Empower your software with our functional testing services. Ensure all features work as expected, delivering smooth user experiences and uncompromising quality.
User experience (UX) is not just a catchphrase. In today's competitive market, it is a fundamental requirement for business success. A company's UX is the sum total of each customer's interaction with its products, services, brand and representatives. A positive user experience leads to loyalty, higher spend per purchase, and good reviews, which results in more revenue for you. So the more you can do to make customers happy, the better.
This includes software that always works as expected. To ensure optimal performance of software designed specifically for your business, you need to hire the best developers or software development company. Here we explore functional testing and how it can help you achieve a better user experience.
What are functional testing services?
A critical part of the software development process must be thorough testing. Performance tests examine back-end processes that can cause user frustration when they are not up to date. While performance testing is highly important, functional testing can be even more important because it ensures that all user interface (UI) components of an application work as expected.
Functional testing services are performed to determine whether software meets functional specifications determined in advance by developers and stakeholders. While it can be run by the developers who created the software, it is best run by a separate team who can be more objective in their investigations.
Ideally, development and testing should be performed by teams that don't normally work together. Functional testing may include a review of the following items:
User Interface
This type of testing includes testing to ensure that all screens, buttons, and forms work as expected. For example, testers determine whether it is easy for users to navigate between screens and whether links take them to an expected location.
log in
With this component, testers try various login methods to ensure that users can easily start the software session.
Primary Functions
Here, testers look for an answer to the question: “Does the software do what it’s supposed to do?” In other words, if it is an inventory control system, does it allow users to perform inventory control?
Payment
For eCommerce sites, payment is key. You don't want customers to go through the process of collecting items from their cart and then abandoning it because the checkout process is too confusing. These tests examine the payment function to ensure the process is smooth and easy to understand.
Errors
Although you don't want users to encounter errors in your software, it's important to know what types of actions will produce errors and what error messages users will see when they do. This type of testing determines what to expect in both scenarios.
Types of functional tests
To reach the conclusions mentioned above, those who provide functional testing services use manual and automatic tests of different types. Each checks slightly different aspects of the software, and each can potentially uncover issues for developers to fix. Test types include the following.
Sanity Test
Sanity testing is used as a “quick and dirty” test when there is no time to do a more thorough investigation. Users operate the software as they would and note any surface-level issues. Integrity testing can also be used to ensure that software modifications have fixed the problems they were intended to resolve.
Smoke Test
Smoke testing is used to determine whether each discrete component of the software works as it should. It is typically performed before other types of testing to detect obvious problems early.
Unit Testing
While other types of testing examine user-facing aspects of the software, unit testing ensures that each component (or “unit”) of the application code works as expected.
Regression Testing
Sometimes fixing one part of an application can break another. Regression testing checks to ensure that updates do not cause additional problems in other parts of the program.
System Testing
This type of testing is designed to be performed on an entire system, rather than on software in isolation. It shows whether the system meets the technical, functional and business requirements previously defined by the developer and interested parties.
User Acceptance Testing
Typically performed as the last test, user acceptance testing runs the software through “real world” scenarios that customers or employees are likely to present. While other tests are more theory-based, user acceptance tests are rooted in users' reality.
Better software means better UX
Clearly, testing can improve software by strengthening back-end functions and removing problems with the front-end interface. These tests and the improvements that follow prevent user frustration with a wide variety of challenges, such as not being able to use the software as intended, having difficulty knowing which button to select, or even causing the software to crash because the server cannot deal with a large number of users.
Every time a user becomes frustrated, they have a negative experience, which removes “points” from their overall user experience or impression of your company. For example, let's say you have a web application for your financial company that allows customers to apply for a mortgage loan. If the transaction is seamless and the final screen promises that a lender will call to discuss the application, a representative will follow up and the customer will have all their expectations met, resulting in a positive UX.
If, on the other hand, the customer fills out a screen and doesn't know how to proceed, or if they submit the application without understanding the next step in the application process, or if a follow-up call is promised but not completed, the customer will be frustrated, resulting in a negative UX. This customer is unlikely to do business with your company now or ever. Additionally, they may tell others about their unpleasant experience or even write a negative review.
Testing is often considered an add-on, but as we've seen here, it can be incredibly important in avoiding common problems and preventing a negative customer user experience.
