Automation Testing and Why It’s Crucial for Web Development and WordPress

by Vipe Team in WordPress Development; Published on 09.11.2022 Last updated on 26.05.2023

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A question to all fellow developers out there: Can you even imagine your work without testing? What about automation testing as opposed to manual one?

We know, we know – perhaps you’re already wondering why our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development is starting with a rhetorical question. All jokes aside, our team strongly understands the multitude of benefits testing delivers in our daily lives as professional developers. Without it, the whole concept of software and web development can quickly turn out to be quite a handful: Imagine deploying a project without even knowing for sure whether it meets certain standards in terms of performance and usability!

Essentially, this has nothing to do with the developer’s skills and work expertise – even the greatest of teams in web development always use testing as the ultimate method to check the quality of their work. Testing ensures the entire web ecosystem of a certain project – it’s thanks to this process of trial and error that we are able to debug a project prior to its release, making sure we offer dazzling performance and user experience.

Join us today as we are about to enter the realms of testing in the context of web development. We’ll discuss why testing is so important, we’ll focus our attention on automation testing and we’ll try to name its many benefits in comparison to manual testing. Sounds intriguing? Let’s jump straight into the topic!

First Thing First: What Is Testing and Why It’s So Important in Web and Software Development?

Before we dive straight into the topic of automation testing, let’s first focus on testing in general.

In software and web development, developers need to come up with useful, beneficial, functional and issue-free solutions in terms of software creation. Their job is to design, build from scratch, deploy and gradually update and upgrade various types of software which will then be used by customers for a great variety of actions, requests and tasks. Initially, each type of software should be up to the highest standard in terms of performance and effectiveness.

Imagine owning an online store. Of course, you’d need the developer to add a virtual shopping cart to your platform so that customers can easily visualize their shopping process – they can see the added items, their number, availability, delivery options, etc. What actually allows this whole process to happen is up to the developers’ team. Their main goal is to figure out a way in which this virtual shopping cart can function without any errors and issues whatsoever. You can imagine how frustrating it could be when customers cannot purchase a specific item due to a failure in the shopping cart software.

This example can be easily used for pretty much every other software whose goal is to answer the customers’ requests and deliver the desired results.
Our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development believes you all know where we are going with this – without any further testing, how can a developer know whether or not they managed to create, deploy and maintain a working piece of software?

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Testing in web and software development is the process when software is checked for issues and problems so that failure could be easily prevented before deployment. Its main goal is to check whether the software does exactly what it’s designed to do. In enterprise web development, LMS systems and eCommerce platforms properly working software is the key to success and customer satisfaction.

How Exactly Do Developers Benefit From Testing?

As we mentioned, the developer’s job is to design, create, build, deploy and maintain a specific project by establishing useful and properly working software. In order for the process to go as smoothly as possible, the developers’ community uses testing as the primary method of finding issues and bugs.
Here’s a short list of how testing actually benefits both developers and customers:

Testing helps a project satisfy its customers’ needs – there’s nothing more frustrating than a platform that keeps on failing with its constant errors, issues and bugs that prevent entirely the customers’ intent;
It ensures the product’s highest quality – essentially, that’s every developer’s team’s main goal;
Testing reduces the risk of project failure due to problematic pieces of software – developers can deploy software or a project once they’ve tested it;
It drastically improves performance – everyone wants software to do what it’s supposed to do;
Software testing is cost-effective – imagine the effort and money saved once the testing process showcases bugs that can be quickly fixed before the software deployment;

Manual Testing vs. Automation Testing – Knowing The Difference

Once we’ve covered testing’s many benefits and showcased why it’s so important in web and software development, now it’s time for our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development to discuss the two major types of testing developers rely on.

Manual Testing in Today’s Web and Software Climate

As we’ve already mentioned, testing in web and software development has one specific goal only – to ensure the software pieces are up and running, providing functional and impeccable project results.

In testing, various testing software is being used in order to run specific processes and check which ones of them manage to pass the tests. Once the test is performed, it gives the developers useful information about whether there are bugs, issues and errors that, essentially, need fixing before the project deployment.

