This month we’ve added tools to help you test mobile sites, check your performance for free, test your links whilst spell checking your site, track bugs and ‘dominate’ your Google Adwords.

Mobile Testing

Keynote

Keynote provides testing and monitoring of mobile content and applications

Keynote’s extensive infrastructure enables carriers, device manufacturers, content portals and developers to test and monitor their mobile content, applications and services on real mobile devices and across multiple mobile operator networks around the world.

You can try Keynote free for 7 days.

Link Checking Software

Inspyder InSite

Inspyder InSite v3 website spell checker and link checking tool

Automatically spell check your entire website to find any spelling mistakes before your customers do. This affordable software will also check all links within your website and has no page limits.

Requirements are a Windows XP SP2, Windows 2003 Server, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 2008 Server (R2) operating system. A free trial version is available and purchase price is $59.95.

Performance Testing

Keynote Kite

Keynote KITE is a free web performance testing tools

Keynote KITE is a free tool that allows you to test your website or application in real-time, to diagnose and troubleshoot web performance issues. Share your results and scripts with web developers or QA and IT teams.

Keynote KITE is free.

SEO Tools

Keyword Elite

Keyword Elite 2.0 allows you to dominate your niche

Keyword Elite 2.0 provides a series of tools that allow you to see where the main sites in your niche are getting their traffic, home in on money terms, find advertising partners and accurately analyse other sites to find out what keywords they are targeting.

Keyword Elite has a free 30 day trial available and costs $97.

Bug Tracking Tools

Mantis Bug Tracker

MantisBT is a free popular web-based bugtracking system

MantisBT is a free popular web-based bugtracking system, written in PHP and works with MySQL, MS SQL, and PostgreSQL databases and a webserver. Now also featuring MantisTouch for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone.

MantisBT is free.

What do you think of these website testing tools? Let us know in the comments.

Testing fails happen all the time and usually when you least expect them. I stumble across a lot of website issues and document some of them on this blog to point out what appears to have gone wrong plus include some steps that could be followed to prevent this type of error happening again.

You don’t have to be actually testing to find problems and this is the case here. I was having a look at the Feedback Army website, which is a usability testing tool that is currently the most popular tool of its type in our testing tools directory.

I was thinking of writing a review of Feedback Army and so was poking around their website at http://www.feedbackarmy.com/.

The Feedback Army site doesn’t have many pages, they like to keep it simple (and usable). But on several of their pages there is a link to ‘Usability Testing Tips’. It looked interesting so I clicked on it, and hit a big error (see below).

Your server is running PHP version 5.1.6 but WordPress 3.3-aortic-dissection requires at least 5.2.4.

Your server is running PHP version 5.1.6 but WordPress 3.3-aortic-dissection requires at least 5.2.4.

Server Error

The blog post containing Feedback Army’s usability testing tips cannot be displayed because of some silly server error. Most users click back at this point and possibly click off Feedback Army altogether.

If we look into the error in more detail, we can see that Feedback Army’s blog uses a version of the popular WordPress blogging software, something called WordPress 3.3-aortic-dissection. This version of WordPress needs to have PHP version 5.2.4 in order to work but the current server only has PHP version 5.1.6 and so the error is displayed.

You would expect website monitoring to pick up this kind of error, as the error is not restricted to just this URL but to the whole of blog.feedbackarmy.com (I get the same error if I try blog.feedbackarmy.com or blog.feedbackarmy.com/usability-testing/.

However, because there is a response from the webserver (even those the response is an error message) it may be that the website monitoring has not been set up to recognise this as an error. The URL returns a 200 OK response from the server and so the website monitoring (if there is some in place) may think that everything is ok.

You can run a server response code check on any URL here – http://www.seotools.com/server-response-checker/

Even if you go to one of those websites that tell you whether a website is down for everyone or just who, this is the response you get:

It's just you. http://blog.feedbackarmy.com is up.

Website Monitoring

To monitor your website more effectively for this kind of error, you could set up your monitoring to check for a specific piece of text so that if an error such as the above is displayed, it will trigger your monitoring to alert you that it couldn’t find the text you specified.

Of course, the root cause of the problem was upgrading to a version of WordPress without checking the server requirements of the upgrade. But at least, with better monitoring in place, this error could have been caught earlier and a decision made as to whether to roll back to a previous version of WordPress or upgrade PHP to the required version.

