Quality Assurance in Web Design and Development
Designing a website for your company can be a costly and time-consuming commitment and quality should always at the top of your design priorities.
A lot of trust is invested in your chosen web designer to fulfill the vision you have for your business website. Whether your website is a fully-integrated online business with an advanced content management system (CMS) or a small brochure website, the site serves an important role in your business. Your website is an important asset that should work for your business and give you a return on your investment. This is where quality assurance comes in.
Quality assurance, or QA for short, refers to planned and systematic production processes that provide confidence in a product’s suitability for its intended purpose. Your web designer should have a quality assurance process that ensures your website will meet the highest standard possible on all levels. QA covers all areas of your business website – from the interface design, accessibility and function, right down to each line of code that makes it work. Generally people only see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to quality, but every website element, no matter how small, needs to meet the same QA. The noticeable quality is the layout design and the way the website works, but the same quality needs to be reflected in each and every detail throughout the website. It’s this QA that defines the website’s quality and ensures you end up with an asset that lasts.
Think of it this way, you’ve bought a sexy new sports car that looks fantastic. Your budget was a bit tight so you decided to fit a 30-year-old bomb engine into the new sports body. The car will look good, but it’s not going to last, is it? Before long your sports car will break down and will have to be replaced. The same goes for websites – they might look good, but without solid quality assurance at every stage of development you won’t have a product that works for the long term. There will be no return on your investment.
Once a web design is complete, it should be tested by your users for quality assurance. Is your interface design consistent and does it reflect your business image accurately? Does the website do what it was designed to do in a user-friendly, functional manner? Has attention been paid to every section of the site? These are questions that must be asked as part of the quality assurance process. If you have a web design, look at the detail in the design, the way it functions from a user perspective, and even look at the source code to see if it looks clean.
At Big Click Studios we pay special attention to each and every component throughout the web design and web development process to ensure you end up with a premium website and an asset you will be proud to show off.
