User Testing:
User testing is crucial step in making sure your website fits the needs of your audience. Ideally user testing occurs at every major step in the design and development process. It is the practice to receive feedback from your target demographic and checking to see if you are on the right track to provide what they need to complete identified tasks.

User testing can be facilitated in a variety of ways:

• Panel survey – Review the website design with a sample group to gauge their reaction and impressions
• One-on-one - A moderator sitting with a sample audience member and observe:
  • Their reaction to a design
  • Their expectations when looking at elements of the user-interface
  • Their ability to complete a requested task
• Online Survey – Direct a target sample to a beta version of a website and ask for their opinion.

Quality Assurance Testing:
Sometimes called “Acceptance Testing” this type of testing usually happens at the end of the development process. QA testing is so important that many agencies have an entire department dedicated to the task.

Unfortunately because it is a step that comes at the end of the project, often times the QA team has to deal with compressed timelines due to schedule slippage over the course of the project.

There are various types of quality assurance:

• Bug Testing
  Test all the pages and functionality to make sure it works appropriately. This includes checking the site out on various types of computers and browsers to ensure your target audience will be supported
• Technical Standards Compliance
  Some clients have internal technical standards that must be maintained by all projects
• Load Testing
  Test your server and code architecture to make sure the demands of high traffic to the new website doesn’t crash or otherwise impair the experience
• User Scenarios Scripts
  When QAing a site for user’s needs, its beneficial to have use-case scripts that detail the steps users are supposed to take to accomplish a task. These scripts should come complete with expected results for every step. This allows the QA tester to know if the actual experience of the test website is holding up to the expectations of the desired experience.
• Accessibility Compliance
  There are different standards of compliance to make sure a website is accessible by people with disabilities. The most important standard is the Section 508 Rehabilitation Act which Congress passed to mandate certain criteria for all government websites to follow. Section 508 has now become the standard for most websites that wish to be considered accessible to people with disabilities.

These tests should take place as a way to shake out as many bugs as possible.

Once completed, your ready to flip the switch and throw your launch party!

But your work isn’t over…

For User Testing

• Personas and audience identification is necessary to recruit the correct sample when conducting user testing during a project.
  Persona Example 82kb
• Business objectives and task goals should be well defined so they can be tested for their successful implementation
  Sample Strategy Brief 4.1mb

For QA Testing

• Functional and Technical Specifications are needed to check to see if the website’s functionality is behaving appropriately and meet required standards.
  Tech and Functional Specs 40kb

User Tests

• Use case scenarios - Have a user try to complete an important task. See what challenges they run into.
  
• Surveys - Surveys are a useful tool to gather information from a large, wide-spread sample.
  

Acceptance Tests

• Bug Lists - Document technical issues during the QA period. Developers can prioritize and correct problems as they come in.
  
• QA Scripts - Testing scripts detail the steps needed to complete various tasks in a website. They document what actions need to take place and what how the website should respond. Using these scripts, the QA test can check to see if the website is performing correctly.