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Website QA testing: strategies for insourcing & outsourcing

Website QA testing is essential to ensure that the digital experience you want to create for your site visitors is the same experience they’re actually having. 

That’s why you need top-notch website QA testing to help you find the issues that are causing silent churn and abandonment. 

In this post, we explore which types of websites need QA testing, what methods of testing should be utilized, and the top strategies for insourcing and outsourcing this critical work.

What websites need QA testing

Which companies need ongoing QA testing for their websites? 

The vast majority of enterprises and medium-sized businesses need weekly or monthly testing, while small businesses can handle this quarterly.

These types of websites should be tested weekly as well as with each new release:

High traffic websites

The higher the traffic, the higher the stakes. 

 QA testing is key for companies with large amounts of traffic

With 500,000 or a few million monthly website visitors, you have more revenue to lose and to gain with your website. 

Unfortunately, companies with large amounts of traffic might forget about the importance of QA in favor of marketing tests to increase conversions. But bugs and errors that marketers might miss could cause much larger conversion leaks than lackluster copy. 

Ecommerce websites

QA testing can make or break your eCommerce revenue.

Website QA testing is essential for ecommerce companies

An ecommerce company of any size and with any amount of traffic should prioritize QA. 

Web applications

For flawless app experiences, web applications require ongoing testing

Small web applications that function as marketing channels instead of products must also be tested. Examples include loan payoff calculators, quote generators, design suites, and paint color testing studios. 

Mobile-first websites

However, most companies still aren’t taking mobile optimization seriously enough. For companies that do and that build their sites with a mobile-first mentality, ongoing mobile site testing is a critical next step. 

Methods for website testing

If a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 40% of website users will bounce. QA testers can discover bad load times via performance testing. 

Testers can also find currency or payment method errors with payment testing and examples of lazy, unimpressive translation through localization testing.

  • Functional testing 
  • Usability testing 
  • Payments testing 
  • Regression testing 
  • Mobile testing 
  • Localization testing 
  • Exploratory testing 
  • Location testing 
  • Performance testing 

Strategies for insourcing and outsourcing website QA testing

How can you apply all of these testing methods to your website to ensure an amazing experience for both new visitors and long-time customers?

You’ll need skilled resources on board. 

Fully in-house QA team

You can build out your entire QA team in house. Roles and responsibilities that you’ll need to cover include QA management, automated QA, and both senior and junior QA testers who can take on various levels of complexity. 

Keep in mind that when building an in-house team, it’s very difficult to cover all device types, locations, and cultures.

You might also struggle with slow releases, as there will be some waiting for results from QA. Distributing your team across different geographical time zones can help with this somewhat, as QA testers can test while engineers are sleeping. 

QA manager working with freelancers or vendors

Most companies need to have some inhouse QA resources and some that are outsourced. 

The benefit here is that you can have an inhouse QA manager who works closely with the engineering team, intimately knows your app, and sets goals for testing cycles. 

Networked testing

Tester skills, experience, selection, consistency, flexibility, and location are important attributes of networked testing

The inhouse QA manager has one point of contact with the networked testing company and doesn’t have to manage the QA testers who are assigned to the project. 

The vendor uses a flexible model to provide the right amount of resources as needed. For example, a client might need 2 testers per week and then 20 during an important release. 

Networked testing is often utilized for device coverage, localization testing, usability testing, functional testing, and exploratory testing. 

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a popular software testing solution, and it can work for website QA testing as well. 

Networked testing vs. crowdsourced testing vs. outsourced testing vs. in-house testing

We’ve all been on a bad website before. We’ve all left a bad website. You don’t want to give your customers or site visitors any less than what you expect and demand.

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