-tester collaboration. You could divide your teams up for individual sprints to encourage your developers and testers to cooperate, while still expediting high-quality deployments.

Website testing does not exist in silo. Your developers and testers need to work together.

You need the right tools, techniques, and team to get the things done. In other words, you need to closely monitor quality throughout the entire testing process, as your business’s reputation may be at stake if work is not up to standard.

Look for quality website testers with expert knowledge.

When the pressure is on, and there are strict deadlines to meet, it can prove tricky to effectively maintain communication with a third party, and even tougher to make sure that your testing is delivered on time.

From a confidentiality perspective, you must also ensure your testers do not give away your valuable IP. Imagine the damage that could be done if a tester leaked your latest product launch. A three-way contract can effectively protect against this issue.

You need to maintain your corporate confidentiality and effectively communicate with your testers to meet your deadlines.

During a typical testing process, you may need to share highly confidential information, such as customer databases, design documents or source codes with your testers.

Therefore, you need to ensure that the testing team works within your firewall to retain your corporate confidentiality. What is more, such measures will ensure any unscrupulous testers cannot exploit any vulnerabilities in your systems.

Check the security measures your testers use and keep them within your firewall.

Every feature or chunk of functionality on your website needs to be tested on as many device and platform combinations as possible to ensure a seamless experience.

API testing is another important component to consider. Many software development processes are shifting towards a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach with the implementation of public APIs.

However, API testing is complex and requires a high level of coding skills – but it is very important to add API testing in your software testing lifecycle to ensure issue-free APIs.

A robust website testing strategy is required across multiple devices and platforms, including APIs.

Localisation testing ensures your website is available to a global audience. It covers linguistic, technical, and visual checks to overcome translational and dialect issues. Some localisation testing services also suggest changes to improve your localisation optimisation.

Typical localisation testing checks

• Translations – Do you need to introduce any specific dialects or special characters?
• Local details – Have you got the correct contact information for each location? Do you accept different address formats to cater for different locations?
• Performance – Is your website available and functions over a range of locations?

Payment testing ensures your customers can complete their purchase, regardless of their location, browser and device. Payment integrations are also checked to ensure no transaction falls at the last hurdle.

Typical payment testing checks

• Payment options – Do your payment options work across multiple devices and platforms?
• Coverage – Are the appropriate payment options available for specific locations?
• UX – Is the payment process seamless?

More than half of visitors leave a page if they are forced to wait longer than three seconds.

Performance testing provides an accurate picture of your website’s load times, identifying potential issues and bottlenecks. There are many different types of performance tests, including:

Load test: a simple test that is usually conducted to understand the behaviour of your website under a specific expected load. This could test what happens when a number of concurrent users perform a specific number of transactions within a set duration on your website.

Such tests provide response times for all your business-critical transactions. If your database, application, and other servers are also monitored, then a simple load test could also reveal any bottlenecks in your network.

Stress test: these tests normally try to break your web applications by incrementally increasing the number of users on your site. This kind of test can determine your website’s robustness in times of extreme load.

Spike testing: as the name suggests, a spike in the number of users is created to help understand the behaviour of your web application when an unexpected spike in users occurs. It may, for example, go down or may be able to handle such sudden load changes.

Endurance/soak testing: this tests your website’s response to a continuous, expected load. This type of performance test can also determine if there are any memory leaks in your applications.

Typical performance testing checks

• Site speed – What is your average load time? Is this the same for desktops and mobile sites? Do return visitors get quicker speeds?
• Compatibility – Does your website perform across multiple browsers, platforms, and devices?
• Images – Do these images load correctly on every device and browser?
• Simultaneous users – Have you stimulated HTTP requests that could come from a high volume of users to see how your site reacts?

Usability testing helps you understand how real users interact with your website and make changes based on the results. This helps you evaluate the overall user experience by measuring how easily a user can accomplish a series of tasks on your website (also known as the user journey.

Typical usability testing check

• Navigation – Does every user journey work? Is each user journey a seamless experience? Are there different user journeys for different user types?
• Search – Can your users find the right pages when searching?

Up to 21% of adults require accessibility features in one form or another to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the internet.

Accessibility testing ensures your website is accessible to all users. Whether a user has an impairment or a slow internet connection, accessibility features let them know their rights matter, and their business is valued.

Security testing ensures your website is free from any vulnerabilities, threats and risks that could cause a big loss to your business. Types of security testing include:

Vulnerability scanning: Automated software scans a system against known vulnerability signatures.

Security scanning: Network and system weaknesses are identified and solutions for reducing these risks are consequently suggested. Both manual and automated scanning can be performed.

Penetration testing: An attack from a malicious hacker is simulated and the target system is analysed to check for potential vulnerabilities exposed by the attempted attack.

Risk assessment: The security risks inherent to the organisation are assessed and categorised. Recommendations to reduce these risks are also provided.

Security auditing: This is an internal inspection of applications and operating systems for security flaws. An audit can also be done via line-by-line inspection of code.

Ethical hacking: Unlike malicious hackers who steal for their own gains, the intent is to expose security flaws in the system.

Posture assessment: This combines security scanning, ethical hacking, and risk assessments to show an overall security posture of a website.

Typical security testing checks

• Authentication – How do you verify your users?
• Confidentiality – What are your privacy settings?
• Compliance – Do you comply with regulations like the GDPR?
• Authorisation – How do you limit/control user privileges? What security measures are in place to protect your website from online threats?

Crowdsourced testing uses remote testers who perform website testing through an online platform. This provides greater test and device coverage, cost efficiencies and can usually be delivered far quicker than traditional methods.

Crowdsourced testing can be used across all the types of testing in this section. However, most businesses use it to increase coverage during functional and localisation tests.