As an expert with over a decade of experience testing complex sites firsthand, I cannot stress enough how absolutely critical comprehensive testing is for WordPress. As the platform powering 43% of all websites, having rock-solid testing practices is what separates the top WordPress developers from the rest.
Trust me when I say that robust testing early and often will save you and your clients endless headaches down the road while delivering faster performing, higher quality sites that drive business results.
In this 360 guide, we’ll unpack everything you need to know about mistake-proof WordPress testing, including:
- Why Proper Testing is Non-Negotiable for WordPress
- Comprehensive Breakdown of Different Testing Types
- Specific Testing Tools I Recommend from the Trenches
- Best Practices and Insider Tips from 10+ Years of Testing
- In-Depth Walkthrough of BrowserStack for Simplified Testing
- Key Takeaways to Bring It All Together
By the end, you’ll have the complete framework to build an ironclad WordPress testing strategy.
Why Rigorous Testing is Critical for All WordPress Sites
Look, I get it. Manual testing cycles take considerable effort and seem tedious compared to just slapping a site live as fast as possible. But speed comes at the expense of quality if you don’t comprehensively test WordPress implementations.
And poor quality leads to catastrophic outcomes when the site inevitably breaks in production under real user traffic. No one wants angry customers, PR nightmares, and lost revenue, right?
Consider these eye-opening statistics that demonstrate why heavy testing upfront pays dividends in achieving flawless WordPress rollouts:
- 61% of users will not return to a site after a negative experience (Source)
- Sites take 3.5x longer to fully load over 3G networks compared to Wifi (Source)
- 52% of users will abandon a mobile site if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load (Source)
- The probability of bouncing increases 32% when load times increase from 1 second to 3 seconds (Source)
- 83% of users struggle to complete mobile purchases from a poor performing site (Source)
As you can see, failing to test response times, functionality across browsers, mobile compatibility, visual appeal, and more severely impacts key metrics from bounce rates to conversions.
Simply put:
- Solid testing = Happy users that convert more often
- Little testing = Frustrated users that quickly abandon your site
Which business outcome do you want? Exactly!
Now that I’ve hopefully convinced you on the invaluable benefits of testing WordPress implementations thoroughly, let’s explore the different types of testing available.
Comprehensive Breakdown of Different WordPress Testing Types
One of the biggest testing mistakes I see teams make is taking a narrow view by only validating one aspect of their WordPress site before launch.
The reality is robust testing requires a combination of validation across these key areas:
| Testing Type | What It Validates |
|---|---|
| Cross-Browser Testing | Site works properly across different browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge |
| Responsiveness Testing | Site adapts seamlessly to any screen size on devices |
| Page Speed Testing | Pages load quickly with optimized performance |
| Security Testing | Site is secured against attacks by finding vulnerabilities |
| Visual Regression Testing | Interface displays perfectly with no visual bugs across devices |
| End-to-End Testing | All features work for complete user journeys from end to end |
Allow me to provide more details on why each test type is indispensible:
Cross-Browser Testing
This validates your WordPress site works flawlessly across the top 5 browsers including:
Chrome – 66% global market share
Safari – 18.7% market share
Firefox – 8.1% market share
Edge – 3.4% market share
Internet Explorer – Still 1.2% share
Testing across these browsers uncovers compatibility issues from styling and layout problems to Javascript errors. Identifying these bugs early is key so they can be eradicated before impacting real visitors.
Pro Tip: Also test across both desktop and mobile versions of these browsers for complete validation.
Responsiveness Testing
With 58.4% of website traffic now coming from mobile devices, making sure your WordPress site adapts perfectly to smaller screens is business critical. (Source)
Testing directly on real mobile devices like iPhones, Android phones, tablets and across simulated device sizes confirms your site remains functional and legible regardless of screen dimensions.
This prevents frustrated mobile visitors from immediately leaving your site due to tiny text, overlapping elements, and broken navigation.
Pro Tip: Test the latest devices like the iPhone 14 Pro but also legacy phones running older iOS and Android versions still used today.
Page Speed Testing
Let’s be honest – No one enjoys staring at a spinning wheel while waiting for a site to load. And most users have minimal patience when it comes to performance.
In fact, a staggering 57% expect web pages to load in under 3 seconds. After that, abandonment rates skyrocket. (Source)
Running comprehensive page speed tests helps identify performance bottlenecks related to images, scripts, caching, compression and more. Addressing these gremlins is proven to boost conversions.
