The widespread proliferation of the internet has forced many age-old businesses to shift focus to the online medium. In fact, every business can now be considered an internet business since it helps the owner run the show 24*7.
Mobile penetration is also one of the important factors that businesses are considering when building their expansion strategies. Irrespective of the size or scale of the business, key stakeholders must ensure in providing a smooth product experience when the website is accessed from the mobile phone.
Consider this – As of 2021[1], out of the 4.66 billion global internet users, close to 92.6 percent (i.e. 4.32 billion) access the internet from mobile phones. Ignoring this crowd would hurt the growth of the business. Needless to mention that building a web application (or web app) is no longer an option- it has become a necessity!
Shorter development cycles must be accompanied with rigorous web application testing so that a top-quality app can be used by the end-users. This is where businesses (big or small) must leverage the potential offered by QA providers that offer web application testing services.
A formidable mobile app release strategy must also involve exhaustive web app testing, else the quality of the app might falter out. In this blog, we look at some of the best practices of web application testing – learnings of which will help in shipping a top-notch web app.
What is Web Application Testing?
Akin to cross browser testing of websites, web application testing is the approach of testing the website on different browsers installed on mobile devices.
Since the intention of web application testing is to ensure that respective website pages render perfectly fine on mobile viewports, the tests can be run on browsers installed on real devices or emulators (and simulators).
With web application testing, you will be able to identify issues related to user experience, security, etc. The findings will be useful in building a top-quality web application that your users would love to use 🙂
Best Practices of Web Application Testing
End-user experience plays a key role in keeping the users glued to your website (or web app). The users will embrace your competitors if the app performance is not good or if the UI/UX is not looking great on their devices.
This is why it is essential to incorporate best practices in web app testing, the major ones are listed below:
1. Prioritize Cross Browser Compatibility Testing
Mobile-friendliness of websites has become an absolute necessity. It also has a massive impact on search engine rankings, since Google also gives preference to mobile-friendly websites.
This is because users access websites from different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc.). Mobile friendliness is one of the first steps to be followed if you are building for a mobile-first audience. Responsive web design helps in delivering a rich user experience on every device.
A majority of responsive websites are built using the HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript tech stack. Every browser uses a different rendering engine (e.g. Chrome uses Blink and Safari uses WebKit). This means that functionalities might break on a few browsers or browser versions.
Cross browser compatibility tests for web apps ensure that the experience is uniform across different browsers (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, etc.) and device viewports. Since there are umpteen browsers and their corresponding versions, prioritize the ones that are used by the target audience.
Also Read – Advantages of Cross Browser Compatibility Testing
2. Consider the right parameters for Usability Testing
Usability and UX can be considered as the pillars of any web app. Your users will never return to the app in case the experience is not that great! User engagement can be hit if the app usability is not upto the mark. Usability testing is necessary for building super-responsive web applications.
Navigation, speed, UI/UX, reliability, and readability are some of the integral aspects of usability testing. The performance of the web app must not deteriorate when a large number of users are accessing the web app. This is where performance testing can play a vital role for ensuring that the app functionalities work flawlessly when numerous users are using the app.
3. Evaluate performance of the web application
You might have come across many scenarios where websites or apps crash when there is heavy load on their servers. This can be a dampener to the end-user experience.
Load testing tools like LoadNinja, BlazeMeter, WebLOAD, LoadFocus, etc. can be helpful in testing the web app under different load conditions. Load testing or performance testing ensures that the web application is ready for usage at a massive scale.
Open-source load testing tools must be leveraged for building a high-performing web application.
4. Perform extensive Security Testing
Whether you are building an e-commerce web app or a fintech web app, it is important to focus on the security aspects of the app. Malicious actors are always on the lookout for exploiting security vulnerabilities in websites or applications. Data breaches in web apps can lead to financial losses and loss of public trust.
Hence, top-notch user experience must be complemented with top-class security. Web application security testing must be performed at crucial stages of product development to ensure that a highly-secure web app is released in the market.
Also Read – 7 Web Application Security Best Practices
5. Make Exploratory Testing a regular feature
As seen so far, following a scripted approach to web app testing has a lot of benefits. The benefits can be multiplied when it is accompanied with Exploratory testing.
For starters, exploratory testing is a form of testing where test scenarios are not planned but created on the fly. Performing exploratory tests on a regular basis helps unearth issues that might not have been discovered as a part of automated testing.
To reiterate, here are some of the major practices that must be a part of web app testing strategy:
- Usability Testing
- Security Testing
- Cross Browser Compatibility Testing
- Exploratory Testing
- Performance Testing
- Functional Testing
It’s A Wrap
Be it web app, mobile app, or desktop app; it is important to test the functionalities of the same on different browsers and OS combinations. There are a plethora of devices with different view-port sizes; thereby making cross browser testing and cross platform testing an absolute necessity.
Web apps must also be tested from performance, user-experience, and security aspects so that a highly-secure and top-performing feature-rich app can be released to the end customers. Partnering with a web application testing services company is instrumental in performing web app tests at an accelerated pace.
Such an association will be helpful in making the most of web application testing; on a short-term and long-term basis alike.
