7. Testing

Testing is part of the development stage, but it's so important that it warrants its own stage. The secret to testing is to get to it early in the web design process.

Produce the challenging parts of the website in a secluded code tool like CodePen, which allows you to test it on multiple devices with ease. If you are using a tricky piece of functionality like a navigation area, then you can save so much effort and stress but get to it early in the web design process. Web development is tricky, and even when you have built hundreds of commercial websites, it just takes 1 line of code to render the website useless in certain browsers.

BrowserStack - A great web design tool

A fabulous tool we also use is BrowserStack, which allows testing websites on more than 3000 devices. Although a web design firm in Aberdeen, Browserstack allows for an astonishing collection of testing environments that come in very handy when trying to get to the bottom of a bug.

You may think “What on earth would you need to test in that many devices, most people just have a laptop, iPhone and maybe iPad?” Many do, but our websites are built to serve a vast array of users, not just people with the latest and greatest new browsing devices. Even a software update on an iPhone from version 15.3 to 16.1 can mean that your site will break. So when you put together Samsung mobile devices, Google Pixel phones, many different laptops, Windows, Apple OSX and hundreds of different tablets, there are a lot of things that can go wrong.

Emulators

Emulators which allow you to test on different projected devices are good tools to test quickly but, unfortunately, are not 100% accurate. They can be used for initial testing, mainly differences in sizing browser windows, but to truly test, you need to test on a native device. That can be done in a tool like the mentioned BrowserStack. Some purists stand by only testing on actual physical real, worked devices. There is an argument for that. At Media Surgery, we have around 19 different physical devices we regularly test on. That includes different laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Then, we used BrowserStack to test further. This covers 98% of cases.

Web Performance

Another often overlooked practice is web performance. This is how the actual website performs in speed-focused tests. Does the website load quickly on an older device? Are there any big jumps in content when viewing different parts of the site?

Web performance is a part of the Google ranking algorithm; if your website loads slowly, then it can be detrimental to search engine rankings. At Media Surgery, we take performance very seriously, and it's baked into our process from the off.

A little trick you can deploy is to turn your phone onto a 3g network and browse the site. It can be quite an eye-opener if you have a slow-loading asset-laden site. We have all been there, and it's very frustrating when web pages don't load as quickly as we expect them to. At Media Surgery, testing is essential to building a modern-day website. We try and cover over 98% of visits to the websites we build.