Now that you are familiar with the most common kinds of web solutions, let’s see what types and stages of web testing your project requires to ensure top performance and high user satisfaction rates.
Unit testing
This web testing method involves testing the individual components of your web solution—units of code. It’s the process of checking functionality in separate parts of the app or website (program modules, objects, classes, functions, that kind of thing). This is what makes unit tests different from system testing (when the entire system or subsystem is tested as a whole) and integration testing that verifies correct behavior in interaction between modules. The main benefit of testing a small piece of code independently is that certain bugs become easier to spot and fix.
Integration testing
The goal of integration testing is to monitor how different modules work together when combined and tested as a group. Integration testing serves as an evaluation of the compliance of the systems and components of your web solution with its specified functional requirements.
There are four different approaches you can use when planning integration testing:
- Big Bang. The development process assumes that the modules and system components are interconnected. They’re combined and tested together.
- Bottom-Up. This one focuses on low-level systems at first, both together and separately. In plain English, you start performing checks from the lower levels, reaching the most critical elements.
- Top-Down. In contrast to the previous technique, this one is aimed at testing all the high-level modules first, gradually going down to the very bottom.
- Hybrid/Sandwich. This is a mish-mash of the previous two methods. The modules on top are tested separately, while the lower ones are integrated and validated with the high-level modules.
Functional testing
Functional testing in web testing is the process of evaluating the behavior of your web solution to see if all the features function as expected. For the product to work correctly, all the processes must show the correct behavior specified in the requirements: from access restrictions during authorization to the correct logout procedure.
Smoke testing
Smoke testing is a quick check-up test method that enables us to reveal anything from harmless bugs to severe system failures that can put the release of your web solution at risk. They are designed for simple checks, so they’re easy to run frequently. If a request returns a correct response, then there are no critical issues with the system.
Sanity testing
Sanity check is a very brief yet in-depth test of certain functionality to ensure that the system is working properly. Always test the features after debugging, even if you know for sure that the problem is fixed. Because you never know what will pop up next. Sanity testing is often performed not only before a full regression test cycle but after a smoke test or after fixing a minor bug in the system to check a slight change in functionality.
Mobile application testing vs. Web application testing
At first glance, mobile and web app testing might look somewhat similar. But once you delve deeper into the matter, you’ll start seeing major differences in goals and approaches.
Mobile app testing evaluates the quality of the app’s performance on various devices and operating systems. This type of testing focuses on functionality, behavior analysis (including support for device-specific functionality such as touchpad controls), QoS compliance, usability, security, and privacy.
Web app testing, on the other hand, aims to see how your app works across different browsers. Unlike a mobile application, it typically allows access to the underlying server functionality through a mobile thin client. Thus, in addition to analyzing the aforementioned, web app testing should also consider connectivity and interoperability.
When it comes to UI testing, mobile application testing should cover older phone models as well as smart mobile clients, multimedia content and graphics, and features such as gesture recognition. In turn, UI testing for web applications should focus on thin web clients, downloadable clients, and browser support for multimedia content and graphics.
There are also certain differences in usability testing. Testing mobile applications involves validating gestures, content, interfaces, and typical user activities such as how they interact with a camera, GPS module, or fingerprint sensor. Web application testing focuses on validating GUI content and user flows.