Enter automated software testing. While nothing can replace good human testers, broad test coverage requires some degree of software automation for it to be economically feasible. Automated testing tools can provide a huge workforce multiplier and do a very good job complimenting human testers. Every change to your website no matter how small requires thorough testing to ensure that nothing else was affected. This becomes very time consuming very quickly due to the large number of possible cases to test. A strategy whereby tests are automated using software becomes an economic necessity.

There are two classes of automated testing tools. The first kind, functional and regression testing tools, helps to make sure that the website behaves as it should: for example if a customer clicks on button X, page Y is displayed without errors. Functional and regression testing tools are able to automate a large number of scenarios to ensure that your website works as intended. The second type, load testing tools gauge how well your website performs when subjected to a large stress, such as a large number of simultaneous users. I will be discussing load testing in a separate article.

I will now give you an overview of the basic characteristics of functional testing. Before you can begin any kind of functional test automation you will need to identify the test scenarios you wish to automate. Once this is done, you will need to generate test scripts that cover these scenarios.

A functional testing tool will typically record user interactions with a website. As you perform various operations on your website or application, the tool records every step. When you finish recording, it generates an automated script from your interactions with your website. Alternatively you could use the tool to construct the script by hand. Typically testers tend to do a combination of the two. They will use the recorder to generate the basic framework of their scripts and then tweak the scripts by hand to incorporate special cases.

Scripts can be graphical and/or text based in nature. A good functional testing tool does not require users to have a programming background. Users not proficient in programming will work predominantly with graphical scripts. In most tools graphical scripts will typically show all interactions in a tree structure and users can edit any node of the tree to modify the script. Some users however, who have programming backgrounds may wish to program their scripts. These users will typically work with a text script written in a standard language such as JavaScript or VBScript.

Once you have generated your script you will need to insert checks in your scripts to test if your website is functioning correctly. Such checks are usually called checkpoints. A checkpoint verifies that values of a property obtained when testing the website match expected values. Checkpoints enable you to set the criteria for comparing expected values with obtained values. The expected value of a property is derived from recording interactions with the web site. It is viewed and modified from checkpoints. The current value is retrieved during replay (i.e. during the execution of the test case).

There are many different kinds of checkpoints. A page checkpoint verifies the source of a page or frame as well as its statistical properties. You can check for broken links, verify link URLs, image sources, the hierarchy of HTML tags or even the entire HTML source of the Web page or frame. You can also set thresholds for the loading time of a page. A text checkpoint verifies that a given text is displayed or is not displayed in a specified area on a web page. A web object checkpoint verifies the properties of a web object e.g. the value of an HTML INPUT field. A database checkpoint verifies the contents of a database used by your website.

When you replay a test script, the testing tool will open the recorded application and perform the recorded steps in the same sequence they were specified in the script. As it replays the script it will also run through all the checkpoints you have inserted into the script. In addition, you can test your application’s behavior with varying data inputs. For example you can try to submit a page after entering different values in the edit box of a web page. At the end of the replay a detailed report is typically be generated.

Functional test automation allows you to automate the repetitive testing of a large number of scenarios across your website. Functional testing tools are an important weapon in your development arsenal whose use provides a huge productivity gain and allows for small testing groups to accomplish significantly more work. There is a very strong economic case for the use of Functional Testing Tools as part of the development and deployment cycle of a website.

The first method is to make sure the typography of your content is suitable. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text.

Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Be it an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease.

Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors. Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn’t load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the crème de la crème of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.

Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about that.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

Every individual would definitely want their website to look good, if not, to the best they can. Here are a few things we could look out for when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.

Color Schemes and Themes.

When designing, always choose matching colors. An example of a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as purple and yellow. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look more professional.

Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization / etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme, such as machinery.

Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing.

Finally, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the pictures must not be too large in terms of size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s needs.

So, planning is something we should always do, before attempting something.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.