The WebSite Quality Challenge

The WebSite Quality Challenge
Dr. Edward Miller
eValid HOME

ABSTRACT

Because of its possible instant worldwide audience a WebSite's quality and reliability are crucial. The very special nature of the Web applications and WebSites pose unique software testing challenges. Webmasters, Web applications developers, and WebSite quality assurance managers need tools and methods that can match up to the new needs. Mechanized testing via special purpose Web testing software offers the potential to meet these challenges.
INTRODUCTION

WebSites are something entirely new in the world of software quality! Within minutes of going live, a Web application can have many thousands more users than a conventional, non-Web application. The immediacy of the Web creates an immediate expectation of quality and rapid application delivery, but the technical complexities of a WebSite and variances in the browser make testing and quality control more difficult, and in some ways, more subtle. Automated testing of WebSites is both an opportunity and a challenge.
DEFINING WEBSITE QUALITY & RELIABILITY

A WebSite is like any piece of software: no single, all-inclusive quality measure applies, and even multiple quality metrics may not apply. Yet, verifying user-critical impressions of "quality" and "reliability" take on new importance.

Dimensions of Quality. There are many dimensions of quality, and each measure will pertain to a particular WebSite in varying degrees. Here are some of them:

* Time: WebSites change often and rapidly? How much has a WebSite changed since the last upgrade? How do you highlight the parts that have changed?

* Structural: How well do all of the parts of the WebSite hold together. Are all links inside and outside the WebSite working? Do all of the images work? Are there parts of the WebSite that are not connected?

* Content: Does the content of critical pages match what is supposed to be there? Do key phrases exist continually in highly-changeable pages? Do critical pages maintain quality content from version to version? What about dynamically generated HTML pages?

* Accuracy and Consistency: Are today's copies of the pages downloaded the same as yesterday's? Close enough? Is the data presented accurate enough? How do you know?

* Response Time and Latency: Does the WebSite server respond to a browser request within certain parameters? In an E-commerce context, how is the end to end response time after a SUBMIT? Are there parts of a site that are so slow the user declines to continue working on it?

* Performance: Is the Browser-Web-WebSite-Web-Browser connection quick enough? How does the performance vary by time of day, by load and usage? Is performance adequate for E-commerce applications? Taking 10 minutes to respond to an E-commerce purchase is clearly not acceptable!

Impact of Quality. Quality is in the mind of the user. A poor-quality WebSite, one with many broken pages and faulty images, with Cgi-Bin error messages, etc. may cost in poor customer relations, lost corporate image, and even in lost revenue. Very complex WebSites can sometimes overload the user.

The combination of WebSite complexity and low quality is potentially lethal to an E-commerce operation. Unhappy users will quickly depart for a different site! And they won't leave with any good impressions.
WEBSITE ARCHITECTURE

A WebSite can be complex, and that complexity -- which is what provides the power, of course -- can be an impediment in assuring WebSite Quality. Add in the possibilities of multiple authors, very-rapid updates and changes, and the problem compounds.

Here are the major parts of WebSites as seen from a Quality perspective.

Browser. The browser is the viewer of a WebSite and there are so many different browsers and browser options that a well-done WebSite is probably designed to look good on as many browsers as possible. This imposes a kind of de facto standard: the WebSite must use only those constructs that work with the majority of browsers. But this still leaves room for a lot of creativity, and a range of technical difficulties.

Display Technologies. What you see in your browser is actually composed from many sources:

* HTML. There are various versions of HTML supported, and the WebSite ought to be built in a version of HTML that is compatible. And this should be checkable.

* Java, JavaScript, ActiveX. Obviously JavaScript and Java applets will be part of any serious WebSite, so the quality process must be able to support these. On the Windows side, ActiveX controls have to be handled as well.

* Cgi-Bin Scripts. This is link from a user action of some kind (typically, from a FORM passage or otherwise directly from the HTML, and possibly also from within a Java applet). All of the different types of Cgi-Bin Scripts (perl, awk, shell-scripts, etc.) need to be handled, and tests need to check "end to end" operation. This kind of a "loop" check is crucial for E-commerce situations.

