Website Testing Services

Website Testing Services for the Average Bear

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When it comes to website testing services, you might not be smarter than the average bear. Or, you might not know if you are.

That’s OK, I can help you sort through some of the techno-babble about getting some help with website testing so you can quickly become smarter than the average bear.

You see, when it comes to software testing, hunting, farming, being a Dad, or training a dog I am smarter than the average bear.

If you ask me about psychology, event management or finance then I’m definitely not smarter than the average bear. Best we stick to the subject of website and web app testing right now, okay?

Cutting Through the Clutter of Website Testing Services

As I scanned internet articles to see what was being written on the subject, I noticed a few things that could be confusing or misleading to the average bear.

Let me sort through those things now to help you find an outsourced website testing company that work best for your unique need and business goals.

Set the Right Goal

First, set a goal. Know what you want.  A SMART goal  is great – even if you don’t know all of it.

But, you may not have a “goal” and that’s OK, too. Use these simple questions to figure out what you really want from your website testing services.

  1. Do I want website testing because it’s something I “should” do or because I’m concerned about the cost of losing customers and prospects to bugs and glitches? This answer will help you (and us) understand why you want website testing services.
  2. What does it cost me to get a new prospect to visit my website or eCommerce store? What is the lifetime value of one of my customers? This answer will help you understand the risk of loss from bugs and glitches that website testing can help you prevent.
  3. Do I have time before I need to release my website to fix the bugs and glitches that the website testing finds? This answer will help you understand if you will get real value from your website testing work.

There are not any right or wrong answers to these questions. The answers are important but the thinking and reasoning you do while answering those questions will shed light on what you really want and we can easily help you turn that into a website testing services goal.

Here’s why knowing your goal is important. Testing is an activity – and it can be performed for as long as you want it performed – regardless and without respect to your goal.  You’re probably more interested in the outcomes of testing – defects, bugs, test plans, test cases, etc – than just knowing someone is testing it. If you know your goal before you start looking for help with website testing services, you’ll get the outcomes you’re looking for. Otherwise, you’ll definitely get some “testing” but you won’t know if it is helping you achieve what you actually want.

Don’t Be Over-Sold by Tool Vendors

Second, Tools! (Hat tip to Tim the Toolman, who always got excited about tools and machines.

Almost everything I read on the internet about website testing services seems to be about how a great tool can solve your problem.

Yeah, like having a hammer get’s you a birdhouse. Not so much. Tools are only as good as the person using them. So, this begs two questions.

  1. How long will it take to learn how to use the tool?  They seem easy in the demo but have you actually tried using it?  It may not be as easy as you think.
  2. Even if you know how to use the tool, will you know where to use it most effectively? Just because you can easily and quickly run a bunch of tests, how will you know they are the right tests applied to the right place in your website?

Humans are more important than tools. Tools help humans be more useful.

The Human Element in Website Testing Services

Third, Testers! Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter.

I’ve learned that there is a difference between a Tester and a Test Engineer. We don’t hire testers and you should look very carefully before you hire them yourself.

Here’s why.

Testers do very well when they are told what to do. They don’t do so well when given a testing problem to solve.  They just don’t have the mindset, education and ongoing training to come up with good alternatives or judgment to select the best course of action.

Test Engineers are seekers, finders, and solvers of quality problems. They have university level degrees in math, engineering, and computer science and are actively engaged in ongoing training in quality assurance and control. Sure, they cost a little more – so does a nice car – for a great reason. They both deliver more value per dollar than a less expensive choice – like a tester.

Name Dropping in the Buzzword Jungle

Fourth, Buzzwords like AI, Services, Technology, Systems, Industry, Functional, Performance, Security, Usability can lure you into a trap. Remember, you’re hiring website testing services, not a copywriter.

When it comes to website testing services, having deep knowledge and experience in some set of buzzwords is far less valuable than having seen and completed hundreds of website testing projects.

