Best Practices for SaaS Application Testing

Software as a Service or SaaS is a cloud-based software delivery model where the cloud provider develops and makes the software available to its customer over the Internet. Examples of SaaS include – Google G Suite, Dropbox, Canva, etc. 

SaaS helps organizations avoid installing and maintaining software on individual computers and reduce expenses like – hardware acquisition costs, installation, and maintenance costs. Today, almost 70% of applications used in a company are SaaS.

Source

Organizations can achieve scale and increase the productivity of their workforce by using this web-based software. 

What is SaaS-Based Application Testing?

Simply put, SaaS-based application testing is the process of testing SaaS applications. It ensures the quality of the web-based software. SaaS application testing approach involves testing for security, performance, cross browser compatibility, functionality, availability, and data integration. 

Testing the application under real user conditions allows SaaS companies to identify issues before release, deploy faster, increase return on investment, and provide the best user experience.

Why Should you Test your SaaS Application?

Whether you develop your SaaS application or already offer software via the cloud, continuous testing is relevant because SaaS testing is an ongoing process aimed at pre-release bug detection and offers constant improvements after the release.

Below are the reasons you should test your SaaS application 

• Cross Browser Compatibility

As the SaaS application is accessed from the cloud, the first and foremost thing that you should perform is cross browser testing. This is because your application is accessible by users from different operating systems, browsers, and versions. Given the browser fragmentation, your application must be compatible across all these browsers. 

BrowserStack allows you to test on 3000+ combinations of different browsers and versions. You can start testing instantly by signing up for the product. BrowserStack also allows you to perform debugging using its advanced Dev Tools feature. 

Optimizely substantially increased the number of tests and deployments after moving to BrowserStack. 

Perform Cross Browser Testing on BrowserStack

• Detection of Bug

Testing helps identify bugs and issues early in the product’s life cycle. This ensures that the application is bug-free. Identifying bugs early helps in reducing costs and resources. It plays a pivotal role in making changes. It is easier to make changes to the application while it is built than to update it once the application is released to production. 

• Saves time   

Testing early helps identify bugs early, saving time spent later on replicating the issue post-release and resolving them. It also helps implement design/code changes swiftly based on the requirements. Teams can perform automation testing to test and identify the issues quickly.

• Improves the scale and reliability of the software

You need to constantly upgrade your product to match the user requirements and stay ahead of the competition. Testing not only ensures that the feature’s functionality is as per requirements but also makes sure that the existing features do not break.

• Saves cost 

The cost of a bug is 30x higher when identified post-release compared to the one identified during the coding phase. Testing allows you to identify these bugs early and rectify them immediately.

• Maintains the quality of the system

SaaS-based application testing helps in maintaining the overall quality of the product. According to a study, every SaaS product has at least nine competitors in the first year. Testing applications helps to withstand competition by elevating your customer experience and improving customer retention and engagement.

SaaS Testing Challenges

SaaS software enables businesses to reach a greater level of productivity while bringing significant challenges. 

1. Release cycles are generally shorter due to frequent upgrades and feature releases. This does not give QA teams the time needed to test the application. Check out tactics to improve release cycles.
2. Shorter release cycles also do not provide the time required to perform security testing all the time.
3. Lack of devices to perform cross browser testing. SaaS applications give users the flexibility to access the application from any device. Maintaining a device lab to perform cross-browser or cross-device testing is expensive. Therefore most of the time, tests are not performed on the necessary devices to ensure cross browser compatibility.
4. Challenges in performing tests from different locations as the product can be accessed by a large number of users across the globe.

Best Practices for SaaS Application Testing

 It is essential to run a wide range of tests on SaaS applications, but some areas need special attention.

• Browser Compatibility: Since the applications are provided via the Internet, it is essential to test the number of browsers it can support and increase the compatibility with all the versions of different browsers to give a smooth experience to the user. For a better experience, browser compatibility testing includes actions such as page validation, alignment checks, CSS, HTML, XHTML validation, and video & audio formats. This ensures that the product can run in different browsers, browser versions, operating systems, and devices.

• Security Concerns: Robust security testing of SaaS applications is necessary to determine whether the application is secure from digital attacks and vulnerabilities. A comprehensive testing strategy uncovers any weakness in the application, creating tough test cases and increasing test coverage.
  

• Performance: Developing extensive performance testing capabilities to ensure the expected output is vital. All the variables affecting the application’s agility, responsiveness, and stability must be a part of the test. Tools like BrowserStack, and Apache JMeter, would help to effectively do performance testing on apps or websites to be developed.

• Geolocation Testing: Geolocation testing is when a web or mobile application is tested from IPs of various locations. Some of the testing parameters include testing notifications, performance, etc. One of the important reasons to consider geolocation testing is an amendment to security. Moreover, you can perform localization testing to test country-specific functionalities like language, currency, etc. 

• Stress Testing: The test must figure out how the application reacts to different stress and the outcome it provides. This is essential for ensuring the application does not collapse under pressure.

Apart from these tests, reliability testing to reduce the risk of failure, upgrade testing to provide timely updates of new features, quality testing, and scalability testing are some tests to pay close attention to.

BrowserStack allows you to perform manual efficiently and automation testing on 3000+ browsers and devices. You can run tests using any automation framework such as Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Puppeteer, Appium, Espresso, etc. You can also perform geolocation testing on 60+ countries.

One of the main reasons for the increase in testing time is the availability of devices. With BrowserStack, speed is no longer a concern. Teams can access multiple devices at the same time. This way, testers do not have to wait for a fellow tester to complete the testing and release the device. 

With BrowserStack, you can scale your test infrastructure and ship your products seamlessly without any bottlenecks. 

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