A Precise Checklist for Responsive Web Design Testing

Mobile-friendly websites tend to operate on a phone or tablet. But, it may hamper user experience as the content on the screen displayed differently according to the screen size. Based on GSMA Intelligence data, it is estimated that there are over 5.20 billion unique mobile phone users in the world, and the number of smartphone users is increasing each year. 

This is the reason why people shifted to responsive web design, as more users tend to browse things on mobiles or tablets rather than computers or laptops. As the figures are expecting to grow more rapidly in the coming years, non-responsive websites are losing their audience.

What is Responsive Web Design Testing? 

In this fast-paced environment, your website should be easy to use and should look good as well. Users tend to stay on the website that responds well to their devices, and Responsive Web Design (RWD) can save you from losing your business and potential customers. Responsive web designs can shrink, enlarge, hide, show, or adjust their content to look good on any device, making the website flexible to the user device or the search engine.

Following the right approach to run your responsive websites seamlessly is necessary. In this article, we will provide a checklist for responsive web design requirements that you need to test. Let us begin!

Factors Associated With the Responsive Design Testing

Before attempting responsive design testing, there are so many factors to consider to fulfill this significant task. It is necessary to make the strategy of this testing because you are going to render on all browsers/devices, and you may not be able to finish testing your responsive website. So, here are the set of constraints to analyze responsive websites keeping it in a realistic timeframe.

1. Parameters for designs: It is necessary to plan design baselines and visually compare a web page against its intended idea of your website in the browser/platform.
2. Give priority to Popular devices/browsers: Find the most popular browser and platforms in a region based on your target users. Aim almost 10-20 popular devices, browsers, and operating systems and test on those devices.
3. Discover the customer demands: Identify the niche of your website and enhance the core features that must render uniformly on all of those browsers and devices accurately.
4. Work according to the requirements: The requirements vary from person to person. The tester should find out the requirements clearly and accordingly and work on them to fulfill the customer’s expectations.

The Ultimate Responsive Web Design Testing Checklist

Below is a helpful checklist that can help you to test your website:

• Test Over Right Browsers and Devices

1. From google analytics, collect mobile and web traffic data.
2. Make the browsers, mobile devices, and operating systems from the most popular to the least popular that your users used to access the websites.
3. Now test the responsiveness of your websites on different devices types such as mobiles, desktops or any custom size that may not be very popular or not available in the preset of the tool you are usingLT Browser.
   
   

• And keep on checking the browser/ device for every change you make on the website while designing.
• Remove the inappropriate devices or operating system and replace it with a new one.

Note: Give priority to the core feature of your website and content for testing. Ensure that the content of your website appears on every device despite the screen size.

• Check the Performance of Your Website

1. Make sure that the device does not take so much to load on the screen.
2. Test the time taken by your website object to adapt to the screen based on the varying devices, browsers, and internet speed.
3. Keep the ratio of website object size across screen sizes seamless and customize the large content accordingly.

• Test the View of Your Content on the Website

1. Make sure that your content remains readable across multiple browsers and devices despite the resolution and screen size.
2. Also, ensure that the color, size, and font of your website maintain consistency.
3. At the same text, buttons, videos, and images need to be in order and should not move out of the frame.
4. Content should scroll smoothly and navigate easily using the swipe gestures.
5. The content that you want to focus on should be visible to everyone and maintains a constant user experience across devices.

• Other Testing Factors

1. Test the responsiveness of the website pop-up ads.
2. Respond seemingly to the apps running in the background, phone calls, and incoming messages.
3. Test on multiple devices to test the mouse, keyboard, and touchpad functions.
4. Ensure that the icons respond correctly to the finger tap feature on touchscreen devices.
5. Websites should adapt to the location change and traffic spikes.

• Checkers for Web Developers

1. Ensure that the browser supports a given HTML, CSS, or JS property and display correctly on the screen.
2. Write correct and more cross-browser compatible CSS and JavaScript queries.
3. Ensure that your web page is loading as you expected, and it is optimized for different devices.
4. The font type and font size are adapting to the environment of multiple devices perfectly.
5. Make sure that the user-interaction is active across the multiple platforms and able to collect data.
6. Image size and placement should be correct, and text should align during the development of the website. 

Best Responsive Web Design Testing Tools

If you’re new to web design testing, and if it seems overwhelming. Luckily, several tools can make responsive design testing more comfortable. There are web-based and tools directly to be installed on devices.

Here are some of the best tools available that make the responsiveness testing of the website quite convenient. 

• LambdaTestLT Browser covers more than 25+ devices and operating system combinations. It has become a widely-used responsive design testing tool rated the best by several market evaluators. Moreover, LambdaTest itself offers an extensive set of web-based tools comprising versatile and advanced responsive testing options thereon too.
  
  

• Google Resizer is Google’s testing tool that enables users to adjust the dimensions with a simple click easily. 
• Am I Responsive is a quick, simple, and easy-to-use responsive testing tool that uses drag and drop for arranging the page layout.
• XRespond is a modern responsive testing tool, through which you can test multiple devices and view the end-result side-by-side.
• Screenfly is a responsive testing tool, which has the feature of pixel measurements. You can view static screens or enable scrolling, depending on what you’re testing as well.
• Browserstack, an easy-to-use tool, that can not only test a wide range of desktop browsers on Windows and Mac but, also Android and iOS mobile devices and the different browsers supported by each device.
• CrossBrowser Testing is an all-in-one browser testing platform. You can run tests on 1500+ desktop and mobile browsers, also automated tests on real iOS, Androids, & other desktop browsers.

Why Perform Responsive Web Design Testing

Responsive web design testing ensures that the website looks good on all devices. It makes sure that information and page elements are visible on the screen correctly, no matter what device you view them on. Web pages adapt to the smaller screen size on smartphones and tablets and change the way it displays each time it loads on different screen sizes.

Responsive web design is essential for web developers and testers to provide a reliable and consistent customer experience on all types of devices, browsers, and operating systems.

With the growing number of device types and screen sizes of smartphones and tablets, it is necessary to consider mobile users and provide them similar website experience. Responsive web design testing ensures that the mobile website one that loads on smaller devices can adjust the content on that screen.

To reach out to more and more audiences and make customers, you must provide similar content or information to different visitors. So perform responsive web design testing and avoid the risk of giving an average experience to your mobile/tablet visitors.

Website visitors tend to stay on the user-friendly website. Therefore, it is also great for search engine optimization (SEO).

Wrapping Up

A Responsive Website Designing testing is not hard with the right tools and approach. You can test your website with the help of the checklist mentioned above and design a web platform that meets your needs and provides a seeming web experience to all your users, no matter the type of device they use.

Responsive web design testing offers endless benefits. The tools and functions of responsive design have evolved as well. It is moving towards the latest technology like Virtual Reality (VR) to Augmented Reality (AR) to become a part of the recent trends to match the mobile devices, laptop, and desktops layout and features.

With users’ availability on multiple platforms, it is essential to provide an extraordinary mobile-friendly experience. As the technology is advancing day by day, operating systems, new devices, and the latest browsers are coming out, and that makes responsive design testing a never-ending process.

That means you need to keep refreshing the list of browsers, devices, and operating systems to make sure that your website is being responsive and adapting to the environment of those new platforms.