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You have designed a very usable website, you have hosted it
using a very reliable web hosting company, and you have integrated a
safe and trusted payment processing system with your website.
However, all these can prove to be useless until you know your site is
actually working and accessible. If you want to create an accessible
website, you will need to test, test and test again.
A recent Forrester Research report reported that failure to ensure
website quality will cost the average small or mid-size company
thousands of dollars in wasted expenditures on website redesigns,
forfeited revenue, and lost customers. Testing a website is a long and
tedious task, but it's perhaps the most important task of all. There are
numerous stages to testing, all of which are very important. Ranging
from browser testing to content testing, none should be excluded.
Visual Acceptance Testing
Visual Acceptance Testing is the first port-of-call for all
webmasters. This type of testing generally ensures that the site looks
as it is intended to. This includes checking the graphic integration, and
simply confirming that the site looks good. In this stage you should
assess every page carefully to ensure that each looks the same. The
site should be tested under different screen resolutions and color
depths.
Functionality Testing
Functionality testing is perhaps the most vital area of testing, and
one which should never be missed. Functionality testing involves an
assessment of every aspect of the site where scripting or code is
involved, from searching for dead links, to testing forms and scripts.
You should also test your payment processing system completely
and thoroughly. After all, you wouldn’t want a potential customer to
get stuck at the last stage and eventually leave the site just because
there is something wrong with payment processing.
Content Proofing
This stage of testing removes any errors in your content, and
ensures that your site has a professional appearance. In this phase,
you should reread each page on your site, and check for spelling and
grammatical errors.
System and Browser Compatibility Testing
This test phase is completed in order to ensure that your website
renders correctly on a user's screen. To begin with, you should test
several pages from your site on different browsers such as Internet
Explorer 4, 5, 6, Netscape 4 and 6, and Opera. This can be extremely
important - if your site does not work properly with the Netscape
browser, Netscape users will end up annoyed, and they'll go
elsewhere.
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