Software testing is performed to evaluate a software program, checking for flaws and if the software functions as expected, producing expected results, prior to implementing it. While it is important for any software, it is critical for
your website, as it represents you online. No web development is complete without testing.Ecommerce website development and testing involves identifying missing requirements in the ecommerce site as compared to the actual customer requirements. Testers use specific manual or automated tools to execute components of the software and asses a few of its
properties. You could say that the solution crafted by dedicated developers is questioned by testers to evaluate it – to the satisfaction of the
stakeholders. All bugs and defects detected are fixed, and only then the software is launched. This helps to ensure that the customer gets a quality product, boosting customer satisfaction and building trust.
Why Software Testing is Important
- Complex apps are likely to have errors; system testing helps in the early detection of all issues in the code so that they can be resolved before product delivery.
- Through stringent testing and passing QA standards, you can ensure exceptional product quality before delivering to the customer. Product quality is a critical KPI.
- Continuous testing of a product through its development cycle brings transparency into the process, offering visibility into the strengths and weaknesses of the product. Eventually, a tried and tested product is implemented at the
customer end.
- By thoroughly testing a product, you can ensure that it is capable of withstanding cyber-attacks, data theft, and malicious code injections. You can ensure that sensitive data is not breached, and protect the end-users and customers.
- With proper testing, you can identify how well the website will scale when your business grows and workloads increase – traffic, transactions, the volume of data, and more; you can even see the maximum load it will handle. This will
help you see how many users it can handle simultaneously etc.
- Tracing and fixing issues after product launch can be messy and expensive. However, doing it before implementation is easier, and far less expensive.
Now that we have understood the Importance of testing, let’s move on to what kind of tests are performed.
What Are the Different Levels of Testing
There are four levels of testing in software; only when the product passes these, can the development team be sure of its successful functioning. Every stage is important, and tests parts of the software with matching complexity. By slowly
increasing the number of code elements in the testing process, we can identify errors in the system at an early stage, preventing product failure. The four stages ensure a systematic testing process and the identification of all possible
errors.
Unit Testing
This is the first level of testing where individual units of the software are tested for usability. The smallest component of software that performs one consistent function is called a unit. It may be represented by a class, software process,
method, or individual function, based on the development method. The need for software testing unit-wise can be understood from the fact that this method helps fortify the code and in identifying errors early so that you can cut costs
and save time.
Integration Testing
The QA team combine units to test them together at this level. This Software testing technique enables the identification of bugs when units in the system interact. The testing can be:
- Top-down Integration Testing, where the engineers test from the highest unit levels to the lowest ones, in the order of flow of control or structure; stubs are used in place of units that aren’t ready yet.
- Bottom-up Integration Testing where the testing begins with the lowest level units, moving up towards the units at the highest levels; it’s ideal if all units are ready .
Both methods have their pros and cons, and factors like how complex and expensive the app is, will determine the method to be used.
System Testing
At this level, the QA engineers test a fully integrated system in totality. All units are integrated now and checked if the product functions as expected, meeting all the requirements. The testers are not aware of the internal paths or
code structure, or details of implementation; hence it’s called black-box type testing. The QA team relies om specs, and verifies if the system complies with the preset requirements.
Acceptance Testing
This is the last testing level executed before releasing the product, and it’s conducted so that the outcome can be assessed to check if the system fulfils the criteria of acceptance. The criteria include conditions
that allow you to verify if the product has all the functionality required to fulfil user demands.
Two types of acceptance testing are:
- Alpha Testing – performed by Software testing and development teams to evaluate the product from the POV of the end-user, using both white box and black box testing methods. Here the testers see the system code and test the input and
output.
- Beta Testing – after alpha testing is complete, the product is used by a select audience of actual users. They use the software and give their feedback regarding its performance, which helps the development team recognize and fix bugs.
Both types of testing have different strategies, goals, and processes, but help to ensure a successful product launch.
Types of Bugs in Software Testing
Regardless of the type of software, bugs are of three categories: Nature, Priority, and Severity.
By Nature:
Bugs have varying natures in how they impact the overall software functions. We’ll look at the most common bugs you’re likely to encounter:
- Performance bugs are those that slow down the app, consume more resources, create instability and provide delayed responses. The most tell-tale sign is slow loading speed or response time. These bugs are caught in the performance testing
phase.
- Security bugs expose user data to risk and damage the organization’s reputation, and hence are the most problematic bugs of all. They can expose the software to cyber threats, leaving them vulnerable to financial loss. The most common
security bugs are encryption and logical errors and XSS vulnerabilities. Developers need to focus especially hard on detecting potential security bugs.
- Unit-level bugs – they are not very harmful, are pretty common, and are usually basic errors in calculation or logic. A small portion of the code is tested as a whole to detect unit-level bugs so that they can be fixed.
- Functional bugs cause specific features of the software to malfunction; their severity depends on the feature they impact. It could be the whole software, or a small part, like a CTA button not functioning. Testers identify these bugs
and then determine their severity.