I just hope this problem hasn’t cost Feedback Army too many potential customers of its usability testing software.

These applications will help you to make sure your website’s links are all correct, conduct easy online surveys and market your website online with a comprehensive set of SEO, Social Media and Advertising tools.

SEO Software

Raven Internet Marketing Tools

Offering a wide range and comprehensive set of online marketing tools, Raven allows you to analyse data from a variety of sources including SEMRush, SEOmoz and Google Analytics. Raven can manage your entire link building process whilst also monitoring Facebook and Twitter accounts and analysing your Google Adwords campaigns, and more.

You can try Raven free for 30 days and then plans start from $99 per month.

Link Checking Software

Web Link Validator

More than just a link checker, Web Link Validator from REL Software, provides a comprehensive analysis of your website to check all your links, finds errors in html code and can monitor for any changes to web pages. There is also a built-in spell checker for 20 languages and the ability to export reports in a number of formats.

Requirements are a Windows operating system, a trial version is available for 30 days use. Pricing starts from $145 for a basic 3,000 link license.

Online Survey Software

Usermood

Easy to install, Usermood allows you to add a survey to your website to ask users a multiple choice question and track their individual responses. You can control when the survey appears to your users, colours and change the question asked. Usermood is an unobtrusive and straightforward way of gaining important feedback about your website.

Usermood is free for 14 day and then $12 per month for unlimited feedback.

KISSinsights

Another online survey app that is easy to add to your website. KISSinsight means you can survey visitors that are browsing your website, ask them a question and receive targeted, actionable feedback in return. Available in 13 languages, KISSinsights is an easy to use method of gaining valuable user feedback.

KISSinsight offers a free plan that allows unlimited surveys and up to 30 responses or a Premium plan at $29 per month that includes customisable questions and thank you message.

QuestionPro

The list of features for QuestionPro’s online surveys is pretty long but it is still easy to create a survey using a wizard based approach. There are many different question types so if you find Usermood or KISSinsights too simplistic then QuestionPro will enable you to customise your surveys in much more detail. QuestionPro has different options for survey logic, design and formatting plus reporting and so would be more suitable for full surveys rather than quick user feedback.

QuestionPro has a free plan available for 1 survey and 10 questions. Paid plans start at $15 per month.

What do you think of these website testing tools? Let us know in the comments.

Code Spaces

Code Spaces - combines issue tracking, project management and subversion hosting

Code Spaces is not only a bug or issue tracking tool, it also provides subversion hosting and project management features that allow you to effectively manage projects, and the issues relating to them whilst keeping your code controlled and backup up.

Code Spaces looks likes a very useful application for distributed teams, comes with a 45 day free trial and a 2 user plan starts at a very reasonable $2.99 per month.

YouTrack

YouTrack believes itself to be the fastest issue tracker around

YouTrack 2.2, by JetBrains, is a keyboard-centric issue tracking tool that allows you to create bugs, edit and navigate using keyboard shortcuts. This sounds perfect for web developers who learn all manner of keyboard commands in their usual day to day programming and so the usage of YouTrack should become second nature.

There are 3 main editions of YouTrack plus you can elect to host it yourself or go for the hosted option. The hosted beta is available for free until 1st July 2011 whilst an evaluation copy to download and host yourself is also free for up to 60 days.

BugHerd

BugHerd believe you can log a new issue within 5 seconds on average

Our final new bug tracking tool is called BugHerd and if YouTrack wants you to think it is the fastest then BugHerd is the simplest bug tracking tool around.

This is because BugHerd embeds itself into the website you are working on, which is pretty handy when you want to log issues without switching to a different application in order to do so. BugHerd reckon it takes just 5 seconds to log an issue from start to finish so if you are getting bogged down with your bug tracking tool then BugHerd might be a good bet.

There is a free 30 day trial available and pricing starts at $9 per user per month.

So there you have it, 3 new bug tracking tools, bringing the total of software testing and issue tracking software applications up to 22 in our website testing tools directory.

Continuing our series reviewing browser testing tools we are having a look at CrossBrowserTesting, which allows you to check your website live across the major web browsers and operating systems and now also includes several mobile devices.

Previous browser compatibility testing reviews that you might want to have a look at include Mogotest and Adobe Browserlab.

The main difference between CrossBrowserTesting and other browser checking tools like Mogotest or Browserlab is that with CBT you can actually test your website ‘live’ by using the browser instead of receiving screenshots or a report showing you what is wrong.