* Database Access. In E-commerce applications either you are building data up or retrieving data from a database. How does that interaction perform in real world use? If you give in "correct" or "specified" input does the result produce what you expect?

Some access to information from the database may be appropriate, depending on the application, but this is typically found by other means.

Navigation. Users move to and from pages, click on links, click on images (thumbnails), etc. Navigation in a WebSite often is complex and has to be quick and error free.

Object Mode. The display you see changes dynamically; the only constants are the "objects" that make up the display. These aren't real objects in the OO sense; but they have to be treated that way. So, the quality test tools have to be able to handle URL links, forms, tables, anchors, buttons of all types in an "object like" manner so that validations are independent of representation.

Server Response. How fast the WebSite host responds influences whether a user (i.e. someone on the browser) moves on or continues. Obviously, InterNet loading affects this too, but this factor is often outside the Webmaster's control at least in terms of how the WebSite is written. Instead, it seems to be more an issue of server hardware capacity and throughput. Yet, if a WebSite becomes very popular -- this can happen overnight! -- loading and tuning are real issues that often are imposed -- perhaps not fairly -- on the WebMaster.

Interaction & Feedback. For passive, content-only sites the only issue is availability, but for a WebSite that interacts with the user, how fast and how reliable that interaction is can be a big factor.

Concurrent Users. Do multiple users interact on a WebSite? Can they get in each others' way? While WebSites often resemble conventional client/server software structures, with multiple users at multiple locations a WebSite can be much different, and much more complex, than complex applications.
ASSURING WEBSITE QUALITY AUTOMATICALLY

Assuring WebSite quality requires conducting sets of tests, automatically and repeatably, that demonstrate required properties and behaviors. Here are some required elements of tools that aim to do this.

Test Sessions. Typical elements of tests involve these characteristics:

* Browser Independent. Tests should be realistic, but not be dependent on a particular browser, whose biases and characteristics might mask a WebSite's problems.

* No Buffering, Caching. Local caching and buffering -- often a way to improve apparent performance -- should be disabled so that timed experiments are a true measure of the Browser-Web-WebSite-Web-Browser response time.

* Fonts and Preferences. Most browsers support a wide range of fonts and presentation preferences, and these should not affect how quality on a WebSite is assessed or assured.

* Object Mode. Edit fields, push buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, etc. All should be treatable in object mode, i.e. independent of the fonts and preferences.

Object mode operation is essential to protect an investment in tests and to assure tests' continued operation when WebSite pages change. When buttons and form entries change location -- as they often do -- the tests should still work.

When a button or other object is deleted, that error should be sensed! Adding objects to a page clearly implies re-making the test.

* Tables and Forms. Even when the layout of a table or form varies in the browser's view, tests of it should continue independent of these factors.

* Frames. Windows with multiple frames ought to be processed simply, i.e. as if they were multiple single-page frames.

Test Context. Tests need to operate from the browser level for two reasons: (1) this is where users see a WebSite, so tests based in browser operation are the most realistic; and (2) tests based in browsers can be run locally or across the Web equally well. Local execution is fine for quality control, but not for performance measurement work, where response time including Web-variable delays reflective of real-world usage is essential.
WEBSITE VALIDATION PROCESSES

Confirming validity of what is tested is the key to assuring WebSite quality -- and is the most difficult challenge of all. Here are four key areas where test automation will have a significant impact.

Operational Testing. Individual test steps may involve a variety of checks on individual pages in the WebSite:

* Page Quality. Is the entire page identical with a prior version? Are key parts of the text the same or different?

* Table, Form Quality. Are all of the parts of a table or form present? Correctly laid out? Can you confirm that selected texts are in the "right place".

* Page Relationships. Are all of the links a page mentions the same as before? Are there new or missing links?

* Performance, Response Times. Is the response time for a user action the same as it was (within a range)?

Test Suites. Typically you may have dozens or hundreds (or thousands?) of tests, and you may wish to run tests in a variety of modes:

* Unattended Testing. Individual and/or groups of tests should be executable singly or in parallel from one or many workstations.

