If you don’t have these on your website QA checklist yet, add them now.
By MJ Gabriel, Account Executive
Website development has to be one of the most tedious tasks in the world. After designing a site map, building it in your website builder of choice, writing the content, tweaking for SEO, and sourcing the imagery, all you want to do is hit “publish” and kick that thing out the door. But you can’t miss the crucial step of quality assurance. The last set of critical eyes on your new website combs for errors your user could stumble upon while visiting.
There are a lot of moving pieces in QA-ing, so let’s cover the three most important quality assurance tests for your website.
Go Hunting for Broken Links
Click on every link on your website. Every last one. Even if you think you know where it goes. Even if you just clicked on it the other day. Ensure that every external and internal link goes to where you intended. Links are the easiest thing to get lost or broken throughout the website design process and the easiest way to make a bad impression on a new user. Luckily, it’s also the easiest to fix.
Doublecheck Layout and Display
Does your website display the way you intended? Spacing can appear one way in design mode but look a different way on the user’s end. Go page by page and look for spacing issues, odd line breaks, photos that are too big or too small, etc. You should look for these things on more than one browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) to see if there are differences between them. You should also monitor these things on different devices too. Speaking of which…
Don’t Forget Mobile
Your site is most likely to break on a mobile display. The most well-prepared layout can still get upended on a thin screen. Graphics can appear wonky, and spacing can get too tight or too wide in weird places. Load times might be slower, and features might not work as intended. Find where this occurs and modify your site accordingly.
What’s worse than missing any of these steps? Not completing them semi-regularly, especially if you have a site that gets frequently updated with new content. Whether it’s a short-term open house website or an evergreen corporate landing page, quality assurance is critical to user experience and reputation management.
Rasor is an award-winning marketing agency in Cincinnati, delivering web design and maintenance to industries including healthcare, municipal and infrastructure and B2B/B2C. Email us at info@gorasor.com or call 513-793-1234 to learn more.