- Usability bugs can be devastating for software as they can render the software unusable even. Users being unable to log in, inefficient layouts, or any other thing that make it hard or impossible for the user to efficiently interact
with the software.
- Syntax errors are among the most common bugs; they prevent proper compilation of the app. It’s usually caused by a wrong or missing character from the source code. It is detected during compiling and is analyzed and resolved.
- Compatibility errors cause the software to become incompatible with the OS or hardware, and it can’t be detected in the initial testing. Testers conduct compatibility testing to ensure that the product can function on the popular OS
and hardware.
- Logic bugs create errors in output or cause the software to crash, and are found frequently. Mostly, it’s coding errors that lead to this, often causing the app to get stuck in a perpetual loop. This is broken via outside interruption.
Priority-Based Software Bugs
The bugs are analyzed according to the effect they have on the business, and priority levels are assigned, stating in how much time the bug must be fixed. There are four types of priority bugs
- Low-priority defects: issues with button or text alignment, spelling etc., which spoil the aesthetics of the application.
- Medium-priority defects: do not cause much harm to the product and may vary as per user, device, or configuration.
- High-priority defects: these defects can render specific features of the app unusable, and must be fixed before further development.
- Urgent Defects: any bug that needs to be dealt with immediately – within 24 hours of detection – is urgent. These bugs can impact user experience and damage brand image.
Software Bugs By Severity
Here bugs are categorized according to the technical effect it has on the app
- Low Severity Bugs: these don’t have a big impact on the app’s functioning, and can be easily resolved
- Medium Severity Bugs: these impact the software functionality, but not in a huge way; they must be fixed to deliver better UX.
- High Severity Bugs: - these bugs alter the behavior of the software, often leaving it unusable, and causing damage to it
- Critical Bugs: these cause the most damage, impacting the entire app’s functioning. It even prevents further testing on the app till fixed
Top 5 Tools in Software Testing
We have seen why software testing is important, and what kind of bugs testing can discover. There are various tools that have differing testing techniques, used by testers in the website development process
1. Selenium
This is one of the most popular open-source automated testing tools globally. It is highly scalable and ideal for large organizations and enterprises in industries where security is important, like medical, banking,
and insurance. Selenium facilitates the viewing of real-time changes, making testing more accurate and flexible. It can be used across almost all popular OS and browsers currently in use, and also can be used to test in popular programming
languages like Ruby, Python, Java, C#, PHP, etc.
2. Telerik Test Studio
This automated testing tool offers performance, UI, and load testing for web and mobile apps, and supports JavaScript, Ruby, AJAX, PHP, HTML5, C#, etc. Both Selenium and Telerik offer record and playback
feature that enables test scheduling for further automation of the process.
3. Katalon Studio
This comprehensive automation solution offers support for web and mobile app development, facilitating smooth deployment and quick results. Thanks to its robust and stable
integration capability, testers get further interoperability and versatility to perform API testing. Its workflows can be tailored, and it has a dual-editor UI, eliminating several hurdles of UI test automation. It can be integrated
with Slack, JIRA, Git, and other testing automation tools, and can be used by newbie testers too.
4. Lambda Test
This is one of the best automated testing tools of 2022, thanks to its capability of running automated Selenium scripts on scalable cloud networks. It’s a cross-platform testing tool that enables testers to do live interactive testing on over 2000 web browser ecosystems and concurrent automated screenshot testing on 25 combinations. It’s the most robust testing tool available. Its inbuilt Selenium grid enables
Selenium scripts to be debugged, and reports to be extracted. The testing can be executed quickly as automation can be done without coding, and it has numerous third-party integration capabilities.
5. Kobiton
This is an outstanding automated tool for testing of IoT and mobile. It offers automated functionality, performance, compatibility, and visual tests with scriptless, AI-driven approaches and open-source, script-based tooling. It is ideal
for testers who want solutions that are quick, simple, and smooth, and allows the code to be tested on actual devices with their IDE directly – making it hands-on and enabling error resolution accurately and efficiently.
FAQs
1. What is the most important thing in software testing?
Knowing the type of devices users are likely to access the app or website from is essential for a tester. Optimizing the application becomes critical as there are innumerable devices available in the market.
2. What are the goals of software testing?
These are the main goals:
- Detecting defects that may have crept in during the development stage
- Prevention of defects
- To be confident and provide information about the quality level
- To ensure that the final outcome fulfils the needs of the user
3. What is quality in software testing?
Quality means conforming to the standards, expectations, and requirements of the customer or end-user. A quality control system is configured to ensure that these requirements are met, helping to attain or boost quality.
4. What is the difference between bug, error and defect?
Coding mistakes by programmers are errors; errors detected while doing unit testing are defects; errors detected during the testing phase are bugs. Errors discovered by the user, are failures.
5. What are the main limitations of software testing?
- You can’t test for every condition
- It can’t discover missing or unknown things; you can only write tests to detect known issues
- It doesn’t give information regarding the underlying reasons for the errors.