* Background Testing. Tests should be executable from multiple browsers running "in the background" [on an appropriately equipped workstation].

* Distributed Testing. Independent parts of a test suite should be executable from separate workstations without conflict.

* Performance Testing. Timing in performance tests should be resolved to 1 millisecond levels; this gives a strong basis for averaging data.

* Random Testing. There should be a capability for randomizing certain parts of tests.

* Error Recovery. While browser failure due to user inputs is rare, test suites should have the capability of resynchronizing after an error.

Content Validation. Apart from how a WebSite responds dynamically, the content should be checkable either exactly or approximately. Here are some ways that should be possible:

* Structural. All of the links and anchors match with prior "baseline" data. Images should be characterizable by byte-count and/or file type or other file properties.

* Checkpoints, Exact Reproduction. One or more text elements -- or even all text elements -- in a page should be markable as "required to match".

* Gross Statistics. Page statistics (e.g. line, word, byte-count, checksum, etc.).

* Selected Images/Fragments. The tester should have the option to rubber band sections of an image and require that the selection image match later during a subsequent rendition of it. This ought to be possible for several images or image fragments.

Load Simulation. Load analysis needs to proceed by having a special purpose browser act like a human user. This assures that the performance checking experiment indicates true performance -- not performance on simulated but unrealistic conditions.

Sessions should be recorded live or edited from live recordings to assure faithful timing. There should be adjustable speed up and slow down ratios and intervals.

Load generation should proceed from:

* Single Browser. One session played on a browser with one or multiple responses. Timing data should be put in a file for separate analysis.

* Multiple Independent Browsers. Multiple sessions played on multiple browsers with one or multiple responses. Timing data should be put in a file for separate analysis. Multivariate statistical methods may be needed for a complex but general performance model.

* Multiple Coordinated Browsers. This is the most-complex form -- two or more browsers behaving in a coordinated fashion. Special synchronization and control capabilities have to be available to support this.

SITUATION SUMMARY

All of these needs and requirements impose constraints on the test automation tools used to confirm the quality and reliability of a WebSite. At the same time they present a real opportunity to amplify human tester/analyst capabilities. Better, more reliable WebSites should be the result.

Navigating Advertising Avenues

By Ryan M. Hoback, Motivated Entrepreneur Incubation & Consulting

So we are sitting at a large round table with a mess of scribbled notes, thoughts, ideas,
and we are not sure where to go next. We are ready to develop a plan or at least a rough
scheme and move forward. So what is the message we are trying to get across to our
target customer base? What is our advertising attraction?

We need to first sit down and discuss what our budget for this particular project or
department will be. Once we develop a budget for the plan, we can start to develop a
message around the mediums that will be using to deliver it through. There are numerous
forms of advertising media we can use, such as;

(Direct Mail, Public Relations Promotions, Display Advertising, Directories,
Brochures/Flyers, Door to Door Leaflets, Transit Ads, Internet, T.V. Radio, Cinema,
Exhibitions, Trade Shows)

Once we have decided the types of advertising we will use, we need to look at what type
of customer would we like our ad to solicit. There are two modes that our customers
shopping habits can be classified as, transactional and relational. Transactional customers
focus on today’s transaction and they fear paying more than they should have. They are
very research oriented and they enjoy comparing and negotiating. At the same time these
costumers are great for word-of-mouth advertising. Relational customers think of today
as a beginning to all the transactions to follow. Their fears are of not of making the right
choice; they do not enjoy negotiation and competition. These customers consider their
time to be crucial and they become great return customers when they are satisfied with
something.

Remember it is all about getting noticed, we need to create ads that resonate on the minds
and hearts of our viewing audience. We need to focus on where people are going to first
see our product/service to make an immediate lasting impact. To help promote impact in
our ads we concentrate on methods create memorable responses. Our ads need to contain
a benefit to the viewer, and a strong visual vocal point. Good usage of colors and contrast
can enhance their memory of the ad.