This means that you are able to pick up issues regarding JavaScript menus or AJAX functionality that you wouldn’t see with a simple screenshot.

Of course, this additional offering doesn’t come cheap. Pricing starts at $19.95 per month for just 150 minutes of use. However, if you consider that the alternative could be to put together your own testing computers with all the operating systems and browsers you require then $20 a month might not be so bad.

Let’s see if CrossBrowserTesting is worth it.

Signing Up

CrossBrowserTesting is a paid service but there is a 7 day free trial with each package, which allows up to 1 hour usage for 1 person.

Unfortunately, in order to sign up, you do have to input your credit card details but if you cancel before the 7 days are up then you won’t get charged.

Once signed up you are dropped into your Test Center and have the option of running a live test, taking screenshots of a URL or installing the bookmarklet (more about that later).

As the main purpose of CrossBrowserTesting is the ability to run live tests, we’ll look at that first of all.

Live Testing

Clicking on ‘Run Live Test’ opens a new window with all the available operating systems and browser combinations plus the screen resolution can be picked from a list.

You can also view what additional software is installed on each operating system if you need applications such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Flash, Silverlight, Quicktime, etc. This is extremely helpful so you can test the full website including animations, PDF downloads and video clips.

The availability of browsers and operating systems is pretty good with all versions of the main browsers available including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Netscape and even older browsers going back to Firefox 1.0, Internet Explorer 5.0 and Netscape 4. You don’t have to test your website in these seldom used browsers but they are there if you need them.

Newer browsers are also present including Internet Explorer 9 RC and Firefox 4 Beta, not yet fully released but very useful to start testing your sites on.

I chose a Windows 7 OS that had Internet Explorer 9 RC installed at a resolution of 1024 x 768 in order to test the WebDepend website on.

The desktop loaded in pretty quickly and I double clicked on the Internet Explorer icon to get started straightaway. Browsing to www.webdepend.co.uk was also fairly quick, there is a slight delay as you type the web address into the address bar and it took a couple of seconds for the WebDepend website to appear but first impressions were that the system was fairly responsive.

There is an additional bar at the top of the screen, which shows the operating system you are using and also allows you to end the testing session, take a screenshot of the page you are viewing and record your sessions to playback later on.

I wanted to test the dropdown navigation on the WebDepend site, as this can’t be tested using screenshot applications, and so I hovered the mouse over each menu item to see how the navigation displayed once it had opened out. I did have to wait a second or two each time for the browser to catch up with where my mouse was pointing.

Using the scrollbar also took a couple of seconds to scroll to the part of the page I wanted to view and so I can see a lot of browser testing starting to become quite tedious in this respect (but browser testing can be fairly tedious anyway I suppose).

Another area that you can’t properly test with screenshot tools are enquiry or contact forms. I wanted to fill in an enquiry form to make sure the validation and submission worked correctly in IE9. The form was completed pretty swiftly and submitted fine, I received the test email within seconds so there was no delay in being able to test filling forms.

Ecommerce websites could make great use of CrossBrowserTesting to fully test the shopping process in each web browser and operating system configuration.

Taking A Snapshot

Whilst testing a website live, simply click on the snapshot icon and it will grab the screen that you are on and save it in your test center. You can then add notes to the snapshot plus what browser you were using at the time for future reference. A publicly accessible link to the screenshot can be shared on social networks.

One useful enhancement to this would be the ability to send snapshots straight into a bug tracking tools such as Unfuddle, Pivotal Tracker or Fogbugz and create a new bug. I would certainly appreciate being able to create new bugs in Pivotal Tracker, which we use at WebDepend, in this manner.

Recording A Video

Once you have recorded a video you can watch it back and add notes plus the browser you were using for future reference, as with snapshots. A publicly accessible link to the video clip can be shared on social networks.

Mobile Testing

Fairly new to CrossBrowserTesting is the fact that you can test how websites appear on an iPad, iPhone or an Android 2.2 device.

Click on ‘Run Live Test’ as with the Live Testing carried out above but choose one of the mobile operating systems to launch.

For this test I chose Android 2.2, which has the Android 2.2 web browser at a resolution of 320 x 480. I waited for around 60 seconds whilst my configuration was being prepared but then an on screen error message appeared to say that it had not successfully launched, the technical team had been informed and to try again.