Pro Tip: Test site speed across both wired broadband AND real world cellular connections for true performance validation.
Security Testing
With website hacks and data breaches on the rise, confirming your WordPress site is locked down tight is mission critical.
The key testing activities here include:
Penetration Testing – Licensed experts simulate real world attacks to uncover vulnerabilities
Malware Scanning – Detect malware infections introduced through themes, plugins or other vectors
Password Cracking – Validate password strength to determine how quickly they can be cracked
Identifying and closing security gaps minimizes the risk of your site being compromised or sensitive user data being exposed.
Pro Tip: Always scan newly added WordPress plugins and themes for malware before deploying them.
Visual Regression Testing
Functionally, your site may work fine across different devices and browsers. But visual regressions can still slip through the cracks.
These include:
🔹 Images appearing distorted
🔹 Buttons misaligned
🔹 Background colors changing
🔹 Scrollbars not rendering correctly
The slightest visual defects severely impact user trust and satisfaction levels.
Automated visual testing quickly identifies inconsistencies through screenshot comparisons so styling and alignment issues can be corrected seamlessly.
Pro Tip: Visual testing early in the development process helps accelerate debugging efforts.
End-to-End (E2E) Testing
While individual features may work in isolation, end-to-end testing confirms all the parts come together cohesively through critical user journeys when deployed on servers.
This testing puts your WordPress site through its paces to validate smooth, flawless execution across activities like:
✔ Checking out as a first time customer
✔ Submitting a complex form
✔ Logging in and updating account settings
✔ Writing a blog post as the admin
Catching bugs with lengthy workflows early on minimizes scramble right before launch.
Pro Tip: Identify the 3-5 most common user paths to focus end-to-end testing efforts for maximum impact.
As you can see, comprehensive testing is achieved by assessing critical components like compatibility, speed, security, and visual appeal in addition to overall functionality.
The good news? Automating this testing is now completely achievable thanks to some amazing tools…
My WordPress Testing Tools of Choice After 10+ Years in the Trenches
Attempting to manually test WordPress implementations across the various types covered is remarkably challenging not to mention wildly inefficient.
The secret weapon leveraged by elite developers is smart use of test automation software to eliminate gut-wrenching manual testing cycles.
Over years of hands-on testing and helping companies boost their WordPress testing game, these are my top recommended tools:
BrowserStack
BrowserStack makes cross-browser and device testing unbelievably simple via instant access to 3000+ real mobile devices and browsers leveraging their cloud infrastructure.
It’s an absolute game changer for simplifying otherwise impossible local testing across new iPhone models, obscure Android devices still in use today, and legacy browsers nobody maintains anymore.
Their awesome WordPress browser extensions, debugging tools, and integration with popular dev platforms provides one slick testing workflow.
Google PageSpeed Insights
While there are more advanced paid tools, good ol’ PageSpeed from Google provides all the core web performance metrics I need for free when testing WordPress implementations.
Just plug in any WordPress site URL to see numerical scores across metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP), Time to Interactive (TTI) and Total Blocking Time (TBT). Granular insights explain exactly how to optimize each one.
This makes dialing in lighting fast load speeds much easier.
Percy
One of the hardest parts about visual testing is the manual effort of banging your head trying to identify subtle style and alignment issues across browsers.
With its powerful image analysis and change detection capabilities, Percy takes visual WordPress testing automation to the next level.
The pixel perfect reports instantly highlight any elements with unexpected shifts, color changes, clipping or contrast issues regardless of screen size. Pure magic!
WP Test
While Percy handles visual validation and BrowserStack provides compatibility testing, WP Test is purpose built to test core WordPress functionality.
Their free WordPress plugin installs right within your staging environment to perform hundreds of automated tests against your plugins, themes, passwords and more to catch issues end users would encounter.
I love how dead simple it is to activate WP Test and have peace of mind WordPress core works perfectly.
Leveraging this elite testing tool stack makes it effortless to catch the majority of nasty WordPress bugs before they bite you.
Now let’s shift gears to the methods and best practices critical for mistake-proof testing…
Best Practices and Insider Tips from 10+ Years of WordPress Testing
Simply having the latest testing tools is only one piece of the puzzle. You need to use them effectively as part of an air tight testing methodology.
After consulting countless companies on shoring up their WordPress testing game, these are the insider tips I instill in every team:
Activate Testing Early In the Project Lifecycle
Far too often, clients want testing to be an afterthought once all development concludes right before launch. This spells disaster!
By building comprehensive test automation into each sprint or workstream, issues can be flagged much earlier when faster and cheaper to fix.
