9 Testing Strategies to Keep Your Users Happy

In the world of ever-evolving digital products, ensuring a seamless user experience is paramount. As products evolve, testing grows increasingly critical to preventing catastrophic app failures. Yet it’s not just about any testing; it’s about smart, efficient, and comprehensive testing strategies that anticipate user needs, preempt potential issues, and guarantee product excellence.

In this guide, we’ll uncover nine transformative testing strategies that will not only help in identifying and rectifying flaws but also play a pivotal role in keeping your users contented and loyal. Whether you’re a developer keen on refining your product, a product manager looking for best practices, or an executive aiming for market excellence, these strategies will serve as your blueprint. Welcome to the world where top-tier testing meets unparalleled user satisfaction.

Automated Testing

Automated testing is the process of validating software automatically, continuously, and efficiently, to ensure your production environment remains stable, secure, and performant.

This differs from your typical QA cycle in that you only have to write a test once to benefit from it for years to come. In this, automated testing is an evolutionary process. Rather than devoting hours to clicking and scrolling, you spend that time writing tests that click and scroll, then you run those tests as you write new code.

Once you write a test for something, you can sleep easy knowing that particular path is bug free. Find a new bug? Write a new test. Rather than your software deprecating over time, instead it appreciates in value.

This saves time and money compared to manual testing, as a headless browser can run multiple tests simultaneously and provide detailed reports on their outcome. They can also run far more frequently than your QA team.

Imagine an e-commerce website that needs to ensure its checkout process works flawlessly. A headless browser can simulate users adding items to their cart, entering payment information, and completing transactions. A single test can run across various device and browser configurations, ensuring compatibility and functionality.

How do I create automated tests?

Most automated tests rely on running headless browsers to parallel your users’ environment. These browsers can run within your CI/CD environment, or they can be remotely accessed via API connections to facilitate scaling and cost control.

You’ll typically write your tests using libraries like Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium. These libraries provide robust SDKs for automating tasks across a wide range of platforms, versions, and environments.

Because tests are typically written in JavaScript, there’s a low barrier to entry for onboarding devs. It’s also worth noting this very same stack can be used for a wide range of browser automation tasks beyond testing, such as scraping and templated image generation.

What can I do with automated testing?

Automated testing can be broken down into the following disciplines:

1. Unit testing: Testing individual components or functions of an application to ensure they work correctly in isolation. Backend tests are often accomplished without headless browsers, but as frontends mature, it’s increasingly common to rely on browser automation to run these tests effectively.

2. Integration testing: Testing the interaction between different components of an application to ensure they work together as expected.

3. Functional testing: Testing the application’s functionality against its requirements to ensure it meets the needs of the end-users.

4. Regression testing: Re-running previously passed tests after code changes to ensure that existing functionality still works as expected.

5. Performance testing: Evaluating the responsiveness, scalability, and stability of an application under different workload conditions.

6. Load testing: Assessing the application’s ability to handle a specific number of users or requests simultaneously without compromising performance. Often referred to as stress testing.

7. Usability testing: Evaluating the user interface and overall user experience of an application to ensure it is intuitive and easy to use. Accessibility testing focuses on testing functionality for users with disabilities, such as those to rely on screen-readers.

8. Security testing: Many companies will create a unique test suite to minimize exposure to hostile agents. One common method to run dependency analysis on deploy, to ensure that upstream issues don’t make it to production.

9. Compatibility testing: Verifying that an application works as expected across different devices, browsers, and operating systems. Most libraries have an easy way to run the same tests across configurations.

How can BrowserCat help with automated testing?

BrowserCat provides a fast, stable, and scalable browser swarm, with single-line integration with Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, and compatible libraries. Our goal is to streamline testing processes, reduce development time, and ensure top-notch web application quality.

We make it easy to build browser automations of any kind, with custom endpoints for common use-cases like image and pdf generation, data scraping, and more.