TESTCo is focused solely on providing the best website testing services for your business. The buzzwords used to sell you on testing services won’t help fix bugs in your code or ensure your application works well when it’s released. We have decades of experience when it comes to solving testing problems that are similar to yours. Instead of writing about buzzwords to entice you to select TESTCo for services, we are focused on providing real testimonials and consultations so you can see our services firsthand.

If you’re looking for a match between your situation and what the website testing services company can provide, look to the references and testimonials and give them about 10 times the weight you’d give to their buzzwords matching your buzzwords. Even better, reach out and talk to the reference/testimonial yourself!

Trust Your Brand to a Crowd of Strangers? Really?

Fifth, there’s the whole crowdsourcing thing.

Sure, some things might be better, faster and cheaper when crowdsourced. But, when what you’re interested in crosses the line from “opinion” to “expert advice”, you’re probably going to get better and more valuable results from an expert rather than “the crowd”.

I know (and so do our clients) that a dedicated QA Team with a QA Manager and a Test Engineer, even for a tiny project of a day or so, can deliver a far more valuable set of results than a semi-random group of internet users.

Crowdsourcing your brand can lead to unpleasant outcomes.

Customer Churn: The entire focus of testing is to make sure that your product is as smooth as possible when it’s released. Relying on crowdsourcing can lead to significant customer churn due to unresolved bugs. All of the marketing efforts it took to make users choose your product will be wasted if there are bugs whenever your release a new version of your product.

Technical issues: Crowdsourced testers are compensated if they find bugs or issues within your application. Generally, most testers are not as qualified as test engineers and cannot deduce the core root issues within your application. Hiring crowdsourced testers may lead to you overlooking the fundamental issues that are causing bugs. This will continue repeatedly until the core issues are resolved.

Confidentiality: One of the biggest drawbacks of crowdsourcing your testing is the breach and lack of confidentiality. When you crowdsource your testing, there’s no incentive for testers to be loyal to your brand. This can lead to the leakage of sensitive business information and other trade secrets. A competitor can offer one of your crowdsourced testers money in exchange for critical information. This can lead to the demise of your business.

Automate All the Things!

Lastly, there’s automation. Automation really means using test automation, AI or Machine Learning software to perform a task. If you believe what you read, then literally everything can be automated – especially “low skill” activities like data scrubbing, sending emails and software testing.

There are 2 challenges to successfully automating anything with these tools.

  1. Automation Tools don’t run themselves. Someone has to instruct or configure the tools. Even then, an incorrect or old instruction can cause a bucket load of False Positives. This might cause you to spend more time diagnosing and fixing your automation tool than just performing the task with a human in the first place. If you’re going to use Test Automation, you might want to consider that you’re writing more software to test your current software. Who’s going to watch the watcher?
  2. Website Testing is a “low skill” activity. I beg to disagree with this idea. Yes, Testers, doing what they are told and manually running a known set of regression tests for the 32nd time is a low skill activity that should be automated. But, that’s not a common problem and probably not your problem. Most website testing challenges aren’t known and aren’t covered by a test case that you know about ahead of time. Most of the defects discovered during website testing aren’t covered by a test case. Testers will seldom find these defects because they aren’t obvious. Test Engineers, however, will definitely find them! Quality and Test Engineering are definitely not “low skill” activities.

Automated testing provides several hurdles for business prior to even getting testing started.

Initial cost: The initial cost of using automated testing is very high. For automated testing to work properly for your products, it will have to be configured and tailored to your business operations. This configuration along with the staff needed to make this happen often costs more than the budget for testing. In large corporations this may be cost-effective, but for the average business this is very detrimental.

Maintenance: Automated testing isn’t a one-time service, it requires continuous upgrades and maintenance just like many parts of your business. The key difference in maintaining automated testing is that it will likely require additional personnel on top of your current payroll. The hardware, software and staff needed to maintain automated systems will easily add five figures to your current payroll each month.

Expertise: In-house automated testing will require the additional staff you hire to have technical backgrounds. Basic programming skills and knowledge will be required because scripts will need to be completely understood. The tools that are used for automated testing may have their own defects, so staff must be able to resolve that as well.

