What is Web Testing? A Simple (and Complete) Guide

Websites are not just repositories of information. They help businesses welcome potential users, capture interest, and generate sales. If you care about your website, want to stand out among competitors, or simply just deliver top-notch UX, web testing is essential.

In this article, we’ll learn:

• The concept of website testing
• Benefits of web testing
• Web testing best practices
• Recommended tools to test websites most efficiently.

Let's dive in!

What is web testing?

Web testing is the process of checking a website to see if its functionality, security, and performance align with expectations. The goal of web testing is to ensure that no bugs slip into the production environment, thus maintaining web quality.

Example of web testing

We’ll use Tripadvisor, a leading travel review site, as an example.

Receiving ~99M visitors per month, it can't afford a bug.

This is a screenshot of the homepage of Tripadvisor.

A typical list of test cases to run for this page includes the following:

1. Check if the search functionality is returning helpful and relevant results.
2. Check if the Hotels, Things to Do, Restaurants, etc., tabs affect the search functionality, and if the on-screen texts are adjusted accordingly.
3. Check the “Start a trip with AI” feature.
4. Check if the travel destination suggestions align with the user’s activity on the site.

And that is just the Homepage.

A complex website with interconnected functionality can have hundreds of scenarios to tested. QA teams usually adopt automation testing to speed up the process.

Approaches to web testing

There are primarily two approaches to web testing:

1. Manual web testing is when testers act as real users, navigating the website, and interacting with its features to identify bugs or usability problems.
2. Automated web testing is when testers write an automation script, either by coding on an automation framework or leveraging automation testing tools, to perform the interactions for them.
   

The difference? With manual testing, you can actually test the site, while automated testing only checks the site.

This means manual testers can explore the website with a greater degree of freedom, allowing them to discover new and more complex bugs, while automation testers can only verify bugs they are programmed to identify.

Benefits of web testing

• Thorough web testing helps reduce defects by around 30% compared to less rigorous methods. It improves reliability across user scenarios. 

• A strong focus on user experience pays off: 88% of users won’t revisit a site that contains noticeable bugs or glitches.

• Web testing contributes to polished user experiences and boosts confidence in the product.

Challenges of web testing

• A major hurdle in testing is the vast variety of browser and device combinations, which makes ensuring consistent behavior difficult.
• Cross-browser compatibility remains one of the most frequent pain points for testers. Different versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge may render functionality inconsistently. 

Types of web testing

• Functional testing checks core features like forms, links, and login workflows.

• UI testing examines layout, interaction, and server response behavior.

• Compatibility testing ensures consistent display and functionality across devices, browsers, and operating systems.

• Performance testing assesses load capability and scalability for peak traffic scenarios.

The web testing process

Web testing starts with requirement analysis. This is essentially a session for stakeholders to align the testing objectives. What should we test? How do we go about testing it? Manually or with automation?

If the team decides to test it manually, they can just start interacting with the website and record the results in a spreadsheet.

If the team decides to automate tests, they can start writing automation scripts with a web test automation framework or an automation testing tool for web to assist them.

If any bug are found, the team documents the bug and reports back to the dev team for immediate troubleshooting.

Top automation testing frameworks for websites

To work with an automation framework requires knowledge and experience in coding. Plus, you need to continuously update the scripts upon code changes. Some of the most common frameworks are:

1. Selenium

Selenium helps you send “commands” to the browser and interact with on-page elements by locating their selectors (XPath, CSS selectors, etc.).

Selenium relies on a client-server architecture. When you write scripts, they communicate with the WebDriver server, which then sends commands to the browser driver. After that, those drivers translate the commands into actions.

Here is an example of a Selenium script:

Here's a brief example of an automation test case in Selenium:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import time

# Initialize the Chrome driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()

try:
    # Open the login page
    driver.get("https://example.com/login")
    
    # Find username and password fields and enter credentials
    username_field = driver.find_element(By.ID, "username")
    password_field = driver.find_element(By.ID, "password")
    
    username_field.send_keys("my_username")
    password_field.send_keys("my_password")
    
    # Submit the form
    login_button = driver.find_element(By.ID, "login-button")
    login_button.click()
    
    # Optional: Wait for page to load
    time.sleep(3)
    
    # Verify login success (simple example: check URL or page text)
    if "dashboard" in driver.current_url.lower():
        print("Login successful!")
    else:
        print("Login failed or incorrect credentials.")

finally:
    # Close the browser
    driver.quit()

This code:

• Opens a login page.
• Fills in username and password fields.
• Clicks the login button.
• Waits briefly, then checks if the dashboard loaded.
• Closes the browser at the end.

📚 Read More: Top 7 Selenium Alternatives You Should Know

Similar to Selenium, Cypress also helps you automate on-screen actions on the browser. However, it takes a unique approach: Cypress runs tests directly within the browser, rather than remotely controlling it like Selenium.

This translates to faster tests and more efficient execution since all interactions of Cypress scripts align with real-time events on the web. However, Selenium offers a grid that allows you to run tests in parallel, while Cypress requires a paid orchestrator in the cloud or with a third-party product.

3. Playwright

A good alternative to Cypress, Playwright also comes with easy-to-use methods. Playwright allows you to handle multiple tabs while testing, unlocking parallel test execution. Check out the Playwright documentation.

Playwright also has Trace Viewer, a GUI tool that helps you explore recorded Playwright traces after the script has run. Traces are a great way to debug your tests when they fail on CI, which can be a huge issue with Cypress.

Web testing best practices

1. Carry out cross-browser compatibility testing.
2. Define and select key parameters for usability tests.
3. Execute performance tests under various conditions.
4. Apply tests to all elements, including third-party and extensions of the web app.
5. Ensure load tests are incrementally performed.
6. Incorporate exploratory testing into the software development lifecycle.
7. Keep URL strings unalterable in security tests.
8. Involve the development team throughout the entire testing process.

📚 Read More: 10 automated web testing best practices