To get the most out of website redesign projects, functional acceptance testing is absolutely necessary.
Redesigning a website is a lot like baking a cake or bread. A failure to use the right ingredients and follow all the steps correctly can spell disaster.
Just as yeast is a crucial ingredient when baking bread, functional testing is a crucial component of any website redesign project.
Functional testing should not be neglected as it plays an essential role in the discovery of all kinds of bugs and anomalies. Uncovering these bugs improves of the quality of your digital service just before it goes into production.
Website Redesign and Functional Testing
Functional testing is a type of software test designed to find any bugs or anomalies that could impact the features or functionalities on a website or any digital platform.
Although testing is normally carried out throughout the development of your website, a thorough final, functional acceptance test campaign should be carried out before the website goes live.
The objective is simple; make sure the newly redesigned site meets all the requirements in order to be accepted by the end-user and therefore released to the public.
During this phase, it is important to focus on the end-to-end feature validation (since this is one of the rare moments when everything is delivered, integrated and operational) as well as the responsiveness of the site across different resolutions/screen sizes.
These are two crucial elements to focus on in the final test campaign for a website redesign project. In turn, it becomes possible to draw a complete picture of the rendering of the site and thus obtain all the indicators necessary for a Go / No Go to go into production.
Underestimating or skipping the final functional acceptance test represents a major risk that can easily result in a decline of your ROI, brand image, and revenue.
For Lesaffre, a major world player in fermentation, having first-class digital communication tools is a top priority.
As a result, Lesaffre partnered with StarDust to plan and conduct several functional test campaigns on its web redesign projects.
Ludovic Sauvage, New Technologies Coordinator, sat down with us (virtually) to share his experience partnering with StarDust CTG.
Can you introduce Lesaffre in a few words?
Lesaffre is a key global player in fermentation. It supplies high-quality yeast to individual artisans and companies in 185 countries to produce, among other things, better bread and fermented beverages. In fact, Lesaffre’s yeast is used in approximately one-third of the world's bakery products.
Lesaffre, however, makes more than just yeast; it also provides other products and solutions used in food production such as natural flavor molecules. Furthermore, Lesaffre develops products that not only improve nutrition, but also the overall health and wellbeing of people, plants, and animals.
With regard to your recent projects, what were your testing needs?
The redesign of our website is part of our new corporate strategy, so it was really important for us to guarantee that the newly redesigned corporate websites were perfect.
From a functional testing perspective, we knew it was crucial to be able to properly test our sites across a number of different devices and configurations.
At the same time, we wanted to be able to save time to focus our efforts on other aspects of the project while also gaining some peace of mind by having the tests done by a UAT expert.
Not having an internal quality assurance team, we looked for a third-party testing partner that could fully meet all of our needs and requirements. As a result, we reached out to StarDust.
How did StarDust meet your needs?
StarDust immediately answered our call by analyzing our needs and implementing thorough functional test campaigns that met the our team's expectations.
StarDust was able to do this for our corporate site as well as the site for two of our subsidiaries, Gnosis and Fermentis.
The collaboration with StarDust allowed our team to save time to concentrate on other tasks with higher added value within the framework of the projects. We even gained peace of mind in knowing that our site was thoroughly tested and could be launched with absolute confidence.
What did you appreciate most about StarDust?
StarDust’s responsiveness and speed were both highly appreciated as it made it possible to quickly test the redesigned websites and differentiate the tests according to our needs and priorities.
In addition to its speed and responsiveness, I really appreciated the flexibility StarDust was able to exercise. During these digital projects like a website redesign, it is not uncommon, unfortunately, for unexpected issues to arise and cause delays.
When our project was delayed, StarDust remained completely flexible adjusting to our new timeline without impacting the testing strategy. For us, the flexibility of StarDust is clearly a plus within the framework of functional testing.
Why would you recommend StarDust?
I recommend StarDust for its ability to meet several challenges in terms of testing.
On the whole, a collaboration is successful when you feel that the partner provides you with all the necessary resources and expertise, and delivers the results at the end.
In addition, the quality of test delivery was extremely valuable for our teams involved in the project.
Having well-documented bug tickets that were accompanied by a screenshot or video was a significant time-saver for our developers. This helped us avoid going back and forth with the testers as we were able to quickly identify the bugs and facilitate the bug fixes.
In the end, the partnership with StarDust allowed us to save time and gain peace of mind, which were our main objectives when searching for external QA partner. While StarDust carried out the test campaigns, all the actors of the project, whether Communication, IT or Business were available to concentrate on their respective core business.
In my opinion, StarDust is the functional testing partner that you want.
What are your next challenges?
More forwarding, our next challenge will be to create additional value by leveraging our data to better serve our customers’ needs.
In addition, the core issue is to constantly strive to improve the overall experience of our customers in order to facilitate our collaborations and better support their needs.
During these turbulent times dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on business, creating the best customer experience is undoubtedly a major issue for us at Lesaffre.
We thank Lesaffre for the opportunity to work together, and wish them the best of luck with their future endeavors.
If you would like to learn more about our functional testing services or how StarDust can assist your organization during its website redesign process, please do not hesitate to contact us.
