Design, content and functionality are to many, the major components of building and launching a website. But then you notice links aren’t working properly, the contact form isn’t sending to your email address and the main video on the homepage won’t play. Then you figured out the one critical step you missed – testing.

Manual testing of a site can be both daunting and time consuming, but in order for a site to be successful, some kind of testing needs to be done.

What if there was a kind of testing that could automatically check whether your website is functioning properly?

Acceptance testing is a high level testing procedure that identifies whether a website is functioning to the specifications of the client.  It is an alternative to manual testing of a site, which usually takes several days to complete.

Acceptance testing operates on a fully integrated application meaning that they do not just test isolated pages or modules of your website, but perform a comprehensive test of the entire application.

The tests are usually written to validate that the implementation of a “User Story” is complete and stays that way over time. A user story is a short description of what the finished website should be able to do and is written by the client. For example, a user story designates whether or not a login form should be able to validate the username and password or what level of interactivity a module should have with a user.

Advantages of acceptance testing

1. The testing ensures that the application or website is fulfilling the expectations of the client
2. It evaluates when certain functionality of a site has completed its desired outcome
3. It ensures that a certain aspect of the site will not only work properly now but also in the future

There are several different types of acceptance testing software available. One of these is Selenium – an open source automated acceptance testing tool for web applications. It is a Firefox add-on that records your clicks, typing, and other actions to validate whether your site is working properly. You can play back the record in your browser to find errors and where they occurred in the programming.