England UK, June 2002 – Business 2 www plc (B2W) Website testing specialist, featured article - The Need and The Market for External Objective Automated Testing of Company Commercial and Communications Websites.

Commercial websites whether for information, communication and transaction with customers, consumers, suppliers, investors and many others are now integral to most companies of any significant size.

Major investments – amounting to hundreds of £millions in the UK alone – have been and continue to be made in the design, maintenance and updating of websites designed to increase the number and value of customers, to save operating and customer handling and service costs, and to encourage investment in, awareness of and commitment to a company and its brands.

Websites are in short ‘part of the company’.

Yet in conducting 13,000,000 URL tests, principally but not exclusively in the UK, are focus is the automated testing of corporate websites, of which some 97% have been found to have errors or other performance problems which impact adversely on the impact, effectiveness and value of the site.

It is inconceivable that this level of under-performance or under-achievement would be tolerated in any other area of company performance. So why and how has it happened or been allowed to happen in this new technical and technology-led field?

Simply because the site testing and monitoring technology has failed to keep pace with the fast-developing technology applied to website design and build. Additionally, management – both technical and commercial – have been far too prepared to believe that their websites are perfect, or at least as near perfect as they can be.

Sadly, such confidence or complacency is all-too-often misplaced.

B2W is only one of handful of companies – in various stages of development – to identify both the problem and the opportunity. If only 1% of the estimated £3bn spent each year were spent on site testing, the market would be worth £30m pa in the UK alone.

There is a growing understanding that internal testing (or testing by the external website designers and builders) does not provide or represent testing which accurately represents the external visitor experience.

As B2W’s Technical Director Jon Ribbens, an acknowledged expert in this field, says :

‘Testing performed inside the company often fails to turn up problems obvious to external users, essentially because the site is relying upon some feature of the company internal network that is not available outside it. This can include, for example, domain name search paths, access to resources blocked by the firewall, routes to private address space, etc. The only simple way to test that the web site works from outside the company network is to perform the testing from outside the company network’.

B2W have also conducted a comprehensive – if not exhaustive - review of the companies and products that operate in this field.

Sitemorse™ is the only fully automated system that combines powerful software and methodology that requires little or no technical skills to conduct a comprehensive test of a company’s website regardless of size or complexity.

From our review we believe that there are currently four sectors of the market, claiming to offer such services – none providing the speed, cost effectiveness, capacity, capability or easy of use of Sitemorse™

- Simple Link Checking Software
Products in the sector include; Link Alarm, Link Walker, Web Garage, Net Mechanic etc. All seem to have very limited functionality not least in their ability to detect errors on their own sites.

There is a limit to the speed at which they operate. On average Sitemorse™ operates roughly 40 - 70 times faster, absolutely essential for a site of 000’s of pages. With some products there is also a declared (but possibly not enforced!) limit to the number of pages they can check (Net Mechanic for instance has a declared maximum of 400 – the average FTSE 100 site has over 550 pages)

- Semi-Automated Application Testing
Simple or sophisticated these software applications generally follow a customer defined script, generally at very frequent intervals – even on a continuous basis. Mercury Interactive is perhaps the best-known of these. Whilst entirely valid – and much used – in their own right, these have serious limitations as a general web site test, due to the limited knowledge and automated application of every path a user could possibly take. They also require a considerable set-up time (and technical skills).

- Web Design Manual Reviews
Often marketed as site audit providers, in the main these provide a manual check of a site commenting on aspects of visual design, corporate image, navigation etc, and are used as a perfectly valid – albeit largely subjective – sales development tool by companies looking for design, build or maintenance contracts.

- Specialist Checking (security etc)
There are a number of specialists in this field. Indeed a sister product to Sitemorse™ - KeyMorse™ - operates in this field. However, this product requires detailed approved access using designated passwords, secure access codes etc. In our view this a different market than ‘public access testing’ – although there are inevitably some overlap areas.

- Internal (self) Testing
Testing performed internally often fails to highlight problems obvious to external users, essentially because the site is relying upon some feature of the company internal network that is not available outside it.

This can include, for example, domain name search paths, access to resources blocked by the firewall, routes to private address space, etc. The only simple way to test that the web site works from outside the company network is to perform the testing from outside the company network.

There is problem for those who are directly involved with the development or deployment of the site – not being about to spot problems due to their reaped exposure to the site, in essence not being able ‘to see the wood for the trees’ effective and efficient QA / checking of any work is not handled by those who commissioned and carried it out the development.

Sitemorse™ which has been actively marketed for the last six months is designed to replicate every move or ‘click’ – whether intended, accidental, routine, repeated, random or even mischievous (not malicious) – that a public access visitor might make.

On average, it checks over 60 elements of every page of any website, regardless of size, complexity or location, and at vast speed. We estimate some 370 times faster than can be carried out manually.

It checks primarily for site errors (which it identifies by type and location as well as categorising) all of which can or do prevent the site working – entirely or in part.

Sitemorse™ also checks for Site Warnings (which do not usually prevent the site working when accessed from a PC but can cause more minor problems to users – especially when access is from a TV, mobile etc), Server Response Time and Calculated Download Speed.

It is possibly best described as ‘website MOT’ or ‘initial pre-service diagnostic’. The software simply identifies the problems and ‘what needs fixing, repairing or improving’, not least because it has been developed by experts whose experience and expertise has taught them virtually everything that can go wrong – and how to detect it.

This ‘diagnostic’ is then passed (often by e-mail) or presented to the client companies website and IT specialists – whether internal or external - who use their skills (already commissioned by the client) to make the necessary repairs, adjustments or system improvements.

We are keen to work with and assist the existing IT and commercial website structures, responsibilities and skills – we see them as partners and customers not competitors.

We think we have a unique product and service to offer. Only comprehensive, regular, accessible and affordable – and thus automated – testing and quality control processes can hope to keep pace with the number of dynamic and commercial developments demanded of commercial websites.

In common with all other commercial activity, mistakes, oversights and omissions – and the impacts of continuous change and passing time – are inevitable and unavoidable. But, also in common with all other commercial activity, they are not acceptable, and it is imperative that they be prevented wherever possible and detected and corrected wherever else.

The errors that plague major Web sites are easy to make, but fortunately, they are just as easy to correct. Unfortunately, they are very difficult to detect, identify, and locate, especially in dynamic sites that undergo continuous change. A comprehensive audit must go way beyond checking a site for page availability, load time and broken links — the audit itself must be geared towards the large, dynamic commercial sites common to the largest corporations, and it must check for all performance errors across the whole site.

We’re very pleased - and modestly proud - to be in the vanguard of the development of effective site testing and quality control products and services that can assist our clients in preventing, detecting and correcting website errors and problems which could cause very real damage to the business – the more so as websites become increasingly important not only to commercial corporations but to government and other institutions.

Furthermore, we welcome quality competent and committed competition – if only to ensure that we never become complacent and rest on the enormous amount of work and investment to date. But we welcome the competition primarily because we are positive about any initiative or individual that raises the core issue of the imperative need for quality and performance testing to ensure that expensive and important websites work – as well as they can, as well as they should and all the time.

Feature Article by Philip Sheldon, Managing Director – Business2www Plc