Quality Assurance. If you've worked on any project before you've probably heard this term.
If you haven't, QA is the process during a project where you put the thing you're working on, like websites, under a series of tests and user scenarios. QA is an essential process in any project to ensure that your product is 100% ready for launch. You don't want to find out afterward that everything is a mess and broken.
How We Tackle QA at LyntonWeb
When starting our QA process for a website, we ask ourselves a few questions:
- How does this website look and function in all major browsers?
- What advanced functionality is on this site that needs to be tested?
- What is the craziest thing a visitor could do while on this site?
How Does this Website Look and Function in All Major Browsers?
This is the basic test we do on every website project. We use a service that takes full page screenshots of any URL that we indicate in whatever browsers we select. Our main focus at LyntonWeb is to view your website on the current most popular browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and all OS browsers. We test all sites in the two most recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and iOS, and Android mobile devices. In total, we test about 20 browsers on Windows, Mac OS, as well as mobile browsers.
During the QA process, we will work across departments to make sure your site reflects and honors your design and business objectives. That includes simple elements to looking for significant differences in browsers and platforms. There are going to be minor inconsistencies, such as how fonts or some graphics are rendered.
Slight inconsistencies are unavoidable for the most part; it's the big glaring issues that we need to look for and address. Ultimately, we test sites to ensure they function and look as expected to provide the best possible user engagement and subsequent business outcomes. Our dedicated QA checks device configurations and resolutions mentioned above based on information from sites like StatCounter and Netmarketshare.
Considering, there are more than a billion websites and more than 4.3 billion active internet users, it’s imperative to be sure you aren’t missing out on any potential page views and revenue. That’s why we are precise and careful with every project. For instance, on a website we launched in the past, we discovered the video player did not resize properly on devices with smaller screens. After QAing, we narrowed down what the issue was so the developer could see it and correct it.
Tablets and phones come in a variety of sizes. In a world where you have 50 milliseconds to make a good impression based on your website, your site should be responsive to survive. That means it's vital to test how your site scales as you change screen sizes. For a quick real-life exercise, try making this blog page thinner by dragging the side of the window left to right. Does your website look good at every size? What about the in-between sizes?
Something to help during the QA process is to have the designer of the website or app go through the site. That helps make sure your developers have interpreted the design and layouts correctly. At LyntonWeb, a standard part of our process is having the designers review and QA the templates against the design to ensure that the client's approved design.
Having our design team work hand in hand with our development teams helps us to ensure a better quality product for the client and a better experience for the end-user.
Advanced Functionality Testing
Testing more advanced, technical aspects of a website is integral to the process. For instance, we worked with a WordPress client who wanted to run separate promotions for two of their locations at the same time. To do this, we had to create a geotarget landing page, as well as one focused on new locations.
The geotargeting page would provide an offer to people who visited a competitor, then who visited a new location landing page. The new location page targeted people within a radius of the client's new locations. We also created the thank you pages and emails for the promotion.
The users would be redirected to these landing pages from outside ads. Once created, we had to confirm that each landing page would have a form the user would submit their email address to that would redirect to a thank you page. Finally, they’d be sent an email containing the discount barcode to redeem at any of the client’s locations.
We had to confirm that each email was delivered to the correct email address associated with the form. Then, we had to be sure the barcode was provided while making sure if a user filled out a form with an already-used email, they’d receive the same barcode associated with that email.
Final Advice
An important thing to note is that after you finish QA and launch your site, you're really not finished. QA and testing are never over. If you update a link on your site, or change content or make any changes to the site you need to test them. Click on every link. Make sure every image shows up.
Need help with making sure your website is ready to go live? We're here for you.