Once I did try again, after waiting another 60 seconds, a virtualized Android operating system appeared and I could launch the Android web browser.

As described above, there is a slight lag whilst the browser interprets your mouse click or keyboard action but it works pretty well and you can successfully browse the website you want to test, using the Android device including navigation buttons and keyboard.

You will probably want a greater range of mobile browsers and operating systems if you intend on doing a lot of mobile device testing but having iPhone, iPad and Android represented is a good start.

Automated Screenshots

CrossBrowserTesting does also include automated screenshots with every pricing plan. In your test center click on ‘Take Screenshots’ and then input your URL including any advanced options such as whether a login is required or if you want to delay the screenshot by a couple of seconds.

Then select the browsers you need screenshots take for, you can customise the list or selecting all browsers will give you a pretty healthy list.

It is also possible to specify the resolution for each browser, set to 1024 x 768 by default or 640 x 960 for the iPhone 4. At present it doesn’t appear possible to have screenshots taken for an Android 2.2 device.

The final step is to click ‘Take Screenshots’ and CBT will start churning through all the screenshots and presenting them to you as they are taken.

Screenshots are taken pretty quickly with all 41 browsers returning a screenshot after about 3 or 4 minutes. I was running these tests at 2pm UK time, which is 8am where CrossBrowserTesting is based. Hence, all times are recorded as being 8am, which might confuse me when I come to refer to results and figure out when I was carrying out the testing.

Checking through the screenshots I spotted a small layout issue on the WebDepend home page when viewed on an iPad (I don’t own an iPad unfortunately and so hadn’t tested on this device previously) so the test highlighted that bug to me, which was useful.

But be careful as using the screenshots facility adds to the overall minutes used. I managed to rack up 31 minutes of usage in checking through the screenshots produced without realising.

Against each screenshot is a handy link to launch a live test session for that specific browser and OS combination so if you spot a problem you can quickly investigate in more detail plus test the rest of your website to find any further problems.

Bookmarklet

There is also a bookmarklet that allows you to take screenshots or launch a live testing session on any web page that you are visiting. This allows quick and easy access to starting your browser compatibility testing.

API

One of the areas not utilised as part of this review is the API, which allows you to automatically trigger screenshots of a URL and then email them to an email address to be checked. I suppose it could also enable you to send screenshots into a bug tracking system as described above.

At present, I believe only the screenshots functionality is included in the API but there are plans to extend that to the live testing side of the system too.

Conclusion

Overall, CrossBrowserTesting is a very useful service for any browsers or operating systems you don’t normally have access to. For me this would be several browsers including IE6, older versions of Firefox, Safari, Netscape, Opera and mobile browsers including the iPad, iPhone and Android 2.2. That’s quite a number and whilst I might not test everything on all the older browsers, I do want to make sure everything displays and works on mobile browsers plus some clients still require IE6 compatibility.

Another advantage I can see is for website developers and apps companies to react to users problems and try to reproduce the issue on the specific OS and browser combination that user has installed. For the smaller organisations they may not have all these combinations to hand and so a service like CrossBrowserTesting becomes essential.

I can also see scenarios where I am out of the office and away from my normal testing environment. Being able to test on up to 41 web browsers from anywhere I can get online is a huge bonus.

CrossBrowserTesting is very easy to use and get to grips with straightaway. There are little details that make browser testing easier, such as the ability to go into a live test from a particular screenshot you had taken. Having the bookmarklet and API add to the overall sense that the application is easy to use however you want to use it.

On the downside there are small delays in using the live testing so over a full session that means browser testing takes longer than it would if you were using the machine locally.

The main drawback is that minutes soon rack up, whether you are using Live Testing or Screenshots so the base package of just 150 minutes per month would get used up very quickly. I wonder whether the ability to purchase extra minutes or a pay as you go service would be something for the folks at CrossBrowserTesting to consider.

However, even with the slight negative points, using CrossBrowserTesting has to be less hassle, cheaper and far more convenient than getting together all the operating systems and browser combinations available plus the maintenance and space required to house all the equipment.

I certainly know what I prefer.

Adobe Browserlab takes screenshots of your web page in several different web browsers

Adobe Browserlab is a browser testing service that allows you to check how each page appears in a variety of mainstream web browsers.

The web-based application allows you to compare your web page in 2 web browsers side by side and in that respect, shares a similar principle with Mogotest, which I reviewed recently. Read the Mogotest review.

