We see often that companies do not test their website themselves, but let their customers do it for them it seems…the real customer that is.
There are mainly 3 reasons for that
1. First it is the “Time Constraint”
A lot of time has been spent on the contract, design, pictures and text, and testing is usualy at the end…. The deadline has been set already, so no time to test. Our advice on this is that even when the deadline is set, please do the testing as much as you can. And above all do the testing also whith people that were not part of the project Team. Reparing errors is very costly, frustrating and time consuming.
2. Second is knowledge. Project teams that built sites with only programmers and designers and do also the testing are not the end-users and do in many cases have not the knowledge or the view on how to use the website in the first place. Tip : 2 or 3 members of the organisation need to participate in the Project. These people need to be on the “operations level” , the ones that realy use the site.
3. Complexity
Building a website is not that complex anymore these days. However, the requirements from the start seem to drift away and more and more stuff is added to the site. Adding complexity in the project. Discussions, compatibily issues, design errors. This will all pile up and in the end….it will not work as it was supposed to…but “it works according to the specs” is usually the end comment