Make Your Website Function Seamlessly with This Testing Checklist for Responsive Pages

A responsive website is one that contains flexible web pages. They can be accessed on any device—desktop/laptop, mobile phone, or tablet. Responsive designs improve a user’s browsing experience and increase the amount of time spent on landing pages (LPs).

Before a responsive website can go live, it needs to go through a thorough quality assurance process. There are a variety of factors that make responsive design testing a challenging task.

Let’s take a look at the challenges faced by testing specialists:

• Increasing consumer demands: With Wi-Fi zones and unlimited data available almost everywhere, consumers demand access to all features on their fingertips
• Parameters for responsive designs: Developers have to work on multiple parameters like user-friendly layouts, content optimization, panning and scrolling to name a few
• Identify the requirements: Testers should be able to identify the requirements clearly and work in accordance with the customer’s expectations on screen

To deal with these challenges, testers need to follow a series of steps. For your convenience, they have been presented in a comprehensive checklist. Let’s take a look:

Devices and platforms:

• Collect web and mobile traffic data
• Create a list of browsers
• List down mobile devices and operating systems used to access your website
• Test responsive design website on the aforementioned platforms
• Test it for upcoming beta versions
• Review your browser/device every three months
• Stop using irrelevant device-OS combinations
• Create space for new combinations

Website performance:

• Measure the object rendering time across different screens
• Measure object sizes and optimize them according to different devices
• Compress heavy content to improve page loading time

Smooth navigation across associated devices:

• Breakpoints to be created based on content and not devices
• Design for smaller devices first followed by bigger ones
• Keep text lines at a maximum of 80 characters
• Validate – allow users to continue with old functionalities on screen
• Ensure consistent UX (colors, labels, object names etc.) across different devices

Visual checkpoints:

• Check alignment of text, images, and controls
• Text, control, frames, and images should remain within the screen boundaries
• Consistent font, color, and style for the entire content
• Proper scrolling and display for text
• The page is readable across different screens and resolutions
• Define content as ‘important’ in different breakpoints

Common user conditions:

• Change in location
• Spikes in traffic
• Network coverage
• Background applications
• Incoming calls and messages
• Pop-ups and advertisements

To wrap up

Quality assurance testing for responsive LPs requires in-depth analysis and should include multiple testing strategies. Thanks to the availability of different testing tools and emulators, the process of responsive design testing has become a bit easier.

However, it is essential that developers and testers interact regularly and share their views during both the development and testing phases. This will create synergy between the teams and allow them to deliver the best results in shorter time-frames.

Want to get your responsive websites tested?