One benefit to Adobe Browserlab is that it is free for 1 year if you sign up before 30th April 2011.

Sign up

First of all, you have to sign up to Adobe CS Live in order to gain access to Browserlab. By signing up to CS Live before 30th April 2011 you get 1 year complimentary access but we are not sure what the costs will be once the first year is finished.

CS Live includes other products including CS Review, Acrobat.com, Adobe Story and SiteCatalyst NetAverages.

Features

Once you have signed up to Browserlab, you can check your web page by inputing the address and selecting the browser you would like to view it in.

Adobe Browserlab then fetches the screenshot in that browser and presents it to you.

There are several different views available to you, as follows:

1-Up View – the default view, this allows you to see the screenshot of the web page in a single web browser.

2-Up View – the view I use the most, you can compare screenshots from two different browsers side by side to see where your web page may differ in one browser over another.

Onion Skin View – an interesting feature and places the screenshot of one browser over the other in a semi-transparent view, allowing you to see more easily the differences between each browser.

Additionally, there are the following features:

Smart Align – allows you to select a specific point on your screenshot and then determine which of the other web browsers display the screenshot at exactly the same alignment. This helps to pick up graphics or other elements that may be slightly out of line from browser to browser that you cannot easily see.

Delay – sets a delay for any animations that come in or start after a certain number of seconds.

Integration – Browserlab integrates with CS5 but I am not sure how, as I don’t own a copy and so have not covered that particular aspect in this review.

Screenshots rather than full testing

Adobe Browserlab only takes screenshots of your web page to display in each browser. This means that you can only realistically check for layout issues rather than being able to actually browse the website with that web browser. It also means that you will not be able to pick up JavaScript issues or items that may occur as you navigate around the site.

For full testing you need to use something such as CrossBrowserTesting.com or Spoon.net/browsers.

Browser Sets

This allows you to set up groups of browsers that you would like to test your web page in. You could create browser sets to test in all the IE browsers for instance or a list of browsers that you support as standard or any browsers that you don’t have readily available.

Supported Browsers

Adobe Browserlab supports all of the main web browsers including the following:

Windows:

• Internet Explorer 6
• Internet Explorer 7
• Internet Explorer 8
• Internet Explorer 9 Beta
• Firefox 2
• Firefox 3
• Firefox 3.6
• Firefox 4 Beta
• Chrome 7
• Chrome 8

Mac:

• Firefox 3
• Firefox 3.6
• Safari 3
• Safari 4
• Safari 5

The range of browsers supported is better than Mogotest but you do have to check each one manually for issues rather than being given a report in the case of using Mogotest.

Conclusion

Adobe Browserlab is a very useful browser testing tool. You gain access to browsers and browser versions you may not have easily available to you, in my case I don’t have Internet Explorer 6 or older versions of Firefox or Safari installed on any of my machines.

Adobe have created a tool that is pretty easy to use and if you have CS5 then Browserlab is probably even easier to use. The 2-up and onion skin views allow you to easily compare one browser with another but I can’t see myself using the smart align feature that much to be honest.

Browserlab is a good free (for now) service but we’ll see what happens if and when Adobe starts charging for it.

Sometimes however the issues can be much more important – whole pages can be rendered incorrectly by certain browsers and, if not checked, it may mean that users visiting your website with that browser cannot use the site.

Most designers, developers and project managers manually check the website in each of the main web browsers, which is time consuming and requires detailed and concentrated testing of each page or page type within the website.

Introducing Mogotest

Mogotest aims to make browser compatibility testing easier

However, all is not lost, a new web app aims to make the process much easier. Its called Mogotest and takes the strain out of browser testing by comparing how your website displays in each browser and giving you the results.

Free Test

To see Mogotest in action you can run a free page test from their home page, which tests a single page and shows you the results once completed so you get feedback straightaway. This is a great introduction to the Mogotest service and gives you instant access to many of the features of a paid plan. Mogotest includes up to 3 page tests for free.

Pricing

Starts at $15 per month for a personal plan, which gives you a single user account, up to 50 tests each month across a maximum of 3 sites. You don’t get certain features such as being able to test authenticated pages or being able to schedule tests. These features come along in the freelancer plan, which is $45 per month. Pricing goes up much more steeply after that with a Team plan costing $125 per month for 10 sites and the Agency plan is $595 for 50 sites.

