A frequently overlooked aspect of managing an ecommerce website is testing the appearance of that site across different browsers and screen resolutions. For example, your website might render beautifully in Internet Explorer 7, but what does it look like in Safari on the Mac? What about Firefox, or in 1024 x 768 resolution? If you haven’t verified your site in the variety of popular configurations, then there is a good chance you are turning away customers. This article will provide a crash course in browser testing.

Website Compatibility Testing Made Simple

Now we are talking dozens of browsers, a handful of operating systems, and a mix of monitor resolutions. So…which configurations should you test your website for? There are two trains of thought here, and you should use a combination of both.

1. Research the general market share
Browse through the various websites that analyze the different user trends to determine what’s most import for you to track. For example, I only verify/test in browsers that have at least 2% market share. This scenario will cover approximately 95-99% of your website visitors. Look through the following sites to learn more about browser, operating systems, resolutions and device usage:

1. Market Share- a leading source of stats, which provides a comprehensive breakdown on all the criteria you need. The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month.
2. W3Counter – based on the last 15,000 page views to each website tracked by W3Counter. W3Counter’s sample currently includes 33,420 websites.
3. StatCounter- Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 5 billion page views per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. Stats are updated and made available every 4 hours.

When using these sources, remember that they represent a small sample of the entire population of the web. Check out the Usage share of web browsers from Wikipeida for a median average of several top stat providers.

2. Research your own market share
Use Google Analytics, or another on-site analysis tool to learn more about your specific sites visitors. I tend to find that the stats provided by our on-site programs vary some from what the public sites provide. Take the time to analyze who visits your site, and through what hardware/software. Make it a priority to verify the sites on the most popular platforms.

Testing tools
Do you have a testing facility with rows of computers configured with different operating systems, monitors, and browsers? If not, I would highly recommend Browsercam.com for remote desktop testing, screenshot services, and the like. You may also want to try BrowserShots.org which is a free browser capture service. 

Browsercam has browser capture, remote desktop, device capture, and email capture features. This service will help you to test your website in the most popular browsers quickly, accurately, and inexpensively. It is easy to paste in a list of URL’s from your site (home, product, category, etc…) and then activate the testing. In a few hours, you will have all your screenshots, which can be easily filtered and downloaded for offline viewing. 

BrowserShots - a free service that will allow you to take screenshots of a single webpage in different browsers/operating systems. I don’t use this service often, but it seems to have gotten the job done when used.

Make it a rule to test the website thoroughly in the most popular browsers, and take browser captures of the site in less popular configurations for design consistency.