Testing and delivery of your site
To make sure your new website meets your aims and objectives, testing of various kinds needs to take place throughout its construction, delivery and deployment.
The three major aspects to test during the development of the site and immediately prior to launch are:
- usability
- content
- technical solutions.
The testing of these three pivotal aspects of the site should be critical points in the development schedule and incorporated into the contract with the web developer. The results should determine whether or not you sign-off on the relevant milestone.
Usability testing
Usability testing assesses how easy the target audience finds the site to use, understand and navigate through. This sounds a simple enough exercise to undertake but it encompasses testing users' reactions to the content, each design element and function on the site (e.g. colours, fonts, buttons, arrows) and assessing how well they complement each other.
Some issues to consider for usability testing:
- The best results will normally be obtained by using an independent consultant who specialises in testing websites. Your team and the web developer will most likely be too intimately involved in the site to see its flaws, and perhaps not experienced enough to ask the right questions of users employed in the testing exercise.
- Ideally, the testing organisation will be engaged by your organisation, not by your web developer. This removes any questions about the independence of the test and the report.
- Make sure the testing organisation produces a comprehensive report detailing the problem areas of the site and specifying the criteria by which to judge whether the fault has been rectified by the web developer.
- If an outside consultant is beyond your budget, usability testing can be conducted effectively by engaging members of the website’s target audience in individual usability testing sessions.
- The most effective way to carry out usability testing is simply to observe users first-hand as they use the website. See what they like, what works for them, what confuses them and if and where they get ‘lost’ in the site.
Testing before and during building
Before signing-off on the design of the site with the web developers test the design with a representative group of the target audience. As far as practical the test group should use computers, browsers and connections that match the minimum configuration agreed to with the developer at the outset of the development of the site.
The difficulty here is with timing. At the point where the first of the formative usability tests is conducted, the site will not have been completed and therefore the user may not be able to assess properly all key design aspects. An unfairly harsh assessment may result. It is therefore important to construct the first usability test such that it only tests what is possible at that stage. The web developer should be enlisted to provide as ‘real’ an environment as possible for this testing and to state before the testing where the limitations lie.
Usability testing at the end
Usability testing also needs to be done at the end of the development phase when the entire site is complete but before it is launched. Those testing the site must be able to access the complete, fully working site using computers, browsers and connections that match the minimum configuration agreed with the developer at the outset of the development process.
The usability test should involve a representative group of the target audience. It should be rigorous, examining all aspects of usability as identified earlier in this section. Click on the link to download this sample usability questionnaire into your word processor: sample usability questionnaire template (RTF format, size 32 KB).
Content testing
Hopefully while your site is being built, your staff have been writing and assembling the site’s content including text, photos, tables, maps, graphs etc.
Here is a sample checklist that you might like to adopt when checking the quality of your website's content before it goes live: Content Verification Checklist (RTF format, size 48 KB).
Technical testing
Technical testing is as important as testing the content and usability of the site. Technical testing is required when milestones in the construction have been reached and before the site is launched to ensure that the site functions as intended. While it is something that your developer will be responsible for, it is important that you understand the basics of what they are doing at this stage.
As with usability testing, it is important that technical testing is carried out on a range of computers, browsers and connections that reflect the real life usage patterns of your target audience. For example if you expect that a large proportion of your users will be restricted to dial-up internet connections then you need to ensure that pages and documents on your site are relatively small files so that download times are not too slow.
Here is a sample checklist that you might like to adopt for checking-off the various technical aspects of your website as they pass technical testing. Click on the link to download this document into your word processor: Technical Solution Checklist Template (RTF format, size 44 KB)
Delivery and deployment
Once the website has been constructed and the testing completed the site is ready for hand-over to your organisation.
This final stage of the development process involves the web developer:
- conducting training in using the maintenance software
- installing any third-party software or templates that your staff will use to maintain the site
- providing the site documentation – e.g. navigation maps, indexes of files and the files themselves
- returning hard copy and soft copy materials used during the development of the website
- closing the test site and project management email groups.