Quality Assurance Testing: 10 Steps to a Bug-free Website

Quality Assurance Testing: 10 Steps to a Bug-free Website

The fourth of five blog posts about what we learned while redesigning our own website. You can read the previous posts on our blog:

• 6 Steps: How to Plan a Successful Website Redesign
• Content Strategy and Design: How to Create the Wow
• Climbing Mt. Code: A Developer’s Journey

You won’t notice Jen’s best work. And that’s just the way it should be.

Jen is the quality assurance tester at Far Reach.
If you have a smooth experience on our website, then she’s done her job. (If you find a bug, however, then we need to “bug” her. Get it? Get it?? Bug.)
She may have had the most important job when it came to developing the new Far Reach website.
That’s because, if the website doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, you and every other user will do the worst thing possible for our business: you’ll leave. And all our hard work will be for naught.

She had a big job.

The new website has a lot of functions and features. In other words, there’s a lot that could go wrong. 
Thanks to Jen’s careful eyes, the new website works flawlessly.
Here are Jen’s 10 steps to a bug-free website that you can use to review yours: 

1. Proofread the content. Your content should be consistent, grammatically correct, and error-free.
   
2. Test it using the most popular web browsers. Your website should look and function the same regardless of the web browser you use. We tested ours on Internet Explorer 9, 10, and 11; Firefox; Chrome; and Safari.
   
3. Test it using the most popular devices. Your web-browsing experience should be consistent regardless of the device you use. We tested ours on an iPad, iPhone, Android Nexus 7 tablet, and a subset of Android smartphones.
   
4. Validate all links. Each link should take you to the right page—whether that’s a different page on your website or an entirely different website.
   
5. Validate font and styles. Your fonts should be a consistent style and size, and the look of your website should match the original design.
   
6. Validate any site security. Check that every page that’s supposed to be secure—for example, a page with e-commerce, a form asking for sensitive information, or an extranet login—is indeed protected.
   
7. Validate all online forms. If your website has forms, make sure you can fill them out and that the submit buttons work. Also double-check that form data is collected and stored according to requirements.
   
8. Validate email notifications are sent as expected. Someone at your company should receive a confirmation email for each form that’s submitted. Double-check that everyone receives the appropriate notifications.
   
9. Validate that any custom functionality works as expected. For example, the Our Work section of our website is a custom module that had to be tested across several sections of the site.
   
10. And much more…Every website is different, and there are more things that could and should be tested.

Now it’s your turn.

What issues might be lurking on your website?
While you’re checking for bugs, we’ll be preparing the last blog in this series: marketing our new website.