How to Test Your Beta Website

So your website project has cleared the Development phase and you now have access to your new website for UAT Testing. Congratulations, but what does that mean? How are you going to test it? How will you know the testing is over? If you have any of these questions don't worry, we've written this blog especially for you to help demystify the process.

What types of things should you test?

There are three different types of testing:

1. Regression testing (issues),
2. Non-Functional Testing (performance) and
3. Functional testing (code, validation, accessibility).

For the purposes of client testing we focus exclusively on Regression testing because Inorbital will use our reports and leverage our tools for Non-Functional and Functional testing.

Regression testing

Typical areas of focus for testing include a list of features, functionality, search and results, languages, editing and uploading, content, images, user accounts and roles, 3rd party integrations.
The effectiveness of testing relies heavily on the test plan. A good test plan starts with use cases that identify user goals. We recommend putting together a spreadsheet that identifies the Goal, Success Criterion, Behaviour, Status.

For example:
Goal: Online Form Submission
Success Criterion (expected outcome): Notification of form submission on website or redirect once form has been submitted; Autoresponder email sent to user confirming form received; Notification sent to web admin with form details; Form information stored in the form application
Behaviour: Form submits in the form application, but email notification not received.
Status: Fail

 

How to track your issues?

JIRA issue tracker:  

First thing you will need to do is to familiarize yourself with how to use JIRA (our web based issue tracking software).
You will receive and email invitation from Atlassian to set up your JIRA account. Once you have set up your account and log in you will see your project board listed in the dropdown menu for the "Projects" item on the main menu. Click on the project to view your board. From here you will be able to submit, track issues that come up during testing.



The board is arranged into the following columns: Backlog, Selected for Development, In Progress, Review, Done. By default, all new issues get added to the backlog column. From there we go through them and when we have approved them for development, we move them into the “Selected Development” column and assign them to a team member.
For beta testing it is important that issues are added to JIRA as soon as they come up so that they can be resolved within the testing timeframe. You can track the progress of individual issues by seeing them move from column to column and directly communicating back and forth issue details within the comments section. You can use the @ symbol to directly send a message to a member of our team within the project description. For clarity, we ask that our clients do not move issues themselves unless it is to the “done” column once an issue has been completed.

How to Create Issues?

To create a new issue:
1) click on the "create" button in the top menu OR where it says "+ Create Issue" in the first column of the JIRA board.
2) Once you have clicked to create an issue, name the issue in the "summary". Please note: the summary is just the title of the issue. Please dont add a lot of text of use this field to add the description of the issue.
3) Click create
4) The issue will then be added to the bottom of first column on the board. If you clicked the "+ Create Issue" button you may need to click the button again and press enter to see the issue you just created. Once you see the issue on the board, click into it and add a description in the "Description" editor that appears below the title. 

How to Communicate your Issues?

What information is important when submitting an issue:
The more detailed you are when describing your issue, the faster it will get selected for development. Be sure identify the steps to recreate the issue. Include an example or description of expected behaviour. Links to pages in question, screenshots and video are excellent tools to use when submitting an issue. Also including your browser information, operating system and what device you were using can help us get a clear idea of what steps needed to be taken to troubleshoot and resolve.

Here is an example of a well documented issue in JIRA:

In Conclusion

The testing phase is extremely important. Taking the time to understand what to communicate and how to do it can save valuable time and ensure that your launch goes smoothly. Happy testing!