So, before you drink the flavored punch that say’s “automate all the things”, double check your goals and constraints. You might not have the time and budget to “automate all the things” and you probably won’t be happy with your first set of outcomes, either.

The Things You Really Want

What you really want with website testing services is confidence and speed. You’re at the end of a long journey building a new website and you’re not in the mood for a long, drawn out, testing phase just when you’re ready to launch you new “look”.

You’re probably not sure but suspect that there might be a few bugs or defects in your website. You’ve done your testing but still aren’t sure. You want to know that your website will be flawless for everyone that visits.

You’re also probably tired from all the hard work and concentration that it’s taken to get your website to this stage. You’re ready to be done and you’re not in the mood for a bunch of back-and-forth with a website testing company that just doesn’t understand where you are and what you want.

When we talk with you about your project, we’ll get a keen understanding of your risks and concerns and build a plan and proposal to complete our work quickly and efficiently so that you can move your website project forward and claim your new customers and prospects.

At TESTCo, we believe in honoring promises. We take the time to make sure our testing work focuses on and delivers the value you need to achieve your business goals. Here’s a page about our website and web app testing services.

We want to help you achieve your business and technology goals.

Automatic Software Testing | Automated Software Testing | Software Test Automation

Calculating the Maintenance Costs of Automatic Software Testing Suites

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Is maintaining automatic software testing* an investment, expense, or just a problem? You’ve paid a lot of money to automate software testing and all was working just fine,  but as time goes on and new features are added to your application, the automatic software testing suite is breaking more often and you’re getting frustrated.

Software Test Automation Tools are Changing Rapidly – Double Check

Before you jump off into a test automation rebuild project, it’s worthwhile to do a little bit of due diligence to make sure your platform and software test automation tool will continue to serve you into the future.

  • Your choices for software to automate your testing activities is growing and changing rapidly.  There are literally new software test automation tools announced every month. They tend to be born or created from a need to solve a unique test automation problem. Make sure your software test automation tool is synchronized with your technical needs and supports your technology platform.
  • Software test automation tools change versions and compatibility frequently. As new software technologies are built and release, software test automation tools change to accommodate those new technologies.  In some cases, these upgrades can cause havoc with the scripts you’ve already built for the previous version. How stable and “future proof” is your selected tool?
  • Software test automation tools also fail frequently as businesses. How can you tell if the company you purchase your tool from will be in business next year? There are many open source choices for software test automation but those tools have a risk as well. Will the open source community continue to be interested enough in that test automation tool to keep it working with the current changes in technology?

Maintaining Software Test Automation is Not Easy

  • You probably paid a lot of money to get your software test automation working properly but the return on your initial investment is fading as time goes by – surely that’s not how it is supposed to go.
  • Your software test automation suite worked just fine when it was originally built but today, it’s throwing more and more false errors – and that doesn’t help you achieve your business and technical goals.
  •  Your software development team is too busy writing new features to keep the test automation updated and, they aren’t really interested in working with those tools.
  • Your internal QA Team has trouble finding, selecting and keeping someone talented enough to maintain your software test automation suite – the learning curve is steep and maintaining code is much more challenging than just writing new code.
  • You’ve looked for outsourced help (again) but your software test automation maintenance project just isn’t quite big enough to interest the big offshore technology firms.

