Website quality assurance: what it is and why it matters.

Website quality assurance (QA) isn’t the most exciting part of web design and development. But it’s one of the most essential. Fail to prioritise quality assurance throughout the whole website build and you can end up with costly errors.

But, make website QA an integral part of the process, and you get a finished product that meets agreed requirements and follows best practices. This means users get an exceptional experience the moment your website goes live.

Here, we explain more about the importance of website quality assurance and share a handy website QA checklist. We’ll be covering the following:

• What is website quality assurance (QA)?
• Why does website QA matter?
• Website quality assurance: best practices
• Website QA checklist

What is website quality assurance (QA)?

Website quality assurance — or website QA — is the process of testing a website to make sure it works as it should.

Once a website is finished, your web design and development agency will check that it meets the requirements you set out at the start of the project. They’ll also test things like functionality, performance, usability, accessibility and security before the site goes live.

This gives the team a chance to find and fix defects in the website. So when your first users arrive, they get the best possible experience.

Why does website QA matter?

Website quality assurance is an essential part of web design and web development. Here’s why your web team should pay close attention to website QA when building and launching a new website.

It saves time and money

Website QA highlights design and development errors. Identifying and fixing these errors early in the process means you save time and money on costly fixes later. It also helps designers and developers to work more efficiently.

It prevents website disasters

Without thorough website QA testing, you fail to spot issues that could lead to website disasters, like:

• Broken functionality
• A security breach that harms your reputation
• A slow-loading site — or one that crashes when it gets too much traffic
• Non-compliance with laws like GDPR

Website QA prevents issues like these. It ensures your website is secure, reliable and performs as expected — and that it meets industry standards on things like data privacy and accessibility.

It ensures a positive user experience

Every person who lands on your website should get the same great experience, no matter the browser or device they use, and no matter when they happen to visit.

Remember that 88% of online shoppers say they’re less likely to return to a site after just one bad user experience.

Website QA testing ensures your website is easy to use, navigate and understand. So users find it easy to complete tasks. This creates a positive user experience, which means website visitors are more likely to return.

It ensures a good impression of your brand

When website visitors have a good experience on your website, they associate all those positive feelings with your brand. You build a reputation for reliability, credibility and trustworthiness.

The opposite is also true. If you fail to complete website QA properly and users have a bad experience on your website, you damage your brand. Customers leave dissatisfied and are less likely to trust your brand in future.

Website quality assurance: best practices

Website quality assurance is an ongoing process. It starts before the design and build — and continues post-launch. Here are some best practices to bear in mind as you plan and execute website QA.

Agree on requirements

A big part of website QA is ensuring the finished website meets client requirements. So, at the very start of a website project, it’s important that everyone understands what those requirements are.

Here at Radical, we spend time getting to know our clients and their business. We find out:

• what they want to achieve with their website
• who their target audience is
• the functionality they want to include

We build a clear picture of the website integrations, hosting requirements and website tools the website is likely to need.

Sometimes, if client requirements will negatively impact the user experience or website speed, we push back on them. For instance, we may suggest fewer menu items or a different font to ensure the finished website works beautifully.

Based on all our chats, we then review client requirements and add any additional best practice guidelines into the specification. This provides the basis for the design and development process.

Create a QA plan and define quality standards

When running a QA process, your web team should put a QA plan in place. A website quality assurance plan should include details of:

• the QA process
• the scope of website QA testing
• the schedule for QA testing

This is a good time to define quality standards too. This means deciding which coding standards and accessibility guidelines the team should follow. It’s also a chance to set performance goals, like page load and server response times.

Conduct continuous website QA testing

Website QA isn’t something you only think about at the end of a website project. Instead, you should test continuously throughout design and development.

For example, during the design phase, there will be a lot of back and forth between designers and the client. You’ll be asked to review and approve elements, getting closer to your ideal website with each new amendment.

But after each web design amendment, we need quality assurance. This helps ensure the website still meets the agreed requirements and any best practice guidelines. Without regular QA, issues could occur during development.

For example, if developers feel that the designs have too big an impact on site loading speeds, they need to be tweaked. This takes the website back into the design phase, which means it takes more time to build your website.

Similarly, when developers are creating code for the website, they should test as they go, finding and fixing any glitches as they arise. This allows for a smoother and quicker development process.

Website QA checklist

QA testing for websites includes several stages. Your web team absolutely has to complete all of them before you launch your website.

If you’ve been following QA best practices throughout the web design and development process, you’ll hopefully find very few issues and there won’t be much to do.

