Five Types of Automated QA Testing Your Site Needs

There are two kinds of quality assurance (QA) testing: automated testing and manual testing. Automated testing is performed by scripts and code running automated quality checks, while manual testing is performed manually by (human) QA testers. While both are core components of website development, they each have unique scenarios where they should be applied. However, for the sake of this article, we’ll focus entirely on automated testing. 

Simply put, automated testing is key to saving time and money in the QA process. Without automated testing, QA teams would need to manually test the same scenarios over and over, wasting both time, money, and resources. Instead of spending endless hours on manual validation, automated QA scripts can shorten test cycles, catch more errors, and allow for more frequent deployments – in addition to creating more time for the team to manually test components on the website. 

Automation generally includes UI and application programming interface (API) tests created and run by Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs). As recommended by these experts, there are five main types of automated QA testing that should be baked into your web development process: 

1. Integration Testing: This type of automation involves testing multiple software modules or components together, as a whole, to see how data flows between them. Developers and SDETs alike can contribute to this testing by creating scripts of end-to-end interactions to ensure components can intermingle and interact. 
   
   This step is critical for site development because while one component may appear to work fine as an isolated entity, it may not function as expected when tested with neighboring components. In fact, some hidden bugs can compromise the integrity of an entire system. These automated tests often detect bugs that humans miss. 
   
2. Regression Testing: With regression testing, SDETs can verify software behavior after a code push, running through a predefined checklist and testing key features. The purpose of this is to make sure that a change or addition in the code did not break previous functionality. 
   
   When creating a new site, or simply maintaining one, this type of testing is necessary to identify and eliminate bugs early on in your deployment timeline. The result is a higher quality, more functional website with fewer unexpected and costly problems later. 
   
3. Load Testing: At this step in the QA process, SDETs test the system for sufficient capacity to support expected traffic. For example, based on analytics data, you will know how many users to anticipate. QA takes this number and adds 10% (or any additional percentage you feel necessary) to calculate a potential peak user count. The results of the test will help determine how much traffic a system can manage within a specific response time. 
   
   Automated load testing is needed when the peak user count is higher than the number of QA personnel, which is nearly always. If you anticipate 6,000 users, you would require 6,000 people on individual devices to test manually. 
   
   It is not advisable to skip this automated test. The last thing you want after building and publishing a web page is for it to break when users try to reach it. 
   
4. Performance Testing: On top of testing for an anticipated number of users, it is important to test the load speeds they will encounter while trying to access your web page. In these performance tests, SDETs determine the responsiveness of the application, including how long pages take to load. The goal is to identify performance-related bottlenecks so they can be fixed before deployment. 
   
   Performance testing is highly recommended if you want to discover when and where a system might lag or fail entirely. Additionally, it anticipates functionality during periods of increased traffic or site stress. 
   
   
5. Security Testing: Site security is not an area where you should cut corners. It is your duty to your business and your customers to ensure you have a secure site, and to do this, you have to invest in security testing. In fact, security testing is required by Adobe LAS (Launch Assurance Services) if you want to use AEM as a Cloud Service. 
   
   At Hoodoo Digital, there are two levels of QA security testing: base scan and deep scan. The base scan includes a Security and Vulnerability Scan using tools that run vulnerability reports. A deep scan tests site security using a more robust protocol set forth in the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) testing guide. The latter is recommended for industries like banking and healthcare, which require extra security for their users. 

If you are not sure which of these automated tests your site or application requires, let us know. Our team of QA experts who specialize in automation and manual QA testing are eager to help you ensure that fewer bugs make it to production, saving you both time and money.