Quality Assurance Tools

Quality assurance, or QA, is the detailed-oriented, structured process of ensuring that everything about a web environment—from its front-end to its back-end—is firing on all cylinders before it goes live. A majority of QA will occur during the testing phase of a web project. However, the beginnings of QA can be traced back to the early phases of a project, even as far back as revisiting the branding guidelines and web style guide to make sure they're up-to-date and available to the team at the start. And taking the time to draft the project specifications (particularly useful for vendors) and document the content requirements up front will help to make sure everyone's on the same page, leading to a better, consistent, and higher quality website down the road.

Other important tools that play an early role in QA include project summary worksheets (which document a project's background information and are very useful in getting team member's up-to-speed), content inventory spreadsheets, and content matrices. A content inventory spreadsheet is a record of the current content on a site, while a content matrix takes that a step further. A content matrix maps all of the content for a website, both current and planned; it can be used to track URLs, content objects, content status, content type, reviewers, authors, deadlines—basically, it acts as a central repository for all things content.

During the testing phase of a web project, checklists are an important QA tool to validate the front and back-end of the site before launch. Click every link, review every webpage, hit play on every video, if possible. In the CMS, open every content module, delete unused material, verify that everything in the back-end is displaying on the front-end. This type of meticulous attention to detail will pay off on the launch date when the first visitors step aboard.