Running A Test

To run a test you follow a 4 step process:

Configure Site – just input your website address and tick if you want to see the advanced options.

Mogotest is easy to get started

Create Test Group – here is where you add paths for each URL that you want to test specifically. If you have lots of URLs to test then this could be a bit more time consuming but nothing like how long it would take to test each URL manually.

It is also possible to schedule tests to run every day, every 2 days, etc., which is a great feature for sites that are undergoing regular updates. Within this step you can also set whether the test should wait for any Ajax to load in before starting.

For my test I added 3 URLs, all for the WebDepend website including the home page, one of the service pages within the Website Testing section and the Blog main page.

Once you’re happy you save your test group and proceed to the next step.

Configure Authentication – you can set whether your site requires authentication, useful for being able to test password protected sites that are still in development or for testing pages within a members section.

Prepare Test Run – final step shows all the items you have configured and allows you to go back to edit settings before clicking on Run Test!

Test Results

Whilst the test is running you can view a Test In Progress page that shows how your test is coming along and the estimated time to complete (900 seconds) although my test took far less than that.

Once the test has run your screen shows 3 tabs:

Easily see which browsers your test failed in

Browser Compatibility Report – from the screenshot you can see that the WebDepend site’s blog page and home page did not pass for Firefox 3.5 on Linux (not a combination I regularly test for it must be said) but that all other tests passed successfully.

Clicking on the items that didn’t pass will display the browser rendering results where it will show the browser you have clicked on side by side with your reference browsers (mine is Firefox 3.5 on Windows) so you can easily pick out the differences.

Any issues will be displayed underneath the side by side view, in this case 3 elements for my Blog main page were incorrectly positioned in Firefox 3.5 on Linux when compared with Firefox 3.5 on Windows.

As it turned out, the issues that Mogotest had found were very minor problems but you can see how useful it is being able to find these problems by running a test rather than manually trying to pick out browser related problems.

Site Problems – shows any HTML or CSS validation errors, broken links, server errors, empty content warnings or redirects. Mogotest found 5 validation errors and warnings that were not picked up when I manually ran each page through W3C’s validator a couple of weeks ago.

Validation Reports – displays a list of the URLs you tested and shows which of those have problems. Clicking on a problem pages takes you to a view of the HTML for that page with row numbers against each line of code (very helpful) plus a list of the issues found underneath. Rolling your mouse over an offending line with also display the issues, which is very helpful when investigating the problems that need attention.

Once you have fixed any issues found, you can go back into Mogotest and click Retest in order to carry out the same tests again, which will hopefully now pass for each browser.

Conclusion

Overall, Mogotest is a really useful service. By automating a lot of the browser checking process it really does make life easier and will pick up lots of layout problems between browsers that could go unnoticed or take time to find.

However, some manual testing is still needed in my view, it is important to browse and use the website in each browser to notice issues that Mogotest is not yet capable of, such as Ajax related content or JavaScript menus.

The browser support could be extended, as Mogotest is running tests in Chrome 5 whereas we’re up to Chrome 9 now and there is currently no support for Mac browsers at all.

If you run tests regularly, across several sites, you could find yourself running out of available tests pretty quickly and needing to upgrade. Also, there doesn’t appear to be anywhere that I can see how many tests I’ve got left or if I could purchase a block of tests without having to upgrade to the next plan up.

When running tests, I was lucky in that there were a small number of issues found. I wonder for projects in early stages of development what happens when there are large amounts of problems to wade through and how easy it is to see the most important ones that need fixing first.

A good addition to any website tester’s, web developer’s or project manager’s list of testing tools to make life easier, Mogotest does do what it sets out to and can only get better from here.

Over on WebDepend, we’ve posted an article asking is your website ready for Christmas? Now is the time to review your site in detail and tackle any issues so that you can be confident your users will not hit any problems when trying to make a purchase.

We’re not just talking about site performance issues here although that is part of what a thorough website audit would normally include. Functional problems and browser related bugs can creep into your website left over from updates or other development work carried out on your site. Even SEO work can sometimes cause issues that need to be identified and resolved.

A website audit is essentially a manual undertaking although there are some testing tools that can help and point the way to further investigation required.

Tools For Functional Testing

For an automated scanning tool, I’ve found SortSite to offer good all round results and pick up issues across a range of different tests (or checkpoints as SortSite calls them) including broken links, standards compliance, browser compatibility, accessibility, usability and search engine issues.