In manual testing, after all those tests are run and provided thorough test reports, we rely on the human factor to identify and debug the faulty processes. In a nutshell, manual testing is the ultimate combo between testing software and human interaction. Its main goal is to find critical issues in the project, pointing out to the developing team what needs further improvement and adjustments. After the test has been performed, the developer needs to report its results and then manually debug each one of the issues before running the test again, making sure everything’s looking great the second time around.

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While our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development is a big fan of manual testing (since we’ve always appreciated a professional developer’s set of skills and debugging abilities), we need to be clear: Manual Testing, even though timeless and traditional, offers quite a handful of disadvantages. Here are some of them.

Manual Testing’s Disadvantages

One of the main disadvantages of manual testing actually has to do with its main characteristic: The Human factor – while developers worldwide are often experts in what they do and are trained to identify and successfully debug issues, there’s always room for a human error somewhere in the process of debugging. This can ultimately lead to more mistakes and delays in the project execution.
Manual Testing requires skilled professionals so it’s not really cost-effective – if an enterprise lands in the category SME (small to medium enterprises), the truth is it hardly has enough profit yet to cover the expense of hiring a top-notch developer who is excellent at manual testing and debugging software.
At some point manual testing can quickly become a tedious task that not many developers enjoy doing – in a dynamic and fast-paced professional field such as software and web development, any tedious and boring activity can quickly lead to dissatisfaction and burnout.

Of course, all the above-mentioned disadvantages don’t depict a truthful picture when it comes to manual testing. Essentially, this testing method has advantages that make it still vital and important in today’s web-developing climate. To name a few, manual testing is oftentimes the only plausible testing method – usually, MT can be used for any type of application or software, while automation testing still meets certain limitations and boundaries.

Automation Testing: A Glimpse Into the Future of Web and Software Testing

Automation Testing’s goal is also to provide thorough reports in terms of an application’s or software’s state when it comes to performance, structure and effectiveness.

What’s different here is that automation testing finishes up the entire task by itself: While manual testing performs the test and points out the errors and bugs that need fixing, automation testing ends up debugging those same errors without the need for human interaction, other than supervision and further checking.

It’s no wonder that today’s technologies have come up with a solution like this. We live in a world where everything’s being automated so testing is no exception. As a matter of fact, it’s the next logical step in terms of software and web technologies.

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Even though automation testing is still incapable of debugging certain types of software and errors (ad hoc testing is a good example here since its goal is to break the software into pieces in order to identify errors early on), it surely provides plenty of advantages. They, as well as the modern and autonomous approach, promise to put automation testing on the web and software development map with the hope of further improvements and constant upgrades.

Automation Testing’s Advantages Are Well Worth the Try

Automation Testing uses software tools to report and debug software errors and mistakes which makes the entire process of testing rather autonomous and independent.
It’s cost-effective since it doesn’t require having expert debugging developers on demand – that’s incredibly important for enterprises since they can use the budget for further improving their services and customer solutions.
It allows developers to focus on other exciting tasks and duties not having to deal with long reports and manual debugging – automation testing quickly gets rid of the boredom and frustration factor. Of course, this doesn’t mean an expert developer won’t have to go through the reports and the debugging cycle to make sure everything’s up and running properly.
In fact, the majority of agile projects use indeed automation testing – it’s quickly setting up a standard for itself in the industry.

At first, automation testing can appear to be the ultimate go-to solution for every other software or web project. However, our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development doesn’t believe in a good or bad testing approach – while manual and automation testing do share some differences in their approach to software debugging, this doesn’t mean the one is better than the other. They are just different. In reality, the thoughtful and smart combination of the two methods promises to deliver the greatest results – there are software projects that definitely need both manual and automation testing in the development of different stages.

Automation Testing Promises to Improve So Embark on The Journey Today

What great times to be alive! We are constantly witnessing growth, improvements and innovation. Automation testing is the result of people’s never-ending desire to upgrade things – work processes, task execution and achieving better and better results.

Our Enterprise WordPress Agency for Development is certain that there’s a bright future ahead of both manual and automation testing – used wisely and effectively, those two testing methods can really do wonders when it comes to project development, regardless of whether used separately or together.

So the next time you are in desperate need of finding a different approach to testing software, why not focus on automation testing? Who knows, perhaps it will help you debug like a pro!