How Should You Select a Website Testing Company?
(Very Quickly & Carefully)
On This Page
The way you select the right website testing company can be the difference between disaster and delight. Why? Because website testing is different than “normal” software testing. Learn the difference and you will save time, money and embarrassment.
If you are wondering if testing your website might be a wise investment, we’ve written an article that will help you learn more about the perils and benefits of website testing.
On the other hand, if you’re already convinced of the value of website testing, and are exploring your options, read on.
The biggest challenge you will face is the cost. For most website testing projects, there is just too much work to be done for too little budget. This is a very common situation and requires a smart, highly efficient website testing company, not one with the lowest hourly rates.
Why a (Good) Website Testing Company Has to be Really Smart
Here is a laundry list of issues we’ve seen as we’ve learned how to be the website testing company that you can count on.
- There are too many different browsers, devices & operating systems to be able to test every one. How do you decide which ones to test?
- The various technical platforms and design patterns used for websites are increasing in complexity and becoming more difficult to test adequately. Which parts need functional testing and which need browser testing?
- The digital assets used to build websites (images, advertisements, links, content, videos, etc.) are rapidly increasing in complexity and becoming more difficult to test effectively each day. How do you effectively test something that comes from another site or server?
- There’s never enough time to test everything. How do you decide what to test and how deeply to test it?
Why Your Website Testing Goals Are Really Important – To You and To Us!
When you first talk with TESTCo, one of the “hard” questions we’ll ask you is “What are your goals?”. Here’s why that’s a really valuable question for both of us to understand.
- Your goals help us understand what is “REALLY IMPORTANT”, “Sort of Important” and “nah, not so worried about that”.
- Website testing can cover a wide variety of different testing types (functional, performance, cross browser, cross device, mobile rendering, page load, etc) and not every type of website testing is important to each project. We need to know what’s important to you!
- Almost every website testing project has a budget – the maximum amount of time and money that you’re willing to spend to accomplish your goals. Your limited time & money are Constraints. Knowing your constraints as well as your goals helps us recommend the best course of action to achieve your goals.
- When we combine your goals and constraints, we’ll create a couple website testing strategies to evaluate and make a recommendation for the best strategy for your project. We’ll share these strategies with you and explain why we selected the one we recommended. You’ll have a clear picture, even before we start, of how we’re going to achieve your goals.
Price Vs Cost for a Website Testing Company
Cheaper prices (rates) don’t always result in lower costs for you and that’s especially true when evaluating website testing companies.
Low prices tend to correlate with higher risk, repeat work, missed deadlines, blown budgets, and unhappy customers. When prices are low, the project almost always takes longer and is less valuable than desired.
Higher prices tend to correlate with low risk, accurate deliverables, on-time deliveries, budget compliance and happy, satisfied clients. When prices are higher, the project is almost always delivered on time and on budget with a very high perceived value.
But, this isn’t absolute and you need to be comfortable with your informed decision about what is best for you and your project.
The primary risks that are sought, found and eliminated on most website testing projects are
A – Keep the current customers
B – Don’t lose any attracted prospects
Your job will be to determine if the total cost you pay is worth the risk and hassle you want to avoid. The Sweet Spot!
You’re looking for a website testing company so you can reduce your risk, right?
Beware of Low Price Strategies
Here are some of the most common strategies used to reduce prices. Note how these strategies increase your risk.
1 – Beginner and Junior testers are cheaper than experienced Test Engineers
2 – The website testing company has little or no overhead – offices, testing tools, computer equipment, mobile device library or high-speed network connections.
3 – Individual testers are cheaper than a QA Team with a Test Engineer and QA Manager.
4 – The website testing company is new and willing to operate at a loss to grow.
In the end, the Price you choose to pay will have an impact on the overall cost of your project. Lower prices tend to have more risk and higher prices have a great certainty of success.
If you know your risk tolerance then you will have an advantage when selecting a website testing company based on their ability to achieve your goals within your budget rather than the lowest price vendor.
Additional reasons to avoid low price strategy vendors include:
- Scams: Often, if you are quoted a price that is too good to be true, you should probably avoid it. There are many companies that fall prey to QA testing scams in which they send money for an invoice to a “company” and never hear back. If a potential vendor doesn’t have an address, reputable websites and previous clients, you should avoid working with them. A good way to check the quality of a vendor is to ask for references and ask them about what they did for their business. If you’re ever in doubt in regards to the legitimacy of a vendor, it’s best to simply avoid working with them.
- Recurring or extra fees: Many QA vendors who quote a low price have very limited services for the quote they provide your business. If you work with any QA team, it’s likely that there will be problems that come up and some QA vendors can charge you for those. It’s important when talking about pricing to ask the kind of coverage that a vendor provides. A vendor that provides many services for a single quote might be much cheaper than one who charges for every single transaction that occurs.
Four Warning Signs that You’re About to Select
the Wrong Website Testing Company
If you happen to see some of these early warning signs, you should be on the alert that this may not be the website testing company you’re really looking for.
1. Very Few Questions Asked. Website testing covers a lot of ground – functional testing, usability testing, cross browser testing just to name a few of the most common areas. Your needs for your website are unique. The only way to understand your project and your needs is to ask a lot of questions. You want detailed and specific help for your unique project, right?
The vendor should take some time to get to know your business needs and how they can incorporate their services. Lack of asking educated and detailed questions is an immediate red flag for any testing provider. A qualified testing provider will do their due diligence before embarking on any project with your business.
2. A Boilerplate Proposal. You’ve seen this before. You’re given a slick PPT and the first 15 pages are boilerplate bragging about the website testing company. Your information, the data you need to make a smart decision about your project, is plugged into more boilerplate in the last two or three pages. Isn’t this proposal supposed to be about your project? These kind of boilerplate proposals can be a template that these testing providers use for every customer.
This tells a lot about their services because they have generic presentations and will likely offer generic results. If a company gives a presentation that’s not focused on your business, you should evaluate their credentials more. Vendors should be customer-centric in their approach to QA testing; a customer-focused vendor will prioritize your business’ needs and finish projects in a timely manner.
3. No Specific Actions or Plan to Achieve Your Goal. If you knew how to do a website testing project, you’d already have it done, right? You haven’t so you’re depending on an expert to help you build a plan to achieve your website testing and business goals. Your proposal should have a detailed plan and explanation of how they will help you achieve your goal. If this is missing, what are you really paying for?
A vendor should explicitly state the time and amount of work it will take to manifest your project and meet your business goals. The work done should be reflected accurately on the billing you receive. Vendors who don’t discuss the specific actions it takes to finish your project leave a grey area in which you can get charged for in unseen circumstances. If you’re ever in doubt as to how much work a vendor has done, ask them to provide you their most recent report so you can see for yourself. Using tools like scorecards and reports are a great way to see the progress made on a project.
4. Low Rates but Uncertain Timeline. Low rates don’t always equal low costs. Low rates can indicate weak engineering talent or uncertain project management. The real cost of your website testing project is calculated as the hourly rate times the project duration. A low rate and long or uncertain project timeline is a warning sign that your project may not be successful or delivered within budget.
Reiterations to projects can be extremely costly both financially and with the time delays for the project. Missing deadlines will push teams back and this continues onto future deadlines because of all the catch-up work. A vendor should provide daily reports of the actions done, so even if you’re falling behind you have a great idea in regards to the progress the team is making.
These warning signs don’t always indicate or predict failure. But, if you see two or more of them in your search for a website testing company, you might want to pause and do a little more research to prevent a terrible project or worse, a failure.
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