SortSite can be a good starting point to get a feel for the overall quality of your website but I would always go through at least the main pages of the website manually to determine what issues were apparent and their relative importance.

SortSite also provide a free online version of their tool that allows you to scan up to 10 pages of your website.

Browser Compatibility Checking

There are a number of browser testing tools that allow you to check your website in a number of different web browsers.

A tool that aims to take a lot of the hassle out of browser testing is Mogotest, which checks that pages are consistent across a range of web browsers. You can also schedule tests to run automatically and get notifications of problems by email. Look out for our review of this tool coming soon.

Site Performance Tools

Heading into the main Christmas selling period you need to ensure that your website is performing well and can cope with the extra traffic.

A free web tool that I’ve found very useful in quickly reviewing the performance of a website or web page is WebPagetest, which checks to see how long each element of the web page takes to download and makes a series of suggestions as to how performance can be improved.

For load testing, to see how much traffic your website can cope with, there are a couple of affordable options including Load Impact, Loadstorm and Browsermob.

Web Standards

To validate your website against a number of accepted web standards, try one of the Validators and Accessibility Testing Tools we have listed in our Testing Tools Directory.

The most popular are W3C’s free HTML/XHTML validation service, their CSS validation service and for accessibility checking I often use Truwex Online.

SEO Tools

There are many SEO tools to audit your website’s SEO friendliness and performance, generally the best web tools are produced by SEOmoz. Simple crawl tests and HTTP tests can highlight problems with search engines indexing your content and confirm whether your HTTP status codes are correct.

Google Webmaster Tools is also a source of good information allowing you to find out how Google sees your site plus what search queries you are being found for and how many people are clicking on your site.

Prioritise Issues Found

When you find an issue or bug that needs to be dealt with make sure you use a bug tracking or issue tracking tool so you can not only keep track of everything you find but also prioritise those issues to be fixed first.

There is only a short amount of time to tackle issues before the peak Christmas sales period and so critical and important items should be resolved as a priority.

One such bug tracking tool I like is PivotalTracker, which is free and I find great for keeping up to date with bugs and issues across a number of projects. It is easy for a team to use and shows a prioritised backlog of issues for developers to work through.

Of course, even once you have used those testing tools you need to ensure you spend time reviewing the website manually and you will be surprised at what you can pick up.

If you would like someone to carry out a website audit on your behalf then look no further than WebDepend.

Is your website ready for Christmas? Let us know what challenges you faced in the comments.

Are you testing your websites with Google Chrome?

According to statistics from W3Schools.com, usage of Google Chrome has now risen to 16.7%.

That figure is in many ways not surprising because Google Chrome is an excellent web browser, is fast and does not crash as frequently as other browsers. What is surprising is that, whilst Chrome is still a long way behind Firefox at 46.4%, it is now ahead of IE8 (15.6%) and a long way ahead of IE7 (7.6%) and thankfully IE6 (7.2%), which is finally fading away.

Google Chrome’s share of the market continues to increase whilst all the major web browsers, except Opera, which picked up from 2.1% to 2.3% over the last month, are on a steady decline, including Firefox and Safari.

Now I’m not suggesting that this trend will continue, browser usage does fluctuate as new versions come out and entirely new browsers are launched.

What I am getting at in terms of Google Chrome’s greater market share, up from 10.8.% in January to 16.7% in July, is to make sure you are consistently testing your sites in Chrome.

Chrome Ahead of IE8

As I pointed out in a recent Tweet (please follow TestingWebSites by the way), the number of people using Google Chrome is now above IE8 and so you should be regularly testing in Chrome to pick up on any layout inconsistencies.

And there are quite a few that I have spotted when testing newly launched websites recently.

My belief is that the surge in Chrome usage over the last few months had caught a few web designers and developers out who traditionally test in IE6, IE7, IE8 and Firefox. I know from recent work with several digital agencies plus graphic design agencies and freelancers that there are still many who do not always test in Google Chrome.

Test With Google Chrome

If you don’t have Google Chrome installed already then you can get it from Google.com/chrome, available for PC, Mac or Linux. You can install it alongside Firefox and IE8 on a PC so can have all 3 accessible at once.

Google Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine, which is also used by Safari and a number of lesser used browsers. It is possible that by testing on Google Chrome that you may find issues also associated with the Safari browser.