Developing a repetitive campaign with a high-frequency of viewings is also beneficial to
the customer creating a mental relationship with our product/service. The law of “3” has
long applied to visual and audio advertising. That is, if a target customer can read your
message 3 times in a short period of time, or hear your ad 3 times, it will increase the
chances of them remembering the product. When developing slogans, phrases, or any
words that we will use in ads we need to use evocative words. Words that evoke a
reaction from the viewer, remove them from their current thoughts, and place them on
your message. This type of product association can be long lasting, and can create word
of mouth advertising such as, “Hey, did you see that ad?”

The most important part of developing an advertising campaign is to be consistent. If the
product/service can be recognized in numerous areas of placement through a consistent
message delivery, it will become a part of the consumers buying habits. Advertising can be very trial and error area, however crucial to any business. If we research, plan, and
implement all the fundamentals mentioned, then our advertising mix will turn out just
right.

Ryan Hoback is Founder and President of Motivated Entrepreneur. They help
entrepreneurs achieve success by helping them start and grow their businesses.

Questions to Ask Before You Advertise

by Michele Pariza Wacek

Most business owners and managers keep a fairly close eye on their marketing budgets.

And nothing throws a budget out of whack faster than advertising.

Advertising, or paying good money to get your message in front of your target market,
still has a place in your marketing mix, although it's not quite as effective as it once was.

If you're going to advertise, you need to be smart about it -- or you can quickly find
yourself with a blown budget and not much to show for it. Below are seven questions to
ask yourself before writing out that check.

1. Do you need to generate customers/traffic/leads/etc. right away? If so, then you better
pull out your wallet. Advertising is hands down the fastest way to get your message in
front of your target market. (You're paying for placement after all.)
2. Do you have another way to get the word out about your business? For instance, do
you have a customer database or an e-zine list? If so, then you might be better off sending
an e-mail (assuming you have customers' e-mails). Although technically e-mail
announcements fall under advertising, I'm not counting it in this particular case because
it's more or less free (or very low cost).
Perhaps you have a good news angle and a good relationship with a reporter. Or you have
a high-traffic Web site and/or blog. Or maybe you're an active volunteer with a large
organization and can use networking to get the message out.

But if none of those really apply, then you'd better take a closer look at advertising.

3. Do you need to augment your other marketing efforts? Maybe you have articles
featured on a Web site targeted to your customer base. Great when your article is front
and center and not-so-great when your article is buried in archives. A little advertising on
that site can keep you in your target market's sight all the time. Or maybe you struck gold
and got a big article written about your company in the perfect trade publication.
Fantastic for that month and not-so-fantastic for the other 11 months of the year. Or
maybe it's taking you longer than you'd like to drive traffic to your Web site. Advertising
is good for speeding things along.
Frequency is king when it comes to marketing -- if you're out of your customers' sight,
you're probably out of their mind when it comes to buying time. Advertising is a good
way to beef up or speed up what you're already doing.

4. Are other marketing methods not appropriate in this situation? Let's say you want to
have a sale. But your customer database is small (or nonexistent). Your Web site has
minimal traffic. And you aren't going to get any bites from the media since having a sale
isn't news. What do you do? Run some ads.

5. Would you rather save time than money? Let's face it. Running an ad is easy. Other
marketing methods are more time-consuming. If you want your marketing to be easy,
then advertising is about as easy as it's going to get. (Now there is a caveat to this one,
because you can hire people to do some of those marketing tasks, such as updating Web
sites, running PR campaigns, etc. However, not everything can be hired out so you still
might be stuck spending time you don't have.)
6. Are you planning to test a new campaign or a new product/target market? Running
small, inexpensive ads can be a good way to test certain marketing aspects before
launching big, expensive, time-consuming campaigns. If you want to penetrate a new
market or if you have a new product to launch or a new marketing message to try, buy
some ads and see what the response rate is. Another strength of advertising is control --
you have total control over your test.
7. Do other marketing approaches never quite measure up? It happens. Advertising in one
or two specific media outlets seem to generate more sales and more leads then anything
else you've tried. If that's the case, then don't mess with it. As the old saying goes, if it
ain't broke, don't fix it.
Creativity Exercise

Advertising and your business

Is advertising right for your business? Try this exercise and see.

