Remote working has become a standard process in the past few months, especially after the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, as companies have to enable their employees to work from home. And looking at the current scenarios, we can assume that it will become a daily routine for everyone to work remotely for some time.
Although every industry is affected by the pandemic, software companies have noticed a decrease of 10-25% in their revenue. Thus, it is crucial to minimize this drop as much as possible by enabling cross-browser testing, as your website needs to function properly in every browser in order to improve your website leads.
But, implementing cross-browser testing has become a significant challenge for companies during this lockdown, as they don’t have access to an in-house team and resources. Although remote testing is still an option that can be carried easily from different locations, it requires proper planning and management.
In this article, we will help you learn how you can test your web app remotely without having an in-house team and infrastructure.
Right Approach to Test your Site Remotely
Cross browser testing could be a complicated process if you don’t have the right approach in place. For example, users can visit your site from any device, browser, or operating system combination, and there could be multiple combinations like this. Thus, to test your website effectively on every combination, you need proper planning and strategy.
- Know your Audience
Before stepping into cross-browser testing, it is essential to analyze the user base of your website and what browsers or devices are used to access it. For example, if you’re going to test an already published website, then you can Google Analytics or any other tool to know about your audience. However, if you haven’t launched your web app yet, then look for your competitors or similar websites user base to analyze the audience.
Also, focus on tracking the most used browsers and operating systems to target a specific audience who would be interested in your site.
- Create a Cross Browser Testing Matrix
Creating a cross-browser matrix means listing the browsers and operating systems that you want to test for your website compatibility. Doing so will help you eliminate the unnecessary browsers and operating systems that are not used to access your site. For example, let’s consider that some of your web elements won’t function properly on Firefox, but you cannot remove those elements from your site, then removing the browser from the list would be an ideal option for cross-browser testing.
The primary goal of creating a cross browsers testing matrix is to eliminate the browser/OS combinations that won’t be used much to access your site.
After analyzing the audience and creating a browser testing matrix, you are ready to perform cross-browser testing for your web app. But, considering the fact that employees are working from home, and they don’t have access to the device labs, it could be daunting to perform cross-browser testing.
Also, if you’re planning to set up your own on-premise infrastructure, it will be very time-consuming and struggling. Continuous communication is another challenge that testers might face while executing cross-browser testing from their homes.
So, the only viable option to execute cross-browser testing remotely is to use a cloud-based testing platform, which can eliminate challenges like communication between testers, setting up virtual machines, and sharing information. And we believe that LambdaTest is the most reliable and budget-friendly cloud-based testing platform that you can use for cross-browser testing.
Why Choose Cloud-based Cross Browser Testing?
Cloud-based cross-browser testing allows you to test your website on remote devices and virtual machines while controlling the entire process from your system. An ideal cloud-based testing platform like LambdaTest can help you test your site easily, quickly, and within budget. There are numerous advantages of using cloud-based cross-browser testing, some of which includes:
- Quick and Safe testing
A cloud-based cross-browser testing platform provides quick and accurate testing results, as it allows you to switch between browsers, devices, and operating systems within a few seconds to test your site. Moreover, if you have already figured out the browsers and operating systems that you want to test for your web app, then it becomes even more accessible.
- Integrated with Multiple Browsers and OS
Cloud-based testing platforms are usually integrated with a combination of browsers, OS, and devices. For example, LambdaTest provides you with more than 2000 browsers, OS, and device combinations to test your web application across almost every browser and their versions, such as Chrome, Safari, UC Browser, Edge, etc. Even if you want to test your website on the Internet Explorer with Windows XP, you can quickly execute it with LambdaTest.
- Scalability
Although scaling is not a major issue for cross-browser testing, sometimes it is required to scale up and down the testing process based on your web app. And using cloud-based cross-browser testing tools, you can scale the testing process as much as you can.
- Quick Up-time for Systems
Most employees don’t have fixed working hours while working remotely from various places, which means the system, should be up all the time to give access to the employees and execute testing anytime they want. A cloud-based cross-browser testing platform ensures that every employee gets high up-time to access the tool even in different time zones.
- Continuous Communication
Continuous communication and collaboration is another factor that is required while executing cross-browser testing. Before executing any scripts, testers need to discuss it with their team leaders or developers, which becomes a significant challenge while working remotely. A cloud-based testing platform makes it easier for team members to communicate continuously.
- Easy Code Sharing
While executing selenium automation tests with remote systems, it is crucial to ensure that they run with the same efficiency as on physical devices. A cloud-based cross-browser testing platform ensures this efficiency, as well as it provides you with multiple languages to execute automated tests.
- Information Sharing
While testing a web app, testers often need to share information like screenshots, comments, videos, etc. with their team members. Cloud-based cross-browser testing tools make it easier to access all these processes for all team members while making them feel like they are sitting next to each other.
