How To Do Responsive Design Testing ? Rules, Challenges and Tips

A website’s responsiveness acts as an important factor for the search engine ranking and influences Google search results largely.

The main objective behind the creation of a responsive web design is to offer a consistent browsing experience for every device

The approach adapts the respective device’s screen size or resolution and works accordingly. It is done through the use of proportion based grids, CSS3 media queries, fluid, and flexible images.

Nowadays, mobile devices are being used largely to get access to the internet. Therefore, every mobile or internet user desires a website that is compatible with a mobile version of it.

However, there are many websites that are not optimized as should be for mobile devices.

Therefore, a website is made to go through a responsive test to achieve its compatibility on devices with different screen size.

Challenges in Responsive Design Testing

The experience of internet users on mobile devices varies from that on desktops. Therefore, testing a responsive web design is very important.

The main challenge when testing a responsive website is to ensure that the respective website works same on different platforms.

However, this testing is not really practical for all mobile devices available in the market.

Testing a responsive design starts with resizing of the browser’s window in order to fit view port of a tablet, desktop or a mobile phone.

The approach is enough for a quick visual check of the website in various view ports. It helps the testers to detect major issues while shrinking or enlarging the browser window.

How To Test?

A responsive design tester can consider the following variances for Responsive testing-

Emulators: it is a simulation based on the web. It simulates how a website or application will look like or function in a mobile device.

Also Read : How To Do Security Testing: Best Practices

The emulator does not serve you with the exact testing facilities.

However, they are a very cost-effective and a powerful solution to test a website’s compatibility in different screen size.

Google Dev Tools-Device mode: it consists of a feature known as device mode which includes tools that are very helpful for debugging and testing responsive designs.

It tests your responsive design by emulating various screen resolutions and sizes.

Moreover, it uses a network emulator to evaluate your site’s performance without hindering the operations of other tabs.

The tool inspects and visualizes media queries and simulates device input accurately.

General Rules For Responsive Design Testing

• Never visualize the horizontal bar in the page
• Text included in the website should be properly visible when scrolling
• Pages should be readable and clearly visible in all resolutions
• The important content in the page should be visible in all *breakpoints
• There should be proper padding around the corners
• Font color, size, and style should be consistent for all sort of text
• Shading, gradient, and color should be consistent
• Frames, images, text, and controls should not run into the corners of the screen
• Ensure that the controls, images, and texts are aligned properly
• There should be a suitable clickable area present in the page
• Selection and hovering highlights and changes color

*Break point demands an adaptation of the layout. It consists of modules that change their rules and positions.

Finally, you need to narrow down your options for device testing to ensure your website works perfectly for the majority of your users.

However, responsive design testing on every device combination does not seem to be a practical option.

Determine the use of your web application. You can take the help of Google Analytics to identify which devices are used by your customers to reach your website.

Furthermore, you should be able to detect the breakpoints and all the elements that will be appearing as you shift from one breakpoint to another.

After this is done, its time you take into consideration the automated tools and emulators and conduct basic checks and functional testing.

Combine the testing with the real device manual testing in the end.

Tips For a Successful Responsive Design Testing

• While in the process of the test, the tester should be well aware of the nitty-gritty of the test. He/she should know what and how to test on a variety of devices at various breakpoints. Or otherwise, it can become quite disorientate.
• For correct and proper testing of a responsive design website, there needs to be a perfect coordination between the tester and the developer. The developer must help the tester through creating the necessary conditions as mentioned in the test cases.
• The main content of the responsive website should be visible from every breakpoints. The transition of the website from the desktop screen to the mobile screen size should not affect the main text and other content.
• Responsive design testing only detects major issues. However, you should always remember to test the small features like tapping, swipes, and other finger related issues. Doing so will lead you to better and successful testing.
• Ensure that the content of the responsive website is visible in every size and resolution.
• Once the browser is resized, make sure that all the clicking areas of the design are suitable for clicking.

Testing a responsive design is very challenging.

However, you must choose the most efficient way to tackle them.

A successful future of a mobile application depends largely on its responsive design testing.

Proper and successful responsive design testing can contribute in a great way to meet up to your expectations of setting your site up