If for some reason you don’t want to install Google Chrome then using a browser checking tool such as Adobe Browserlab or CrossBrowserTesting.com will help you pick up on any issues.

I recently covered 3 browser checking tools or you can view all 9 browser testing tools in the Testing Tools Directory, around half of which support Google Chrome although none yet support Chrome on a Mac as far as I can tell.

Do you currently include Google Chrome in your browser testing?

Browser checking tools allow you to test your website in a variety of different web browsers easily

Browser checking tools are important and can be a life saver, as they allow you to test or check your website in a variety of different web browsers.

It is not possible for many web designers and developers to have physical installations of each browser type and version on each operating system out there. I do know of digital agencies that have a number of testing PCs dotted around the development studio for quick testing of work or perhaps a testing server with 8 or 10 different browser versions and operating systems installed.

But for many of us, especially freelancers, having this number of browsers and operating systems at our finger tips is not possible unless we fork out money for the hardware ourselves and install the required browsers.

For instance, I have 3 computers, running Windows 7, Windows Vista and Mac OSX 10.5. On those computers I can test using the following browsers – IE7, IE8, Chrome, Firefox 3.6 (PC), Opera 10, Safari 3 (Mac) and Firefox 3 (Mac).

So that is a decent number of browsers, but there are times when I need to test on IE6 or a different version of Firefox, Safari or Chrome that I don’t have running on any of my machines. Plus, when new browsers are released, I have to decide whether I can accommodate it within my existing setup or whether I need to do things differently.

Thankfully, the last couple of years have seen a number of good browser checking software solutions launched, which allow me to check the website over in pretty much whichever browser I want installed on any of the main operating systems.

Here are 3 of the most popular browser checking tools taken from the relevant category of our Testing Tools Directory, which contains 9 browser testing tools in total.

CrossBrowserTesting.com

CrossBrowserTesting.com allows live testing and automated screenshots

Allows live testing on an OS and Browser of your choice plus the ability to take screenshots across a range of browsers.

Features:

• Offers live testing – for in depth testing, using the browser you need remotely
• Automated screenshots – to identify display issues
• From 150 minutes per month
• 1 week free trial
• Pricing starts at $20 per month

When you sign up you get access to the live testing and automated screenshot features, whilst all packages come with a 1 week free trial. Packages are based on a usage allowance with $20 per month getting you 150 minutes.

Browsrcamp

Browsrcamp focuses on Mac browsers

Focusing on web browsers running on a Mac operating system, such as Safari, Firefox and Flock, which allows those who don’t use a Mac to test the compatibility of their websites on Mac browsers.

Features:

• Gain access to 12 browsers on a remote machine including Safari, Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer plus other lesser known browsers.

With prices starting at $3 for a 2 day subscription, Browsrcamp represents good value for money for website testing on a wide range of Mac browsers.

Adobe Browserlab

Adobe Browserlab is free for a year if you sign up to CS Live before the end of April 2011

Now a part of Adobe’s CS Live, Browserlab integrates with CS5 allowing you to access it from Dreamweaver and starting testing straightaway.

Features:

• Zoom – allows you to zoom in to see more detail and spot bugs more easily
• Rulers and Guides – display rulers along the x and y axes and display a guideline at the point of the screenshot
• Screenshot Delay – you can take a screenshot several seconds after the page loads allowing time for flash animations to start to play and show content
• Customisable settings – configure up to 10 browsers sets for different projects
• Multiple viewing modes – compare 2 browsers side by side or overlay one over the top of another with the Onion Skin view
• Covers all leading browsers

If you sign up by end of April 2011 you get Adobe Browserlab free for a year as part of CS Live, which also includes CS Review, Acrobat.com and a couple of other online services.

Conclusion

I think each of the 3 browser testing services has its merits. Browserlab from Adobe has some good features, getting free use for a year is also a big bonus and, even if you don’t use their Creative Suite then Browserlab is still a good standalone testing suite.

CrossBrowserTesting.com was pretty much the first service to move beyond just taking screenshots and allow you to access the browser itself to conduct real testing. They have the widest range of operating system and browser combinations and so are worth a look from that point of view.

I would use Browsrcamp for any specific Mac browser that you can’t get on either Browserlab or CrossBrowserTesting.com or if you just need access for a short period of time, as $3 is peanuts for 2 days access.