Website Testing Companies

Reviewing Website Testing Companies

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In This Post

There are three things you should think about when reviewing Website testing companies.

If you have a clear idea of these three critical aspects of working with a website testing company, your selection process will run smoothly and your “best choice” will be very obvious.

  1. What Are Your Website Testing Goals? – Specifically, what outcomes do you need your outsourced software testing team to accomplish for you? Not the activities but the outcomes. The activities may look like testing but the real business value is accomplishing your goal. What is your goal and why is it important? Share that with your outsourced website testing team and see what happens. If they are inspired, then you’ve found a strong candidate.  If they only want to know how much work you have for them, you should keep looking.
  2. What Are Your Budget and Time Constraints? – Sure, the budget is a big constraint. But, are there others? Do you have a promised due date for your next release? Do you need tight coordination with a variety of teams to meet your goal? Is this project big and visible to a lot of people? Share these constraints with your offshore software testing team and see what they say. Are they excited about the additional challenges? Do they offer a variety of strategies to accommodate your constraints? Or, do they just want to know how many testers you need and how long you need them? A lack of testing and quality strategies might indicate they don’t know any testing or quality strategies. If so, you should keep looking.
  3. What Are Your Expectations About Website Testing Outcomes? – Everyone has them but few recognize how we are influenced by them. Your expectations are going to one of the prime measures of how satisfied you will be with the process and outcomes. While expectations aren’t goals, they are very important. To add to the problem, most of us are generally unaware of our expectations as something important. Mostly, we just recognize when they aren’t met. This leads to dissatisfaction and then disappointment. Share your expectations with your outsourced website testing team. Gauge their reaction. Most will be interested in meeting your minimum expectations. A few will ask you to explain and may even question your expectations. This is good! They’re asking those questions so they’ll have a deeper understanding of why your expectations are important and how they can incorporate them into their daily software and website testing process. If you don’t get a rise by sharing your expectations then you should probably keep looking.

Comparing Website Testing Companies

What will it take to win your confidence that a website testing company can achieve your goals? That depends on what you want.

Website testing can cover the very simplest issues like testing for accurate rendering on just a few browsers to very complex issues like load and performance testing. But that’s mostly technical jargon. You probably have some business and project goals that are related to your website that you definitely want to achieve. Explain your business and technical goals to your proposed website testing company and then listen as they explain how they will work with you to achieve your goals.

It can be difficult to compare two or more items if the criteria are hard to measure. Here are a couple of simple but very important aspects of a website testing project that you can easily use to compare your preferred website testing companies.

  1. Do they understand your goals and constraints? Are they able to repeat them back to you and then show incremental progress as the project progresses?
  2. Do they have several strategies or are they a one-trick-pony? There is almost always more than one way to accomplish a goal and the constraints on the goal usually determine which strategy will deliver the highest value for the lowest cost. Do you understand and agree with their strategy or will they just “test it for you”?
  3. Do they have the talent to execute the strategy? Test Engineers are twice as productive and twice as effective as “testers”. QA Managers add even more value with analysis, reporting and planning to keep the Test Engineers fully productive on your website testing project. “Testers” do what they’re told – usually without any supervision. How much talent and confidence do you want for your website testing project?

A simple Yes/No score comparison between your preferred website testing companies should provide you with an easy solution for picking the best solution for your needs.

What Does it Take to Have Real Confidence in a Website Testing Company?

Are you worried or concerned about outsourcing to a website testing company? How can you know if you’re on the right (or wrong) track to finding the help you need?

If you are seeing danger signs that erode your confidence in the website testing companies with whom you are working, it’s not too late to give TESTCo a call – here’s why!

  1. A 90 Minute Start. We know you’re in a hurry and under the gun.  But, we need a basic amount of information about your website testing project so we can accurately achieve your goals and objectives. (Isn’t that what it’s all about?)  Don’t worry though, we’ve done this before (a bunch) and have a list of questions already prepared so we can get started quickly and effectively. We assign a QA Manager to every project (at no additional cost) so that we always have all the information and access we need for our Test Engineers to get your work completed accurately.
  2. The Basics. All great teamwork requires effective communication. It’s basic stuff really – writing status reports and participating in daily stand ups – like brushing and flossing every day (twice please). Our Test Engineers know this and do it as a natural part of their working process. Testers that other companies use typically just test what they are told to test.
  3. Leverage and Assets. Your website (and the website testing project to launch it) can either be an expense or an investment. An expense is once and done.  An investment creates an asset that provides leverage for future opportunities and produces a regular return (new prospects maybe?). If your website is an expense, then just skip this.

Here are a few more tips about selecting a website testing company.

How to Be Successful with Your Website Testing Company

How can you be confident that you’ll be successful with your outsourced website testing project? What might you do to insure the certainty of success?

Selecting an outsourced website testing company is only the first step. Next, you’ll want to make sure they are successful in achieving your goals for you. Your involvement with the website testing team will be important but it shouldn’t take a lot of your time. Here are some tips for making sure you get the most out of the website testing company that you select.