- Zero Setup Cost
When you use a cloud-based cross-browser testing platform, you don’t need any additional physical device to execute cross-browser testing across different browsers and operating systems. Also, there is no setup cost involved in the cloud-based testing platform, as it will run in your browser with an internet connection.
Testing your Web App with LambdaTest
After knowing the benefits of a cloud-based cross-browser testing tool, you can begin your cross-browser compatibility testing journey with LambdaTest. This cloud-based testing tool allows you to test your website across more than 2000 browsers. There are multiple ways in which you can execute cross-browser testing with LambdaTest. Here, we will give you an overview of each testing process.
Real-time Testing with LambdaTest
Real-time testing enables testers to test a web app on various browsers and devices across all operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. LambdaTest provides real-time live interactive testing experience with virtual machines that are hosted on their servers.
To execute real-time testing with LambdaTest, you need to create an account or sign in with your existing account on LambdaTest. After signing to your account, go to the dashboard and select the ‘Real-time testing’ option from the left pane.
Now, enter the URL for your site and select the browsers on which you want to test your site, and then click Start.
LambdaTest will start testing your web app for cross-browser compatibility across the selected browsers, and provide you with the accurate results within a few minutes.
Screenshot Testing
It is another great feature offered by LambdaTest that allows you to take full-page screenshots of your web pages across multiple browsers and operating systems in a single test session. With the Screenshot feature, you can also test your locally hosted web pages quickly.
Besides, it is elementary to perform screenshot testing of your web app with LambdaTest. All you need to do is select the Screenshot option under Visual UI Testing on the dashboard, provide the URL for your site, select the browsers on which you want to perform the testing, and click Capture.
LambdaTest will start capturing the screenshots for your web app across the selected browsers. Once it is complete, you will be able to download the screenshots on your system to analyze them.
Responsive Testing
The responsive testing feature of LambdaTest allows you to check the responsiveness of your website across all the browsers, OS, and devices. With this functionality, you will be able to analyze the visual appearance of your site across multiple browser combinations.
To check the responsiveness of your site with LambdaTest, select the ‘Responsive’ option below the Visual UI test menu. In the opened screen, enter the URL of your website and make a selection of monitor size on which you want to check your web app responsiveness, and then click Generate.
You can also select mobile and desktop versions provided by LambdaTest to execute responsive testing on particular devices.
Moreover, a new feature named – LT Browser, has been recently added to LambdaTest for responsive testing of websites across multiple devices and viewports. Using LT Browser, you can quickly execute live testing of your site across more than 25 devices at once.
Also, you can create your own custom devices with multiple screen sizes to examine the responsiveness of your site on various screen resolutions.
However, if we consider the number of browsers, operating systems, and their continuous updates, then cross-browser testing of a site could be very time consuming and hectic. Thus, it is recommended to automate the cross-browser testing with Selenium to reduce the testing time and improve testing efficiency.
Selenium Automation for Cross Browser Testing
Selenium automation is a process of testing cross-browser compatibility of a web app in the form of a set of instructions. In selenium automation, test scripts are executed automatically at different time intervals. Besides, automation test scripts can be run repeatedly regardless of their size and complexity. For example, if you want to test the latest version of the Firefox browser for your site, then all you need to do is add that version to your browser matrix and rerun the test for cross-browser compatibility.
Another significant advantage of selenium automation tests is that you don’t have to sit in front of the computer to examine the tests continuously. You can run automation tests round the clock without keeping an eye on them.
LambdaTest gives you the freedom to write automation test scripts for cross-browser compatibility testing of your web app across all major browsers and operating systems. It even allows you to schedule your test scripts so that they can be executed at a later time as per your preferences.
Selenium automation surely provides efficient and fast testing results for web app compatibility testing across various browsers, and it can be improved significantly by implementing parallel testing in LambdaTest Selenium Grid.
LambdaTest is integrated with Selenium Grid that allows you to execute selenium testing scripts in parallel for fast testing results. For instance, if you need to run 10 different tests and each of them takes 5 minutes to execute, then the total time taken by them would be 50 minutes if you execute them sequentially one after another.
But, if you execute all the test cases in parallel with 10 concurrences, then the overall time taken would be 5 minutes only. And that’s how parallel testing can save you enough time to test other aspects of your site. Parallel testing is hugely beneficial in accelerating the entire cross-browser testing process.
Final Words
Corona pandemic has affected everyone’s lives and messed things up in an unexpected way. Employees are bound to work from their homes and companies are not finding reliable ways to keep up with their businesses. In these hard times, it is crucial to maintain the online presence of your business by ensuring the compatibility of your site across all the browsers and operating systems. So, to help you deal with the uncertainties and keep up with your site’s compatibility, we have mentioned a unique and fast way to execute cross-browser compatibility testing of your web app.
