Although you may think that once a site looks good on your laptop or phone, it should be fine, it’s not quite like that. First of all, we have many choices when it comes to browsers. Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari – all installed on one of the 6 most popular versions of operating system, which is installed on a certain device from a certain brand.
In other words, there are many things to take in account when testing your (new) website. A brief summary of what should be taken into account when checking your site.
Browser testing
What if you have one laptop installed with Windows10 and 3 web browsers. Most people would expect the same site, on the same device and OS, to look similar on the different browsers. However, the pick of a browser might affect the font you intended to use, therefore also possible margins you have configured.
Device testing
You want to make sure your site is presentable on desktop and mobile devices. The last category can possibly be split in two different devices, tablets and phones – for testing this is not a possibility, but a must. Check if your site looks good on different devices. Screen size or underlying versions of either the OS or web browser might have a negative impact on the visualization of your site.
Connection
Maybe not as important for making your site look slick on every aspect mentioned above, but something that could drastically impact your site it’s user experience. Test your website on different connections. Where the super fast WiFi connection at home can load your site in just a second, the mobile requests may take longer. Make sure your site is optimised to load fast with a minimum concession of the quality of used images.
Although this is just a brief summary of all the possible test variables, you can imagine that only 6 browsers that can run on roughly 3 different operating systems (Windows, Android, MacOS) there’s already 18 different situations is a time consuming task. Obviously, it’s not possible to test every situation on every site. That’s why we profile the visitors of your website. What device did they use, what operating system and how was their behaviour? If we create the insights, we can always point out mistakes that didn’t show up during testing.
A proper test, and a good measurement / KPI document can help you achieve the goals of your business better. Contact us if you want to learn more about optimising your site by just a cross-platform test, or if you would like to have an in depth analysis of your customer behaviour. We might find out it’s just visitors using Firefox that have a lower conversion due to a faulty button In that browser.