Push the Reset Button for Automatic Software Testing

  1. Build a business case – nothing complex – back of the napkin calculations should be sufficient. Gain a deeper understanding of your specific technology and business goals and how they relate to continuing to invest in software test automation. Once you are clear on your specific goals and expected returns, your choices will become much more distinct and easy to evaluate.
  2. Treat test automation false alerts as defects – just like you do with your application software. Use a defect tracker just like you do with your application software. Then, simply cross check application defects reported by your software test automation with the software test automation defects and automatically rule them as false and then use manual testing to verify. This won’t eliminate the time waiting problem but it will reduce it and stop the confidence erosion.
  3. Move your test automation engineer into the software development team. When your test automation work is aligned with the development project timeline and not the QA team timeline, your software test automation will be ready when the software is ready, not a few weeks later.
  4. Start building a software Test Automation Team. Hire a Jr Test Automation engineer to learn from your current Test Automation engineer. Not only is this a great strategy for succession, your software test automation suite will suffer fewer issues and grow quicker to match your software application.
  5. Find an outsourcing partner (not a”vendor”) to work with you over time to specifically meet your business and technical goals. Most outsourcing companies try to be as large and broad as possible to meet every need possible. A few outsourcing companies specialize in automatic software testing and test automation. We specialize so all of our talent will be perfectly suited to solving your software test automation maintenance problem.
^Most readers will dislike my use of the term, “automatic software testing suites”, in this post. The term is not accurate. “Automated software testing suites” is the accepted phrase used in the software testing world. Accepted or not, our research indicates that “automatic software testing” is used by a large number of folks as they search for information on the topic. Therefore, I’ve devoted this post to the folks who prefer “automatic” over “automated”. We do a great job for both. -JCH
Software Test Automation

Software Test Automation Case Study

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Journyx has customers worldwide and have been improving their products with software test automation for the past seven years. The company offers customers project, time and expense tracking software, and resource management software for forecasting projects, budget status, and employee time and availability.

Challenges/Pains

Before hiring TESTCo to manage software testing and develop best practices, Journyx was in a world of hurt. Early on, they used company staff and even some family members to bang on new software releases, but that didn’t work so well. This was about 15 years ago. “It’s difficult, repetitive work,” said Journyx CEO Curt Finch. “No one really likes it, and it’s not really a core competency.”

The company wasn’t able to hire more people for testing, but they were always under pressure to release new versions of their products. “We couldn’t get a handle on when our next release would show up and what level of quality it would be. We could say we’re going to ship this come hell or high water by May 1st, but we’d be in danger of shipping broken software.”

“Back then, customers hated us and wanted to shoot us,” said Finch.

Journyx’s director of product management, Meredith Zachritz, had to manage a lot of the chaos at the time. “In the early days, our developers were responsible for testing their own code,” she said. “There were no robust peer code reviews. It was very messy. We just about drove ourselves out of business.”

The company didn’t have an official product manager back then, and they didn’t have the budget to hire testing resources in-house. “I was spending more than 50% of my time on testing and related fire drills,” said Zachritz. “It affected customer retention, and we lost confidence in our product’s ability to handle customer needs.” When mobile apps came along, complexity increased, and it was even more difficult to keep up.

Download This Case Study (PDF)

 

Decision

The Journyx team eventually decided on outsourced testing, but they struggled with how to do it. Initially they hired contractors in India, but that failed. “We tried a couple of different firms,” said Zachritz. “It wasn’t apparent that they had QA expertise. If they did, the language barriers and time zone limitations were too difficult to overcome, and we couldn’t make it work. Our QA didn’t improve, and they didn’t understand what our goals were. They had no certifications or formal expertise, and no one was managing the entire project.”

Journyx ended up with nothing to show for their efforts – no test scripts, documentation or processes they could hand over to their internal development team. “We got what we paid for,” said Zachritz.

After that fiasco, Journyx hired a dedicated employee to be QA manager. They built up a set of test scripts – nothing automated – and some manual testing methods. “We had to train her,” said Zachritz. “She was only one person. When she was out, she wasn’t doing QA. And when she found a more attractive offer, she left. When you have someone in house, those are always issues.” That employee didn’t offer up any strategic guidance or best practice recommendations either.

Local, Accountable and Low-Cost Solution Helps Drive Revenue

Journyx eventually found TESTCo and solved everything in one fell swoop. They found a local company with the expertise to manage complex software testing and low-cost offshore testing labor. “What I like about TESTCo is that they’re an intermediary to different cultures,” said Finch. “At one point they switched testers from Romania to Ukraine, and we didn’t notice the change.”

“They’re here in Austin, and I can take them to lunch and hold them accountable or beg for forgiveness if we’ve messed something up on our end,” he continued. “We trust them, and the costs are very reasonable for what we get.”

