16 Major Challenges Faced By Testers While Testing a Web Application

Testing a web application can be a very hectic task. With the number of devices and browsers increasing day by day, apart from testing the functionality and performance, proper testing needs to be conducted to ensure that there is no impact on the overall user experience of the website. In this article, we shall discuss 16 challenges often faced by testers while testing a web application.

Understanding practical hurdles in test execution is crucial for developing proficient automation strategies. We conducted a social media survey, asking about their primary challenges in test execution. The results reflect a widespread concern in the testing community, emphasizing the need for strategic approaches to address test flakiness issues.

Cross Browser Compatibility

Earlier, when internet explorer was the only browser available, just unit testing would have done the job. But, currently, with hundreds of browsers along with their different versions available for desktop and mobile, cross-browser compatibility is a common issue. It is ideal for a tester to use a cloud testing platform like Lambdatest for testing whether the application is compatible across different browsers.

Responsiveness

The one thing to look out for while testing is whether the application fits properly in the device resolution. A tester must check if there are any horizontal scrolling, alignment or padding issues, and sizes of font and buttons in different devices.

It’s of utmost importance that your images are responsive to different resolutions. In this case use LT Browser a dev-friendly browser for mobile view debugging on which you can see the mobile view of your website on Android and iOS resolutions.

Cross-Device Compatibility

Nowadays, people mostly use mobile devices to access websites. Although there are a limited number of devices in iOS, the count increases tenfold when it comes to Android. It is important for a tester to target the devices where the application is meant to run and start testing in each of them.

Integration Testing

The rating of an application depends on its usability as well as functionality. Integration testing is a must thing to carry out at the user’s end to check whether the application is reliable, all the critical functionalities work properly as well as there is no significant impact on performance after merging new features.

Security

If the application has features like online transaction and payment gateways, testing should be executed to ensure that there are no chance of any fraudulent activities and local storage of payment-related data in the device.

Performance Testing

Often a web application gets too slow or crashes when the internet traffic increases all of a sudden. Performance testing should be carried out to ensure that there is no impact on the speed of performing an activity using the application.

Application Getting Slow

It does not matter what device is used to access the application, due to poor network coverage or low configuration of processor or physical memory an application may run slower or take an infinite time to load a page. Testing should be conducted to ensure that it is properly optimized to run properly under any condition.

Usability Testing

Interactive and dynamic web applications are always popular among users. Proper unit testing should be carried out across devices from the user’s perspective to ensure there are no such issues that may impact the usability of the application.

Entry and Exit Points

There are stages when a user will need to navigate out from the application to a third-party website and redirect from another website or gateway to the application. It is a real challenge to test whether this feature works properly.

Checking the Standards and Compliance

W3C has stated several standards and guidelines that every web application must comply to. To ensure proper site ranking in the search engine index, the code should be tested properly to check whether the website follows those standards and guidelines.

Firewalls

Often a web application is blocked by certain firewalls or port. This may be because of the security certificate or something else. Testing should be conducted to ensure that it behaves properly across all firewalls.

Accessibility Testing

W3C has mentioned several guidelines stated in Section 508 and WCAG which requires a website to be accessible by all people, especially people with disabilities. Testing should be conducted to ensure that users with hearing or sight disabilities can access the website with the use of screen-reader and other devices.

Project Deadline

Testing is often not conducted properly when a project is coming nearer to the deadline. It should be planned beforehand to ensure that there is a proper time for testing the functionality, performance, and usability of the application before it is deployed in production.

User Experience

Users love an application not only based on its functionality. But also on how great it is to use. Testers must check the overall design and user experience of the application to ensure that the user gets attracted and engaged while using it.

Web Service Requests

All the latest web applications are integrated with web service layers like SOAP/JSON/XML, etc. The requests sent by those web services contain certain parameter values that need to be tested. This testing is particularly important if your web application has a Google Map API integrated with it.

User Input Validation

This is an important part often skipped during testing. Web applications may often feature forms to be filled up by users. Testing should be conducted to ensure that there are proper validation rules and in case of wrong input, the user is warned and further proceeding with the form submission is blocked until the input is corrected.

That’s all from our side. Always remember to test the above-mentioned facts carefully before your website is launched. Do let us know if you have faced any other challenges while testing your web application.

Now start your free web testing on the world’s fastest testing platform.

Shubham Saxena

Shubham Saxena was a Product Growth specialist at LambdaTest and was also a tech blogger.

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