  1. Before Your Project – your website testing team will need a clear set of goals and constraints so they can achieve your goal. This information is usually covered in a Scoping process prior to building and delivering a proposal to you. You liked and believed the proposal enough to select this website testing company, so take some time and make sure it is accurate. It’s worth a brief 30 minutes to review both, your scoping document and your proposal to make sure that everyone is perfectly, crystal clear on your goals and constraints.
  2. During Your Project – your website testing team should deliver at least a daily status report. At TESTCo, we provide 2 daily status reports – one in the morning and another again each evening. Please, take just a few minutes and read these reports when you receive them. They contain a wealth of important information about the status of your project and can be an early indicator of Things Going Wrong. If you don’t understand or agree with what you see in the daily status report, please speak up quickly so your website testing team can correct their course and get back on track to achieve your goals.
  3. After Your Project – Once your website testing team has completed their strategy and plan, you should have a very clear picture of the quality of your website. In most cases, there will be defects that need to be fixed by your developers. Fixing those defects can cause additional defects! It’s worthwhile to talk with your website testing team about a second round of testing for your website – just to make sure that the big fixes didn’t break something else that was already working. Talk with your website testing company about another round of testing – just to make sure that they can have your website testing team available when you need them next.

TESTCo’s Three Values for Website Testing Companies

At TESTCo, we believe there are three values that are really important for website testing companies to provide. See if you agree.

Safe – Our work and way of working with you is safe. You won’t have any surprises. Our work will follow a well-thought-out plan with twice-daily status reports. You’ll always know where things stand and how we’re doing honoring our promises to you.

Easy – We’re very easy to work with. You can have as much or as little transparency as you like. Our work processes will integrate yours without any interruptions. The defects we discover for you will be crystal clear and ready for fixing. And, we can stop and re-start with just a one days notice.

Reliable – We honor our promises and plans. Our QA Managers will present you with the best strategy and plan to accomplish your goals. Our Test Engineers have the experience you need and we’ll have your favorite Test Engineer ready when you need them again.

TESTCo, One of the Few Website Testing Companies that Delivers Business Value Every Day

If your website is an investment, then you’ll want to make sure you’re getting every bang for every buck you spend. In website testing projects, the test cases and test plan are your assets.  They measure and validate the quality of your website – today and then again next quarter when you update it.

At TESTCo, we believe in honoring promises. Honoring promises produces trust and confidence. You want confidence that your website will meet your quality standards and represent you and your brand effectively.

Once you start talking to us, you’ll notice the difference between TESTCo and other website testing companies. Once we start working for you, you’ll know you made the right choice. Let us prove it.

Outsourcing Quality Assurance

Outsourcing Quality Assurance Helps In-House QA

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There are three things you can get from outsourcing quality assurance, even if you already have an in-house QA function.

I know, the thought of outsourcing may not have crossed your mind lately if release cycles are running smoothly and customers are loving your software, apps, or website.

But, for how long? You know that with each release the testing gets a little more complex; a little more time-consuming.

The Impact of Regression Testing Debt

Every time new features are added, the quality assurance cycle get’s a little longer…and longer…and longer.

Why is that? It’s called regression testing debt and it occurs because the amount of things that need to be tested increases each time new features are added.

Yes, the new features need to be tested, but the old features need to be tested as well to make sure the new features didn’t bungle them up and break them.

Kicking the Can Down the Road

Of course you’re thinking there’s probably no real budget to add additional quality assurance staff – the internal team is just going to have to do the best they can.

This approach might work for a little while but it won’t be sustainable unless you find some *leverage* to make your quality assurance team more efficient.

Outsourcing quality assurance – even for a project or two – can bring your in-house QA team a ton of learning, new techniques and better strategies to overcome the increasing workload that comes with regression testing debt.

The leverage and ROI on this approach is very high – and not just in terms of dollars or time.

Three Benefits When Outsourcing Quality Assurance Resource for Your Internal QA Team

Here’s how your in-house QA team can benefit from working on a couple software testing projects with an outsourced quality assurance team.

  1. New software testing techniques – the art and science of software testing and quality assurance advances significantly every year. A well qualified outsourced quality assurance partner keeps their team well trained on new and effective testing techniques. They can easily teach your in-house QA team some of the best techniques for your unique situation.
  2. New software testing strategies – software, websites and applications are growing in size and volume every year. The old strategies for making sure your software has adequate quality assurance coverage may not work anymore and may even lead you in the wrong direction. New quality assurance strategies are being built, tested and used to great advantage – wouldn’t your in-house quality assurance team benefit from learning some new strategies?
  3. New quality assurance tools – last but not least, the tools!  All the tools! Almost too many to chose from – and how would you chose anyway? Choosing and implementing the most effective software testing tools can be daunting if you try to figure it out yourself. Adding to the confusion – those sales guys selling the tools! Give yourself (and your QA Team) a break and let the experts tell you (and even show you) which tools work best in which situation. This alone can save you weeks of time!

The Cost of QA Leverage

It should cost you less than $10K to engage with a well qualified and respected quality assurance partner for a project that runs a week or two.

In return, you should expect that your immediate testing needs are well covered and your in-house QA Team should get a range of the following benefits in addition to the software testing.

  • New software testing techniques with guide sheets and personal instruction on how best to use them.
  • New software testing strategies with coaching on the costs and benefits of the selected approach.
  • Introduction to software testing tools you haven’t used but might benefit from – along with demos and examples of how they can work for you and what the true costs of implementation are.

Where else are you going to get that kind of ROI and leverage? Keep your internal QA team sharp. Keep your customers (and your boss) happy. It’s all possible you choose an outsourcing quality assurance strategy for raising the level of performance in your internal QA team.