6-Step Guide to Web Application Testing
The Internet is one of the easiest ways for companies to reach users, and websites are an excellent way of impressing your clients. In general, bug fixing costs increase the later you find them exponentially.
You have to try your application and resolve any problems to make sure your web application is good enough to impress customers and avoid any negative consequences.
We have created a 6-stage guide to give you an overview of how your application can be tested.
Functionality Testing
Website Functional testing process proceeds by testing every functionality of the system. Various types are followed in the market by software test procedures. It is significant to look for a quality tool or a test plan because it helps in saving time and money.
Every functionality is tested functionally by providing the right input. The checking process begins appropriately with the output. Comparison of the results is essential to identify any possible mistakes in the testing
For example, if you’re building an e-commerce website like Flipkart, The application aims to allow users to purchase things online. You have to make sure the products are listed in the right way. You also have to make sure that the links to the products work fine. Payment gateways and processing are some of the major things you should test because nobody would like their money to get stuck in the process.
Functional testing happens in the source code, where the system is tested against functional requirements and specifications.
List of parameters tested using website functional testing
- User Interface or UI of the application
- APIs for web and mobile applications
- Database testing
- Security And Threat Level Testing
- client and server applications
- Basic functionality of the Application
Concentrate on Usability Testing of a Web Application
Usability tests can show you how easy your website or mobile app can be used. Usability tests include a UX test. By observing the interaction between real users and your product. You will test how easy it is for the user to navigate and use the application functions. You must also ensure that your web application content is easily visible.
Among the main benefits of usability testing are:
- learning whether your product meets user expectations;
- detecting UX inconsistencies and ways to improve user satisfaction;
- gathering unbiased feedback;
- developing empathy towards your user base;
- learning the why behind data gathered via other methods like A/B testing or heat maps;
- receiving buy-in from stakeholders for necessary changes; and
- decreasing the risk of building the wrong product.
Usability testing can save you a ton of time and money by revealing issues while they are still easy to fix.
Interface Testing
The main objective of Interface testing is to ensure that all interactions among the app server and web server interfaces are functioning properly and smoothly. This includes verifying communication processes and ensuring the correct display of error messages.
Whether in agile or waterfall, this type of testing is crucial to guarantee a positive UX (user experience). There are chiefly three sections that a QA tester mainly targets- Application, Database Server, and the Web server.
- Application: Testing requests are sent to the Database appropriately and the result at the consumer side is displayed perfectly. Glitches also need to be caught by the app and need to be exposed to the administrator but not the purchaser.
- Database Server: Test Database server to make certain that queries sent to the database give accepted outcomes
- Web Server: To make sure that the webserver is managing all application requests with zero service denial.
Compatibility Testing
Ensuring the compatibility of the web app with all the operating systems, mobile devices, and browsers is a key part of the web application test.
Compatibility testing ensures that apps are efficient, smooth, and reactive in all mobile devices, web browsers, and operating systems. The following tests are included.
- Browser Compatibility Testing– This test ensures that the web app can render effectively across varied browsers such as Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. It helps in find out JavaScript, HTML, AJAX, and CSS associated issues.
- Mobile Compatibility Testing– This test ensures that the web application is running on varied devices of dissimilar shapes and sizes.
- Operating System Compatibility Testing– Just like browsers, the web application also captures problems on some OSs. This test checks whether the web application runs smoothly on Linux, Windows, Unixes, and macOS.
Performance Testing
After ensuring that the functionality of your application is working properly and responsively on all browsers and devices, it is time to look at how it performs under heavy loads. For example, an e-commerce site will get more traffic when it has seasonal sales, compared to a normal day. You should test your application to make sure that it can handle this traffic load.
In the performance testing of the web app, the functionality of varied OSs and distinct hardware platforms are scrutinized for hardware and software memory leakage issues. Testers execute the tests to ensure the web app’s scalability or for benchmarking the performance of 3rd-party products like middleware and servers for potential acquisition.
Security Testing
Security is one of the most important aspects of any kind of application. This step of web application testing ensures that your application is protected against unauthorized access and harmful actions by viruses or other malicious software.
Security test for web applications includes the following actions:
- Test illegal access to secure pages
- Ensure secret files shouldn’t be downloadable without proper access
- Test out sessions are automatically killed after extended user inactivity
- Check the application’s SSL. With the usage of SSL certificates, the site should send on to encrypted SSL pages.
Conclusion
These are six steps to test the web application. If you follow these steps thoroughly before you roll out your application, it should take a long way to find any bugs and viruses and allow you to fix them before it’s too late.