You can’t build something great the first time. It takes multiple iterations to build anything that will last, be it an engine or a website. That’s why web application testing is so important.
Testing your website thoroughly helps you catch mistakes before they impact user experience and create a better website as a result.
This article will walk you through what web application testing is, why it’s a necessity in web development, and how to implement it in your web app.
What is Web Application Testing, and Why is It Important?
Web application testing is the process of scanning your web application or website for potential bugs or issues. During this process, you can find and eliminate cybersecurity weaknesses, bugs, or underoptimized elements of the checkout process, as well as other website elements that can impact user experience.
Why is web app testing important? Displaying a perfect, bug-free website to the users creates a base layer of trustworthiness. If you see that the website works poorly, you can’t but think about what else this company is trying to cut corners on.
Proper web testing also ensures a high level of customer experience, which contributes to overall trust and sales. Research shows that 32% of users would walk away after one bad experience with a brand.
Benefits of Web App or Site Testing

Web app testing is the standard procedure in web application development, and it has quite a few important reasons behind it.
Testing improves performance. Proper testing reduces errors and may increase website speed. This contributes to a professional, trustworthy image and helps your performance in search engines as well.
It also improves the functionality of the website. Web app testing ensures the website operates as intended and provides users with a seamless experience.
Testing also lowers business expenses. Reducing inefficiencies may lead to lower server space and broadband needs. Catching mistakes before they make it to the live version of the website also reduces the cost of fixing them.
As discussed above, testing improves user experience. When a web app is properly tested, users won’t have problems browsing your site on any device. This improves both engagement metrics like time spent on site and sales figures.
Types of Web App or Website Testing
Web apps are complex things, and you have to test a lot before you can be sure the app is functioning as intended. There are seven main areas you have to test.
Functional Web Testing

The first thing you need to check is whether your web application functions as intended. This includes checking different processes on the site, like navigation, data submission, and checkout.
For navigation, you have to test whether buttons and links work and send the user to the right page. You should also test whether page URLs are displayed correctly in in-app navigation.
Data collection in web apps is typically a form. You should test how that form sends data, verify that it appears in the right place on your database, and check form validation.
For checkout, pay a lot of attention to payment processing.
Web Interface Testing
Start with testing your API. Use compatibility, contrast, and integration testing to make sure API performs well under different scenarios.
Test your server and database connections. The easiest way to do that is to use UDL files.
Make sure you run tests with different loads to confirm your interfaces remain operational during traffic spikes.
Web Usability Testing
Usability testing would focus on how the structure and layout of the navigation system serve the end user in terms of ease of access.
This type of testing also goes through the whole web app and checks whether the layout, visual elements, and text help the user get the information they’re looking for from the site. If the layout is confusing or some elements reduce readability, you should flag that as a possible issue.
Crawlability Testing
Crawlability is the measure of how well search engine bots can discover content on your site. This determines how fast your new pages or content updates make it to Google’s index and search engine result pages.
You can test for crawlability with a web scraper tool like Screaming Frog. When you’re choosing a tool, make sure it has a JavaScript rendering function, otherwise, it won’t be able to check the web app.
Check your website for common issues that may prevent proper crawling, such as incorrect use of canonical tags, duplicate content, broken links, or meta tag problems, all of which can be identified with the SE Ranking website crawler. Also, make sure robots.txt isn’t blocking pages you want to get crawled and check the sitemap's correctness.
Web Performance Testing
You want to learn two main things during performance testing: how your web app performs under poor user conditions like a slow internet connection or an outdated browser and how it performs under a load.
You can find the first one with basic tools like Chrome’s Inspect tool. You can choose the slow internet preset in the Network tab and run a performance test.
For the second part, use a specialized tool. Something like the Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool can mimic different activity levels on the web app to see server response quality.
Online Security Testing

Breaches of cybersecurity cost an estimated $8 trillion worldwide, and suffering a breach results not only in a loss of money but also in a loss of trust in your business. So, security testing is a very important step in the overall web app testing.
Start with testing the source code for common vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, or cross-site request forgery. You can repeat the test dynamically with your web app in staging.
If you have the budget to spare, hire a professional for penetration testing. This type of cybersecurity testing has an expert stage an attack on your site to find exploits and insecurities.
Test for Compatibility
Compatibility testing helps you ensure your web app functions as intended across all platforms. Check performance in all popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge, and Safari. Make sure you also check it across the last couple of browser versions.
Also, check the performance of different operating systems. You can limit Linux testing to a few popular distros, such as Ubuntu and Mint.
You should also test how your web app performs across popular devices. It’s best to use cloud-based testing systems instead of device emulators to have a realistic picture.
Web Application Testing Methods

Some parts of testing can be done manually, for instance, web usability. Others can only done with an automation script or a tool. Let’s look at both approaches.
Automated Testing
Testing some elements of the web app manually requires too much time. For instance, you can’t possibly click on every link on an ecommerce web app that has thousands of pages. This calls for automated UI testing. Other areas, like interface testing, can only be done with a script.
That’s why automation is the most used solution in web app testing. It requires you to either write a piece of code for software testing or use software that helps you comb through the site and simulate different scenarios.
Pros:
Simplifies and speeds up testing.
Allows testing areas that can't be tested manually.
Cons:
Pricing for running some tests may be high.
Requires analyzing large quantities of data.
The number of tools available for web app test automation is probably in the hundreds. You can find advanced tools that let you test web app interfaces and database connections under immense loads and simple no-code solutions for automating UI testing.
Manual Testing
Manual testing lets you focus on user-oriented details. Doing usability testing manually lets you put UX through a test of human judgment. Software can’t estimate how a user might misinterpret information on a page or find it hard to navigate.
A programmer can also manually go through the code and web app components to ask for bugs. That’s called exploratory testing.
Pros:
Allows for exploratory testing.
Allows for penetration testing.
Shows the perspective of the user more clearly.
Cons:
Might be cost-heavy in terms of labor compensation.
Prone to human error.
Save manual testing for very specific occasions to not waste your employees' time. Make sure you create a plan for manual testing and decide what level of quality you’re going to uphold.
Conclusion
Web application testing is necessary to ensure quality, avoid cybersecurity risks, and ultimately improve user experience and trust. When you look at your website from multiple angles — security, usability, compatibility — you can catch bugs early. That will save you both expenses you’d waste catching them in production and your reputation.
Get the proper tools to do the type of testing your web app needs, and allocate time for manual testing of specific areas.
This will help you build a better app and save on maintenance costs in the long run.