Finch categorized the value of what TESTCo brings in terms of revenue, cost and risk. “TESTCo helps us understand exactly what we’re shipping,” said Finch. “We know customers will be happy with it right away, and our sales people have confidence in the software. That translates to increased sales.”

“The sales team is no longer afraid to demo stuff in presentations,” added Zachritz.

“Our costs are reduced because the testing talent is in another country where it’s less expensive to employ them,” continued Finch. “If I were to replace TESTCo with people here in the U.S., I’d have to spend about $5,000 to $10,000 more per month.”

As Journyx rolls out new product features and new software, they reduce risk by leveraging TESTCo resources. “For one thing, I have reliable, detailed insight into the status of everything,” said Finch. “With TESTCo we’re able to have a known level of quality in a consistent, predictable way.”

Journyx can also examine potential costs and complexities when considering the addition of new software features. “We can ask TESTCo how much it’s going to cost to add something to the testing,” said Finch. “That’s a double-check on the complexity question. It’s like a reverse estimation tool.”

Virtual In-House Team

Zachritz meets with TESTCo for bi-weekly progress calls and has daily email status updates from the TESTCo team. “We coordinate as though TESTCo is an in-house team,” she said. “The TESTCo QA process is run for me. I don’t have to do anything but review status and answer questions. I contact them with adjustments. They come to me with best practices and next steps guidance. All of that is very powerful for me.”

She now spends about 5% of her time on testing chores (as opposed to the 50% she mentioned earlier). “Now I can spend my time on planning and execution, and avoid all that fire fighting,” said Zachritz.

With TESTCo, Journyx can also scale up and scale back resources depending on their release cycles. “We can really manage it closely in terms of what we need at a given time,” said Zachritz. “And it doesn’t hurt us when someone takes a two-week vacation during testing. The TESTCo replacements are seamless.”

Software Test Automation Moving Forward

The TESTCo solution allows Journyx to automate software testing processes, as well. The goal is to reduce regression testing cycle times and get new releases out in a shorter amount of time.

Initially, Journyx didn’t tackle software test automation when starting out with TESTCo, but they eventually decided to move ahead with it in order to further enhance productivity and free up resources. “We tried to implement an automation suite earlier,” said Zachritz, “but coverage was bad, the platform was difficult to maintain, it was open source, and it wasn’t possible to upgrade it.”

TESTCo recommended changing out the platform. The two companies went through a new platform evaluation process, and found a new system that fit Journyx’s budget.

“We ended up automating the most time consuming manual tests and regression test cycles,” said Zachritz. “That speeds up our release cycle and in effect drives sales.”

 The process helps them improve code quality, close the gaps between fixes and generally move faster as an organization. “Our support teams can now work on bug reports and patching custom solutions for customers,” she continued. “They can also work on the videos they create to help people configure their solutions. Software test automation allows us to work on more strategic projects because of the quality of releases.”

“All of it has transformed our business,” said Zachritz. “It’s really incredible how it works.”

Download This Case Study (PDF)
Read more about TESTCo’s software test automation services.
automate software testing

Automate Software Testing to Deliver Quality Complex Apps

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Software and mobile apps are getting more complex every day. Users want more and more capabilities to complete their work quickly and enjoy their lives more fully. As software and mobile apps add features, they grow and require more time to fully test.  If you automate software testing properly, better software and happier customers will result.

Increasing the number of customers that want to use your software is fantastic! Even better, they are actively requesting more features – that means they intend to stick around rather than bail out and use another app.

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But, this growth in features comes with some distinct challenges – here are just a few related to your software and mobile app.