1. What's your biggest marketing challenge right now? Write it down.
2. Go through the above list of questions and ask yourself each one. Does it apply to your
situation? If it does, write that down too.
3. Do some brainstorming. In what ways can you use advertising to solve your marketing
challenges? What media would work best? Online? Print? Radio? Television? Direct
mail? Something else? Make up an ad for a variety of media.
Now do the exact opposite. Think of ways advertising WON'T work for your business.
Brainstorm at least 25 reasons why advertising won't work for your specific situation. Be
silly. It's a good way to loosen you up.

4. Go back and reread both your pro and con lists. Now read your ads. Do you like what
you came up with? Do any of them resonate with you, even now after coming up with
your list of objections?
You may have just come up with your next advertising campaign.
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of "Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make
More Money." She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity
with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at
attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be
reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com.

A customized toolbar and RSS Feeds

What can greatly increase the traffic in our website and the quality of information disseminated to as many readers and visitors as is possible is by providing a RSS Feed to your visitors and readers and a customized toolbar to your subscribers. The RSS Feed is a recent innovation done by those in the Internet industry. It need not only bring news and other news-related information, it can be used to provide other information such as news related to your website and articles that you have currently uploaded and published. The RSS Feed goes successfully in tandem with the customized toolbar. One such customized toolbar service which you can take is the one provided by www.effectivebrand.com With this customized toolbar service, you can combine and strengthen the information dissemination capacities of both the RSS Feed, your blogs, and the important webpages of your website. One can tell one's reader-client that it is not really too unwieldy to have another toolbar in one's browser's arsenal. In fact, you can have as many toolbars in your browsers. All you need to do to manage them is to click which one you want to view at the moment.

Clean up all your coding and links

This is usually one of the things many webmasters and website owners often overlook when it comes to improving the quality of their website. What is important is to clean up all your coding and to fix all links that are broken. There are many tools in the Internet whereby you can check whether your links are broken. They will also say whether you need to add the necessary trailing slashes to some of your URLs. One such tool is the W3C link checker. We may be surprised but when we check all our links, we might find out that a lot of our links are indeed broken. This will surely bring about a lot of 404 error not found pages in your readers and visitors searches. And a lot of these 404 error not found pages will greatly hamper the service excellence of our website. If we want to improve the quality of our website, we must do this as a regular action and operation.

Create a good articles template

One good way of increasing the quality of your website is by creating a good template for your articles. For this website, the template created included links from webpages with high visitor count. Also, it embeds RSS Feeds for subscription for the visitor who may be a potential reader-client or subscriber-client. For creating this good quality template, what is important first is to see which among the webpages of your website are having high visitor and hit counts. Once you do find out which of them have good visitor and hit counts, then you can make them as regular links in your articles template. What is good about this is that whenever your content or article makes it to the first page of results in the leading search engines, these links that already have high visitor and hit count will even have a greater potential of increasing their traffic count.

SEO-oriented articles production in succession

To produce good quality SEO-oriented articles in successive waves will truly raise your traffic rank higher than you might have expected. The reason behind this is that the SEO-oriented articles usually are picked up by the leading search engines and are placed in their first-page of results. Thus, those who are searching for keywords or keyphrases related to the SEO-oriented articles which you produced will naturally click on those articles and will provide you with the increase of traffic you have aimed for for your website. Often, when you have already achieved a high traffic rank, it is but natural that many other website owners and webmasters who surf the Internet looking for high quality websites would be interested in exchanging links with your website because of your high traffic rank. Even those website owners and webmasters who have higher PageRank than yours but do not have as high a traffic rank will naturally want to link with your website.

Focusing on one keyword

Sometimes, in our desire to be truly SEO-oriented in our writing of content and articles, we often get mired in a lot of thinking when we use a lot of keywords and keyphrases in our webpage. It would be simple if we just pick one keyword and then stick with it all along the writing of the content and the article of the webpage. We can use variations of that keyword: its plural form, its noun form, or its adjective and adverb form. However, consistency in the use of one form would even be better. This tactic and strategy will truly help land our webpage in the first page of results in the leading search engines.

