Articles
[18/12/2009] How to test my website?
A good website that has all the elements working in good condition are user friendly and meets all the requirements of your company ensures that it attracts a lot of visitors and leaves them satisfied. A satisfied visitor leads to a growth in your business. Your web design-London based company will tell you that and make sure all the right elements are included. On the contrary, a website with bugs, takes ages to load, has broken links will put off any visitor and not want them to come back again. This could harm your business. This is why you need to regularly test our website to ensure that everything is in working order.There are many things that need to be checked to ensure a user friendly site. Web pages look different on different operating systems and browsers. A Macintosh operating system will treat your web page differently than a Windows operating system. Colors, fonts and graphics are all dependant on your computer’s hardware and software. A browser such as Netscape navigator loads a page differently than an Internet Explorer based on the rules set by the web browser programmer. Hence what is seen by one user on one particular computer with a particular browser varies from another. If you have included a lot of images in your web pages, then they might take a while to load. Hence it is necessary to test the look and feel of your website on different computers and operating systems to ensure that there is no particular information that does not match your expectations.
A visitor is first directed to the homepage of your website. Therefore this page is the one that will leave a lasting impression. Make sure that all information is updated. This page is used to direct the visitor to other pages. So all the links should be functioning perfectly. Any break in the links and the visitors will not be able to find what they came to look for. Navigation must be made easy. The website must be accessible to people from all walks of life. Hence even a blind or deaf person must be able to make the most out of your website. Prepare your website to cater to the needs of the hearing and visually impaired by ensuring that audio and video content is in place and the text and colors are just right so as to be easily meet the requirements. In order to make the web page load faster despite the content being heavy because of an audio or video file, allow an option by means of which the visitors can choose to hear or view it only if they wish to. Visitors to your website might want to print some content for their use. Make sure that when it is printed, the content is displayed correctly.
One simple way to test any changes that you wish to incorporate into your website is to compare the original with the changed version and see which one better fits your requirement. You can also do a complete overhaul of your website and test to see which one is more users friendly and brings in more traffic. Testing again and again will enable you to come to options that are best suited to increase sales and profits.