But — to ensure the best possible experience for users from the first time they land on your website — tick off the items on this website QA checklist before you take your site live.

1. User interface (UI) and design testing

The first thing on your QA testing checklist is a UI and website design quality check. This is where you look at the presentation and consistency of design elements like:

• fonts
• colours
• buttons
• alignment and spacing

You should also check that it’s easy for users to navigate the site and find what they need on every web page.

2. Functional testing

At this stage in the website QA process, you’re testing that your website functions as intended. You need to:

• test all links to ensure they work properly
• check that website forms are working properly
• ensure all images, videos and any audio load and play as expected
• check that interactive elements — like buttons, sliders and any dropdown menus — work well
• test your site with cookies enabled and disabled to ensure that everything works as it should — and ensure that cookies have an expiry date
• check the registration and login process for user accounts

3. Compatibility testing

Now, it’s time to test compatibility. You need to check that your website works across all:

• devices
• browsers
• operating systems

Test your website on all the possible combinations of devices, browsers and operating systems. Check responsiveness, layout and interactivity across all devices.

You should also check that no popular browser plugins or extensions prevent your website from working properly. Also, test under different network conditions. For example, does your website work as well if users have a 3G or 4G connection?

4. Performance testing

This stage in the website QA testing process is all about website performance. You need to know that your website performs well and that pages load quickly no matter how many users are trying to access the site.

So test how quickly pages load and how well your website works under various scenarios, including spikes in traffic, sustained traffic and lots of users logging in at the same time.

This is a good time to check that all performance optimization tasks have been completed. This could include minifying code and enabling caching.

5. Usability testing

Usability testing is all about how the target audience interacts with the website. It involves testing your website’s design, layout, navigation and functionality. And it works best if you enlist real-life users within your target market.

Ask users to complete realistic scenarios. For example:

• You want to buy a product for under £50
• You want to locate the returns policy
• You want to view services, then fill out the contact form

Then, use analytics and user feedback to find points of friction in the user experience. You can assess things like:

• task completion rates
• how long it took to complete tasks
• how satisfied your users were with the experience

Then, make any necessary changes to your website to make things simple and streamlined for website visitors.

6. Security and privacy testing

The next step in your website QA checklist is all about site security. You need to:

• check that you have a clearly displayed privacy policy
• verify HTTPS implementation
• test security measures — like password encryption and secure transmission — when users log in to your website
• check that captcha tests are working properly
• check that only authorised users can access sensitive parts of the site
• make sure that the website behaves correctly when a user deletes cookies

You may also like to simulate a security breach to check your site defences.

7. Accessibility testing

Website accessibility is another important thing to look at when testing your site before launch. It ensures that all people, regardless of their ability, can access and use your site. So, check that:

• there are alternatives to audio and video content
• users can navigate your website while using a keyboard or screen reader
• users can use the site while zoomed in
• all images have alt text
• all videos have captions
• all text is legible for colour-blind users
• the text on your site is written in simple, easy-to-understand language
• you’ve used Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) attributes properly

8. Content testing

One of the final tasks to complete on your website QA checklist is website content testing. Here, you need to:

• proofread every single bit of text associated with your website, including navigation menus, 404 pages and metadata
• find and fix any spelling and grammatical mistakes
• ensure there are no duplicate pages
• remove any placeholder text

Also, check that every page contains enough content and at least one clear call to action. Make sure that information flows logically and that the most important information comes first.

This is also a good opportunity to check on-page optimisation for SEO. Ensure that page titles, headings and alt tags are optimised for your target keyword — and check that the page content matches user intent.

9. Fix, retest and compare the website to the agreed requirements

As you complete these tests, you may come across website issues. If that’s the case, document the issues, describing the steps you took to produce it and what happened. Then, fix these issues and retest the site.

Also, check that the website meets the agreed requirements set out at the very beginning of the website project.

Ensuring top website quality, at site launch and beyond

Website quality assurance is an integral part of any website build. It ensures that your finished website looks and functions exactly as it should.

But your website launch isn’t the end of the process. You should continue to monitor website quality once a site is live.

Keep an eye out for bugs and respond to any user-reported issues. Conduct a performance review every now and again, particularly after a content update or a surge in traffic. Regularly update your website to ensure compatibility with new devices, browser versions and third-party integrations.

Work with Radical and you can be sure of top website quality every step of the way. We’ve honed our quality assurance process over years of building websites. We also help our clients keep their websites in top working order with bespoke aftercare packages.

Want to know more? Give our team a call to chat about your website project.