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Top 7 Web Application Testing Practices for QA Professionals

Having a website or web app that offers rich user experience across all platforms, such as mobiles, browsers, and operating systems, has become a basic necessity for every organization. If you don’t have a website, then you won’t be able to make a good online presence of your business. To enhance user experience on your site, developers have to focus extensively on the accessibility, functionality, performance, security, and usability of your web app.
Well, the development of a web app is a tough task, but it can be done easily if you have knowledgeable and experienced developers. However, the most complicated part of the development process is evaluating all aspects of web applications to ensure it meets user expectations.

Different types of testing of web apps is done by QA professionals, and it used to be a simple and easy task earlier. But, with the development of new devices, browsers, operating systems, and other digital platforms, it has become very complicated to test a website across all platforms. Moreover, users have started browsing the internet over mobile phones rather than desktop, which makes it crucial for enterprises to build mobile-friendly sites.

We have to agree to the fact that web apps are no more simple information-based websites; they drive force of today’s information, business, and communication world. Thus, testing your web app for compatibility and rich-user experience is essential in today’s world. But, as web apps are becoming too complex, QA professionals need to put extra time and effort to test a website for all aspects. For that, they need best practices to speed up their web app testing process.

Here, we will talk about 7 website testing practices that every QA professional needs to make their web app testing process efficient.

Use Exploratory Testing Techniques with Conventional Testing

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If you want to reduce testing time and fix more bugs in your web app, then it is recommended to perform exploratory testing with conventional testing techniques. Most QA professionals have already started implementing this technique for greater test coverage and better result. In general, the web app testing process involves writing and executing test cases simultaneously, but many QAs often forget the shortcomings of exploratory testing.
However, if they integrate exploratory testing with other white-hat or black-hat testing techniques, then these shortcomings can quickly be resolved. Also, the integration will help testers produce better test results as well as reduce the overall testing time.

Focus on Cross-Browser Compatibility Testing

The number of mobile devices is increasing rapidly, and people use all of them in someplace. Now, the main concern is each of these devices comes with a different mobile browser, which is used by the user to browse a website. So, making your site compatible across all the browsers is very crucial to survive in the search engine market and earn potential users. To provide a smarter user experience on each and every device, developers need to develop responsive websites with technologies like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

But again, these technologies are not compatible with some older versions of browsers, and testing each browser manually will take considerable time and require multiple resources. So, what QAs can do is take help from various tools like LambdaTest.com that allow you to test your web app across a combination of more than 2000 browsers, OS, and devices quickly and efficiently.

Test Website Performance under Various Conditions

If you want to evaluate the right functioning of your web app on all platforms, then it is recommended to test the site under various scenarios to ensure it doesn’t crash due to heavy loads. For instance, a few bugs or minor flaws in the coding of web apps can bring down their performance. Also, if your website gets slow when multiple users visit it at one time, it adversely affects the user experience.

Thus, it is advisable for testers to test their web ap functionality under various loads. You can even take help from automated load testing tools like LambdaTest to analyze the performance of your web app under varying loads. Also, load testing of web apps should be performed every time new changes are applied, or new features are added to it to ensure its performance is not affected.

Test Each and Every Element of Web App

When it comes to testing a web app, most testers only focus on functionality, performance, features, and compatibility, which is, of course, a priority. But, testing these parts is not enough if you want to deliver a rich experience to your users. So, you should ask your QA team to examine each component of your web app.
For instance, it could bring ultimate benefits for your business if the testing team evaluates the basic features and elements of a website, such as CSS, HTML, Cookies, Dead-links, JavaScript, Browser Control, and Security.

Moreover, if your site is integrated with third-party plug-ins and extensions, then it recommended testing their compatibility with your website. Using third-party resources indeed improves the web app functionality, but their quality differs from the application. Thus, it is crucial to test third-party resources for compatibility. Performing tests across all elements of your website help in providing a better user experience.

Perform Load Testing in Multiple Intervals

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To analyze the performance of your web app under varying loads, it is crucial to accelerate QA testing. But, one thing most QA professionals often forget is executing load tests at multiple intervals. Usually, load testing is performed only once or twice for a specific scenario, but that’s not the right approach. In order to evaluate the accurate performance of your web app, it is essential to perform load testing under varying load situations.
During the initial stages of development, most QAs increase the user load to perform load testing so that it becomes easier to verify the exact points where the web application crashes. But, this technique must be used at several intervals, and the results of load testing for each interval must be analyzed to evaluate the performance of the website properly.

Select the Right Factors of Usability Testing

UI and UX are two of the most critical parts of a web app, which require proper attention of developers and testers. So, if you want to provide a quality experience to your users, then ask your QAs to evaluate the user interface and user experience of your site. In fact, usability testing must be performed based on the most relevant factors. For example, the most important key elements of a web app are UI design, speed, performance, content visibility and readability, navigation, and convenience. Also, testers should follow all the user actions to analyze the time required to perform each task.

Most QA professionals prefer to automate the UI & UX testing of web apps to check the look and feel, performance, and usability of applications across multiple platforms, including web browsers and OS. Automating usability testing of web apps not only provides quick results, but it also helps in the development, support, maintenance, and reusability of automated tests so that the front-end of the site can be tested more efficiently.

Work with the Development Team

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During the last few years, it has been observed that many enterprises have started adopting agile approaches and DevOps in their software development cycle, and it is increasing consistently. Agile methodologies require businesses to merge testing activities with development so that better can outputs can be produced. Therefore, testers need to collaborate and coordinate with IT professionals like business analysts, developers, and consumers to test web applications throughout the software development life cycle.

Likewise, DevOps also ask businesses to unify software testing with development and deployment processes. Thus, it is essential for QA professionals to understand how to work with developers and IT professionals thoroughly. With continuous collaboration between testing and development teams, you will be able to deliver a web app that meets user expectations.

Overall, it would be right to say that experienced QA professionals must follow the latest web app trends that dominate the web development sector.

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Conclusion

Every user uses numerous types of applications, and these apps could be web, mobile, or desktop based. And if we consider the number of devices available in the market, the ease of accessing the internet has increased consistently in the last few years, which makes it complicated for testers to test web apps. Also, with the new and upcoming developments in the software industry, there are a few chances that testing will ever get easier. However, QA professionals can use various automation testing tools that offer a thorough QA strategy for faster testing of web apps and produce more reliable tests.

About Suzan Vega