  1. Your software/app becomes more “crowded” with features, links and buttons – simplicity is usually a strong market driver and this complexity has to be managed carefully.  How will you increase features and still maintain a usable application?
  2. Your customers need support for a wider variety of operating systems, browsers, devices.  Again, this a great news but a big challenge to your development team as each operating system, browser and device has “little quirks” that are unique to it.  How will you know?
  3. Your software testing team becomes overloaded.  Not only because of the added features but also because of the number of operating systems, browser and devices that need to be tested.  How can all of the possible combinations be tested?
  4. Your developers begin “refactoring” the code to improve maintainability.  What? At some point in the life cycle of a software application, the developers will begin to recognize repeating patterns and behaviors within the app.  To make it easier and less time-consuming to maintain and improve in the future, the developers will begin replacing several unique code items with a single common function.  This is great and definitely improves both the software application and time to maintain, but it can also break things.  This “refactoring” happens all the time and is the leading cause of functions “breaking” when they worked previously.  Only detailed regression testing will find when this happens.  Automating software testing helps the regression testing go faster and at a lower cost.

Intelligently Automate Software Testing

What does this mean? Very simply, it means that you will need to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your software testing team.  Here are some tips to help you improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your software testing team.

  1. Make sure your requirements and test cases are TIGHT!  Take a little extra time to make sure that you have accurate requirements with specific test cases.  This prevents much uncertainty when building and executing your software testing plan.
  2. Manually test the newest features.  New features are subject to change.  Older features tend to be more static.  Manually test new features until they stabilize enough to invest in test automation.
  3. Use Software Test Automation to handle the majority of your regression testing for older, more stable features.  A best practice is to treat your software test automation effort just like you would a software development effort.  You will reduce risk and improve your likelihood of achieving your goals if you take this approach. Tips on maintaining software automation testing suites.
  4. Hire a Software Test Automation expert to guide you through selecting the best software test automation tool set and strategy.  The learning curve for test automation is steep and expensive.  A proven, experienced expert can help you quickly select the best tools, strategy and plan to achieve your software quality and customer satisfaction goals.
Download Software Test Automation Case Study

 

Mistakes to Avoid when you Automate Software Testing

It’s easy to get in a mess when you automate software testing.  Here are some of the problems we’ve seen when we were asked to fix a “broken” software test automation system.

  1. Pick the Wrong Software Test Automation Tool – selecting the primary software test automation tool (or platform) is challenging.  You’ll need to compare your current technology stack AND future application/technical growth plans with the very long list currently available tools.  Hint – don’t automatically select the one your QA Team has used before – it might not be the best for your situation.
  2. Just Start Writing Scripts – Test Automation Scripts are the fuel that is fed to the test automation engine when you begin to automation software testing.  If you fail to use test cases and a test case management system, you run the risk of building an un-maintainable system to automate your software testing.

At TESTCo, we have been helping companies automate software testing since 2003.  Let us help you pick the best path to achieve your customer satisfaction and software development goals.

Benefits of Automated Software Testing

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Automated testing of software has become one of the most popular ways of increasing the efficiency of testing today. Most typically, automated software testing eliminates the human hand in test execution steps. Automation testing is completed using technology instead of people to test and verify the software product and functionality.  Automated software testing by TESTCo can provide this and more.

Automated Software Testing Services

A critical aspect of deploying a test automation product is to develop a realistic plan for implementation and to create a business case that establishes the expectations and structure of the project. Test automation also provides challenges to less experienced test organizations, due to the requirement for a separate development life cycle to produce a well-structured, easily maintainable and reusable process.
TESTCo has extensive experience in implementing test automation in general. Having worked with customers on countless projects, we know how to help you maximize the value of the tool you choose. This, combined with our experience in building a high quality software testing automation framework, provides you with an expert partner to make your project a success.

What Are The Benefits of Automated Software Testing?

Automation saves execution, which results in more time for analysis, design and development, and can result in higher quality software.  Automated software testing can also be part of a Web site test.  In addition:

  • Implementing automated software testing and automated functional testing will reduce the number of required test cycles and involve less people to execute test cycles. Long term, this will reduce the total costs of testing.
  • Automated software testing enhances the repeatability, maintainability, automatic reporting and the ability to run unattended regression (repeated testing) tests.
  • Apart from test execution, other areas of the testing process may be automated, such as administrative tasks and any routine tasks in preparation.

What do you do if you’re ready to explore automated software testing? Contact TESTCo, of course.