Whether running unit tests or UI tests, identifying bugs immediately results in higher quality code overall.
Adopt a Shift Left Testing Mentality
Building on early testing, shift left requires quality engineering tasks like performance benchmarking, security scanning, and cross-browser checks to happen earlier.
The goal is to catch more problems automatically while developers write the application versus waiting for unstable, hard to troubleshoot builds.
Testing early, testing often is key!
Make Use of Canary Launches
Once you feel confident in your WordPress site after extensive testing, resist the temptation to unleash the floodgates with a big bang launch.
I recommend a phased canary launch to a smaller test segment first, like loyal customer subgroup.
Monitor their usage closely using real user monitoring tools before ramping up traffic to confirm everything remains stable.
Create Locked Down QA Environments
Having an isolated, hardened test environment is crucial for accurate results free of noise or resources constraints.
Too often, shared staging environments get overloaded preventing proper load testing and skew visual testing.
Invest in a dedicated physical or virtual test lab matching production infrastructure for apples to apples comparisons across factors like CPU, memory, storage, etc.
Test Across Geographically Diverse Networks
While your LA office may see blazing fast performance, that doesn’t account for real users scattered globally with varying network conditions.
Leverage tools like BrowserStack to test across networks spanning North America, Asia Pacific, Western Europe to confirm consistently speedy page loads worldwide.
This perspective is invaluable.
Validate Accessibility for All Users
Beyond functionality and visual appeal, ensuring your interface complies with modern web accessibility standards ensures no user gets left behind.
Run automated accessibility scans to catch issues upfront around color contrast, ARIA roles, alt text, keyboard navigation and more. Identify gaps to improve inclusiveness for all site visitors regardless of physical ability.
Step-By-Step Guide to Simplified Cross Browser Testing with BrowserStack
As mentioned, BrowserStack is my number one recommendation for simplified, powerful cross browser testing of WordPress implementations which is why I wanted to walkthrough exactly how ridiculously easy it is to use.
Step 1: Signup for BrowserStack Account
Navigate to https://www.browserstack.com and signup for their generous free trial to gain access to their industry leading testing platform.
Step 2: Configure Browsers and Devices
One of BrowserStack’s biggest strengths is their enormous device catalog spanning over 3000 real mobile devices, laptops, desktops and tablets waiting in the cloud.
Easily configure whatever mix of devices, browsers, operating systems and versions you need. Go as modern or obscure as your heart desires!
Step 3: Integrate Browserstack into CI/CD Pipelines
For automated testing, BrowserStack offers tight integration with all popular dev platforms like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Circle CI, etc enabling easy incorporation into continuous integration flows.
This means every code change gets tested across your desired configurations for faster feedback.
Step 4: Analyze Detailed Test Reports and Logs
As tests execute across your specified Matrix, BrowserStack captures highly detailed logs including screenshots, network calls, console output, vitals and more for effortless defects analysis.
granular data pinpoints the root cause of issues whether CSS conflicts, slow server response times, or Javascript runtime errors.
Step 5: Debug Issues Rapidly
Thanks to BrowserStack’s comprehensive logs and media capture capabilities, narrowing down testing failures takes minutes instead of days.
Quickly fix defects and re-run tests until 100% pass rates are achieved across all of your preferred configurations.
Rinse and repeat tests as changes occur before launch!
And there you have it! With these 5 simple steps, simplified cross browser testing powered by BrowserStack ensures your WordPress site offers pixel perfect experiences across all modern devices and browsers.
If you take anything away from this complete guide to WordPress testing, I hope it’s this:
Taking the time to test WordPress sites early and often leads to better performing, higher quality implementations with happier customers.
Specifically:
✔ Comprehensive WordPress testing across areas like compatibility, speed, security, and visual checks is mandatory for flawless sites
✔ Leveraging leading tools like BrowserStack, Google PageSpeed Insights, Percy and WP Test makes test automation highly achievable
✔ Following insider best practices around canary launches, shift left testing, and geographically diverse validation prevents real world issues
✔ With streamlined test configuration and detailed results analysis capabilities, BrowserStack can accelerate testing WordPress sites across thousands of real mobile devices and browsers
Hopefully this guide served as the blueprint you need to level up your WordPress testing game dramatically. Just remember, every minute spent validating WordPress sites leads to less headaches, firefighting, and damage control down the road.
Please drop me a note via the comments section if any part of the testing process remains unclear or if you have any other suggestions to improve this WordPress testing resource!
