Web Application Testing

What is Web Testing?

Web app testing, or website testing, is a software testing exercise that involves reviewing your web application or website for potential bugs before going live.

With the boom in technologies, web applications are evolving swiftly. With this rapid pace, there comes a sense of responsibility to deliver maximum number of features but with a minimum number of bugs. Bugs can affect your business badly and can cause big losses. The earlier you find bugs, the lesser your loss. If bugs reach production stage, the cost of fixing them can be very high.

If you have a budding business and have just launched your web application, then your testing team should follow our 7-step guide to web application testing to have negligible bug leakage in production.

Your quality assurance team needs to make sure that your application is functional as well as stable to handle high loads at unusual times. So, let’s look at the 7 pillars of web application testing.

1. Functional Testing

It is black-box testing in which the application is tested based on specifications provided by stakeholders. Different business use cases are validated by providing different inputs. We provide inputs considering boundary value analysis and equivalence class.

Functional testing doesn’t include execution of code. It is made sure that the web application adheres to all the functional requirements and specifications.

In Functional Testing, we verify that our web application does all those functions which it is supposed to perform as per specifications. We analyze the results of test cases based on different inputs and then bugs are raised if needed.

It is very important to think from the user’s perspective while testing the system and executing all those test cases which your users can execute in a real-time environment. Thinking out-of-the-box test cases during functional testing helps in stabilizing your web application. It also helps to identify different errors such as null pointer exceptions in code.

Ad-hoc testing such as clicking on all links embedded into a page, and assuring all of them points to the correct web page are part of functional testing. Additionally, cookies are tested while functional testing is done. Some of the test cases include logging out of the application once cookies are cleared from your browser.

Functional scenarios can be automated using automated testing tools for web applications OR web application testing tools that are available in the industry such as Selenium, Cypress, Puppeteer, etc. Most of the tools are open source and require knowledge of at least one programming language to start with.

As a tester, we always aspire for maximum automation coverage which would help to reduce bugs in the application. It is very tedious to test each and everything manually. Hence, automated testing of web applications can be our savior.

2. Usability Testing

It is generally carried by a set of people that are similar to the target customer base. Generally, external testers are hired to achieve this testing. They verify the navigation of the website using various links in the application. They also take care of the content being displayed on the website including grammar checks and verbiage.

The testers also verify that the application is very easy to use and understand. This way they can come with early feedback and suggestions which can help businesses to correct their flaws at an earlier stage. Different tools can be used to automate usability testing use cases such as Chalkmark and Clicktale.

3. Interface Testing

Interface testing includes testing of all the three main interfaces in a web application – database, web server, and application. We make sure that correct requests are sent to the database server from our web application and correct data is displayed on the UI. While processing requests, if there are any errors, then they should not be shown to the users for security reasons and should only be displayed to the administrators.

We also make sure that the web server should respond to web requests with minimum delay and without any denial. Additionally, we verify the CPU usage of the database servers at maximum usage so that unexpected errors can be avoided. Web application testers also have to verify when database connections are not properly established due to internet issues, or any client-side errors. In such case, we have to display proper error messages to users.

Ranorex can be used to automate interface testing and it can make sure that all the components are in sync.

4. Database Testing

The database is the heart of your application. It is the data bed, and it is the sole responsibility of testers to verify it so that unexpected bugs can be eliminated. We need to make sure that there are no errors while executing queries in the database. Data integrity should be maintained while executing create, alter, and delete queries in it.

We also verify the response time of queries, and we should raise bugs in case the response time is above the expected response time. The data retrieved from the database should be correctly displayed on the web application. The database should always be tested under high load. Java language can be used for setting up the database connections and verifying data on UI using selenium.

5. Compatibility Testing

Here we verify our application in different browsers and in different operating systems. Some websites display differently in different browsers and the testing team should make sure that the display is consistent across different browsers. Need to make sure that JavaScript and AJAX are working fine in all browsers. If the website supports mobile devices, then the application should also work fine on mobile browsers.

The rendering of web elements changes with different operating systems. Make sure that your website should fine in all operating systems such as Linux, Windows, and Mac. Docker can be used with automating framework to bundle dependencies so that automated tests can be executed on all OS and in all browsers.

6. Performance Testing

It is very important to test the performance of our application before releasing it to real customers. We verify the response time of our APIs under different application loads. It is made sure that the response times of APIs are optimized under different connection speeds.

Also, the application should behave normally under high loads. The breakpoint should be calculated by applying stress to the application. We need to make sure that whenever a crash occurs due to a high load, then our application should recover automatically in minimum time.

LoadRunner and JMeter should be used for web application performance testing.

7. Security Testing

As part of web application security testing, we verify that data is secure and is not compromised. Unauthorized access to different pages should be tested according to different user roles. Additionally, we verify that restricted files are not downloaded. The session should automatically expire after prolonged user inactivity. Different tools can be used for web application penetration testing such as ZAP OWASP which follows OWASP principles.

Conclusion

We wish the above blog must have helped you in knowing the basics of web application testing. If you still have questions and want to know more, then contact us to know more. Get free estimation from our team to implement web application testing.