Improving 'old' webpages quality

Those of us webmasters and website owners who started really from scratch in building a website, started with not-so-good webpages in our website. We can still improve the overall quality of our website if we do not pull out these 'old' webpages but rather rework them to make them better. In fact, it may not be wise to pull out these 'old' webpages because some of them may be responsible for bringing in the traffic to your website. One thing to be done is to fix all the meta tags of these 'old' webpages: using all the necessary keywords and keyphrases that will make it fare better in the leading search engines. Also, placing a new navigation system that will make it reader-friendly will also do a lot of help. If these 'old' webpages belong to a series of webpages, then making an internal navigation system among them will greatly help the quality of these webpages.

Entering into an advertising program

This website also entered into the Google AdWords program. It is a very good advertising program because aside from increasing the visibility of your website through the keywords and keyphrases you will use in your advertising campaigns, it also gives you the opportunity to increase the possibility of gaining additional income from the AdSense program you have included in your webpages. The Google AdSense program helps the webmaster and website owner gain income by the clicks the visitors make in the ads that are published in your webpages. And if in the Google AdWords program you have chosen the write keywords and keyphrases that will also increase the visibility of your website in the Internet, then it is likely that the AdSense program you have placed in your website can give you additional income for your website.

Entering into an affiliate program

Probably what will give the website a good standing and a highly credible rating in the Internet world is to enter into an affiliate program with a product or service of a company that is well-known, highly-popular, and truly high in credibility among all the other Internet entities in the world of cyberspace. This website entered into an affiliate program with Yahoo! Webhosting because it not only truly believes in the high quality service of the company's offer but most especially because it believes that by doing so, it can help promote the service of Yahoo! Webhosting, that is helping this website itself attain the goals it has already attained many times over. And aside from attaining the goal of promoting the Catholic faith in the Internet, the affiliate program can also help the website earn additional income for the needs of the website's missionary goals.

Continuous production of articles

Our SEO professor tells us that the leading search engines always loves new content and articles. Thus, the more you produce contents and articles on a continuous basis, the more the quality of your website increases. What is important though is that we also write quality content and articles which will benefit a lot of people: not only our reader-clients and subscribers, but also the whole Internet public in general. In producing the contents and the articles, we are also called to balance between SEO-oriented written works and reader-oriented written material. The SEO-oriented works are usually produced so that they may figure well in the first pages of results in the leading search engines. On the other hand, the reader-oriented works are those contents and materials that focus primarily on what would truly benefit the reader-client or reader-subscriber. The best and wisest move to enhance our website's quality and credibility is to strike a moderate use between the two.

Reorganizing your menu navigation system

Another way of increasing one's website's quality is to reorganize one's main menu navigation system that will connect all the webpages of the site that are stronger in PageRank quality. An immediate result of this action gave this website a higher Traffic Rank since those webpages with higher PageRank quality, figure well in the leading search engines and thus each of them reinforced each other's quality - both in terms of PageRank and Traffic Rank.

Removing any nonreciprocal external links

When I started building my website, I never knew about SEO yet. However, when I got to learn about SEO, I realized that it was necessary to have many inbound links coming to your website and as little external links or outgoing links. Usually, the outbound links that I have placed in my website where meant as references to websites which have provided my website with content and materials for building the website. Therefore, without being detrimental to the websites to which my outbound links refer to, I removed all of these external, outgoing but nonreciprocal links: most of them just placed as a natural referral link and without any reciprocal relationship or link exchange agreement.

Getting more inbound links

Google has formally stated that having more incoming or inbound links to your website will increase the quality of your webpages. The more you engage in reciprocal linking with high quality websites, the more your website will have its webpages gain high quality PageRank. Getting inbound links is not necessarily done only through reciprocal linking or through link exchanges. It can also be through what they currently call - natural linking. This is done when you provide a service for free and which a website owner or webmaster uses and therefore would willingly give a natural link to your website. One example of a natural linking system is what this website provides: free contents and articles. By providing free contents and articles for copying and republishing, those website owners and webmasters who may find helpful the contents and articles this website can provide, can give a natural link to the website.