3 web quality tests

Is your organization going to create a new website or ecommerce? Get to know 3 simple tests that when requested within the requirements you will considerably increase the web quality of your new site, which translates into a better user experience that in turn implies greater conversion.

• Introduction
• Test 1
• Test 2
• Test 3
• Other tests
• Exceptions
• Conclusion
• Notes

The recommendations apply to most cases with the exception of organizations that have an absurd (monopolistic) power or very specific websites that allow them to bypass web quality rules

Introduction

A good website must meet a series of subjective attributes according to the expectations of your users in your particular industry such as:

• Easy to navigate and use
• Correctly represent your brand
• Quality content
• Comply with the law
• Meet your business objectives (be able to sell, inform, measure behaviour, etc.)

Normally, web agencies meet these requirements according to the approval of the counterparty (client). Ideally, the purchase of the development service also includes the requirements of the IT, Marketing, Sustainability, Legal and specific departments that have the requirement. However, in most cases the work of defining requirements is poorly done or ignored altogether. The following tests are a simple way to increase the quality of your purchase, being possible to verify in deliveries.

Test 1

Pagespeed Insights PageSpeed Insights

Note: Alternatively Lighthouse Test, which is very similar and is accessed from the browser (Chrome) by accessing the console.

In Pagespeed Insights website, just enter the URL of the site. This can be easily checked by the manager/business owner/entrepreneur who buys the web development service.

Hint: Compare your site to your competition.

We recommend that you order a minimum of 90 (green color) for each category on both mobile and desktop. With this simple requirement, the vast majority of companies/agencies/freelancers that develop with platforms and with “copy/paste” methodology without paying attention to web quality are eliminated.

• SEO: It is quite easy to obtain the 100 score by complying with the minimum of good SEO, such as that the html document has a meta description, title, links that are findable by search engines among others. Ask for a minimum score of 90.
• Best Practices: Be especially careful about insights in security settings that can affect your site. Ask for a minimum score of 90.
• Accessibility: A category that can be very relevant in your industry. Simple things like color contrast (better readability) should be mandatory. Ask for a minimum score of 90.
• Performance: Without a doubt the most difficult category to achieve, especially on mobile. It requires using techniques in how html, scripts, stylesheets, and images are generated, transferred, and loaded. By asking for a score over 90, you’ll almost certainly be ahead of your competition, getting a site pretty fast ¹.

It is useful to consider a website not as a product to be purchased but as a service to be operated on a day-to-day basis ²

Test 2

Websitecarbon Websitecarbon.com

Websitecarbon calculates the CO2 emissions of a website. Regardless of the fact that the methodology to calculate it may be questioned (read Sustainable Web Introduction) it is a fact that your website produces CO2. Lower CO2 emissions not only contributes to less pollution but also requires optimizing the website with the advantages of producing lower operating costs and greater conversion potential by improving the initial load attributes, cache management, speed, among others.

Our recommendation: ask for a maximum initial load of 300kb-500kb from your home page. Demanding an A or A+ grade requires optimized development, filtering out copy/paste agencies and acquiring all the benefits of the sustainable web.

Test 3

SSL Labs SSL Test

This is a test that analyzes your site’s SSL configurations, ranking them with grades according to the security level of the configuration. This can be especially relevant for ecommerce or systems that handle sensitive information (payments, medical records, etc.).

Ask for an A grade or higher.

Other tests

There are several additional tests that you can require when buying your website development, such as:

• Test for broken links.
• Test that your site works well in different browsers.
• Test that your site works well if the visitor uses VPN.
• Test for security configuration of http headers.
• Test for traffic overload.
• Test that your site works well without Javascript enabled or shows friendly errors.
• Test for friendly bug pages.
• Test by typos in content and duplicate content.
• Test accessibility in depth.
• Among others

Additionally, once in production and operation, SEO and marketing characteristics such as backlinks, search engine rankings, A/B testing and user behavior (metrics) should be tested.

Exceptions

A website by definition has to meet the business objectives that motivate its existence, from mandatory regulations to have information available, to being a marketing and sales tool.

Depending on a case-by-case basis, the recommendations set forth here may not apply. But most of them are exceptions. For example, if you are creating a private chat system for military use, it is very likely that you will have a discrepancy in terms of security with SSL testing, that certain accessibility and SEO attributes of Pagespeed Insights test will be ignored, etc. Ditto, if your market power is very high or it’s a private app. Nonetheless, it is an excellent starting point.

Conclusion

How to buy is up to you. However, by asking for good score/grades in the indicated tests you will be able to measure quality objectively ³, you will be able to show these results to relevant stakeholders and you will be one step ahead of your competition.

Notes

1. Page speed insights test measures performance with simulated data and is a great starting point. However, to obtain accurate results of your site’s performance, it is necessary to test with real data, which is a posteriori (website delivered and operating with users). Injeniero can help you with this. ↩
2. IT Principles Guide (ITIL). ↩
3. It can be argued that the tests indicated are somewhat subjective to the devices, internet connection, browser settings and location used to perform the tests and also that the results are not deterministic. While true, for practical purposes for an average B2B company, it’s enough level of objectivity and certainly a wise approach to buy the service of web development. ↩