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.

Mobile Application Testing: Step-by-Step Approach

Blog | Mobile Application Testing: Step-by-Step Approach

Mobile Application Testing: Step-by-Step Approach

Mobile Technology is transforming the way people use their cell phones. Although demand is highest for consumer apps, enterprise applications are evolving too, allowing businesses to work more productively. Right from Publishers, Retailers, Automobile Dealers, Financial Service Providers, Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare Providers, the mobile application usage trend has now extended to schools and Universities providing faster interaction between staff and students.

Due to the ever-growing demand for mobile apps, decision makers are focusing on creating mobile strategies and roadmap before implementing the application for their users. It is important to build an app with all features and functionality required by the customer and which is beneficial to the app user, but it is even more critical to have a rigorous mobile testing plan before the mobile app is deployed. A comprehensive plan gives customers the confidence that the app will function as intended on different devices with varying screen sizes, resolutions, internal hardware, operating systems and across telecom operator networks.

Mobility Testing Process

A typical end-to-end mobile testing process, should start from creating test cases of the application, performing user acceptance and finally device testing stage.

The stages in mobile application testing process are as follows:

Described below is the mobile testing process we followed for a native educational application which we launched recently.

Case Study

Developed Native Applications for one of the largest higher education providers in North America.

The client is a leader in education and learning systems with over 4bn$ in revenues.

The mobile application allows interaction between faculty and students. It is accessed by over 5, 00,000 users in the University. The app is available for both iOS and Android phone users.

To deliver an issue free app was challenging given that, the application is downloaded and accessed by several thousand users. And this is difficult to achieve as every user is different from another.

Step-by-Step Mobile Application Testing Process followed:  

1. Identified Types of Testing – It was a mandatory requirement that the application has to work in all iOS and Android devices as the end consumers can have diverse devices. To ensure that the app worked in all the devices we selected  combination of manual testing, automation testing and testing in cloud simulator – Device Anywhere.

2. Performed Manual and Automated Testing –The development process followed for this project was SCRUM and each sprint was two weeks long. Every two weeks development team delivered a logically completed product to the QA team and QA would run their test cases on the build. Regression was a challenge because in each build QA had to ensure that previously completed items were still working. To accomplish this, QA team had automated basic set of functionality using Experitest and ran the automation script on each build which saved good amount of time. We used JIRA to file and track defects.

3. Provided 24 hours of QA Support – We follow a SCRUM development model (QA team is integral part of the development team throughout the project). We provided 24 hours QA support during the development phase since we had onsite as well as offsite teams working on this project. This ensured timely and steady progress in the app implementation.

4. Beta Testing – After this initial setup, once the particular build was moved from the QA bucket, user acceptance testing was conducted for this QA/ST build. This was achieved by asking the beta users (a set of hundred students from the University) to browse every single page within the mobile app. This ensured that every bug was fixed before the app was released. And that the app captured all necessary features and functionality.

5. Performance Testing – The functionality, performance (stability, responsiveness, resource usage, stability parameters as per standards) and user interface for the delivered build was thoroughly tested.

6. Device Testing – The app was tested across multiple OS versions/devices using the Device Anywhere simulation tool and also physically tested in our dedicated mobile application testing labs.

7. Maintained Test Case Sheet –During the whole process the QA team maintained the test case sheet (with all functionality implemented), at last certified the build to release. The entire end-to-end mobile application testing process involved collective effort between onsite and off- site teams.

8. Generated Test Summary Report – Finally QA manager generated the test summary report. This is a management report which provides details of any important information uncovered by the tests conducted, includes assessments of the quality of the testing effort, the quality of the software system under test and statistics derived from incident reports. The report also records different types of testing performed and how long did it take to complete the testing. This helps to improve any future test planning.  This final document indicates whether the software system under test is fit for use and has met acceptance criteria defined by project stakeholders.

This project was a good learning for our team and we were pleased to release the app successfully as planned.

Do let me know if you have any questions.

Rahul E.T
.

- See more at: http://www.rapidvaluesolutions.com/mobile-application-testing-step-by-step-approach/#sthash.kpAjTHkm.dpuf