| Almost all webmasters (or at least "quite a lot of | | | | under a certain browser, operating system and within |
| webmasters") have heard about the significance of | | | | some testing scenario. Website testing scenarios must |
| website testing before the production. Having | | | | describe all user actions that can be performed on the |
| developed a website or a web application, most | | | | site: reading of different descriptions, using onsite |
| authors want to publish it immediately and see how | | | | search, submitting orders, updating the pages, etc. |
| people like it. If they ignore prior website testing, the | | | | They must also take into account all user mistakes |
| project may appear unprepared for real Internet | | | | that can occur: missing credit card info, bad email |
| activity and reveal awful performance. The lack of | | | | address, etc. This is essential for correct website |
| proper testing (due to laziness or inexperience of the | | | | testing results, since each new action makes server |
| webmaster) leads to bad user impression, what is | | | | applications generate a new page and affects the |
| deadly for the whole project. | | | | overall website performance. |
| Website testing is of supreme importance. It makes | | | | Some advanced website testing utilities, for example |
| you sure that every visitor (including those with | | | | the aforesaid Testing Master, allow basing test |
| 28.8kbps modem connection - their number is still big | | | | scenarios on your actual behavior. Testing Master has |
| enough to be neglected) will see something on the | | | | an integrated recorder that memorizes all actions as |
| screen within the first 10-15 seconds. In other case, | | | | you browse the website in Internet Explorer and |
| they will most likely close the window before the site | | | | provides a quick way to define your website testing |
| loads. This is a common problem for all new projects: | | | | scenario. During the operation, it gathers statistics on |
| even if the website showed good performance at the | | | | load time and speed and in the end returns explicit |
| stage of development, it can appear almost unusable | | | | information on what can be improved. Like other utilities |
| under real Internet loads. Website testing is needed to | | | | of the same class, it allows performing a so-called |
| find and optimize weak places, or otherwise a crowd | | | | stress load website testing, which shows breaking |
| of concurrent visitors can slow the site down to full | | | | points and bottlenecks of the site. This kind of website |
| unusability. | | | | testing gives an opportunity to predict the future |
| The good news is that today there are website testing | | | | performance, when the website will gain popularity and |
| services and utilities that allow testing website behavior | | | | acknowledgement. |
| in different conditions. Some of them (such as | | | | Website testing utilities vary in feature sets and user |
| web-version of the "tracert" Windows service) provide | | | | interfaces. Some of them can give only final reports, |
| online test of availability and load time of the website | | | | showing statistical information for each page, each |
| from different places around the world. And some of | | | | virtual user, sizes of uploaded and downloaded data, |
| them (for instance, Testing Master by Novosoft) can | | | | etc. Other programs provide real-time reports and |
| perform thorough website testing that reveals all weak | | | | graphs, what enables the user to stop the test if the |
| places of the website and shows where you should | | | | problem is identified quickly. In any case, they are |
| tune it. Using such utilities is much less expensive than | | | | helpful for web developers of all levels, allowing them |
| hiring a team of testers, and the results they give are | | | | to improve performance of the website and prepare it |
| far more accurate as against manual website testing. | | | | for high traffic strain. Do remember: this is all about |
| The concept of most website testing utilities is very | | | | user impression. The better your site works, the more |
| much the same. A program creates multiple virtual | | | | positive image it leaves - and the faster it will grow to |
| users that produce huge loads on server applications. | | | | an authoritative, trustworthy and profit-making |
| Each virtual user emulates a real visitor who works | | | | resource. |