Cross-Browser Testing Strategies: Including Often-Overlooked Browsers in the Frontend QA Process
by @designerly.bsky.social on , tagged guest-posts, browsers, testing, processes, strategies, chrome, google, safari, apple, uc-browser (share on Mastodon or on Bluesky)
Testing is central to reliable frontend development, but many tests are not as comprehensive as they should be. Devs may understand the need for cross-browser testing, but only focus on two or three dominant browsers. Even though the browser market heavily skews toward just a few wildly popular options, overlooking less common alternatives is a mistake.
Why Include Less Common Browsers in QA?
Chrome and Safari may account for the vast majority of the market, but focusing on only these leaders leaves out a massive group. Even a small percentage of today’s 5.56 billion internet users represents a considerable audience.
UC Browser may only have 0.79% of the browser market share, but that is still over 43 million people. Consequently, if you do not test your UI on UC, you may alienate tens of millions of users you could otherwise turn into loyal customers.
Those using less popular apps may also have specific needs or concerns. Some may use DuckDuckGo because they care more about privacy. As a result, failing to work well on DuckDuckGo may hinder your ability to reach a security-minded audience. By contrast, ensuring your site works across these niche platforms helps you reach specific markets your business may want to capitalize on.
Cross-Browser Testing Strategies
Balancing the need for more diverse cross-browser testing with time and budget constraints can initially seem challenging. However, you can address these concerns by employing a few key testing optimization strategies.
Identify Target Browsers Before Testing
As crucial as cross-browser testing is, gauging your site’s performance on every available app is not feasible. Consequently, you must determine your target audience and use this to inform which platforms to include. Major players like Chrome, Safari, and Edge are essential, but which smaller ones to cover depends on your niche.
Roughly 69.4% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, so you should include Samsung Internet in tests, as it has a larger mobile user base. UC Browser and DuckDuckGo are crucial for tech-forward or security-conscious markets. Alternatively, you may need to cover older options like Internet Explorer when serving an audience relying on legacy systems.
Save Time in Other Areas of Development
Broader testing does mean some unavoidable extra time in development. Consequently, efficiency improvements elsewhere are necessary to ensure you do not need to sacrifice too much of your schedule for comprehensive QA.
Switching to headless architecture is a choice adopted by nearly three quarters of surveyed industry leaders today, as it enables simultaneous cross-platform updates while minimizing site load times, making it an ideal time-saving and performance-boosting opportunity. A DevOps approach is also preferable, as it will shorten the overall dev cycle and give teams greater agility.
Automate Wherever Possible
Similarly, streamlining the cross-browser testing process itself is crucial. The best way to do so is to automate as much of the workflow as possible. You can choose from multiple cross-platform testing automation tools, so not using any would be a massive oversight.
The specific factors you must test for may vary depending on your target browsers and your UX design, but you should choose solutions with support for common functionality issues. These include tests for CSS consistency, JavaScript errors, HTML support, font and form element rendering, event handling, and performance problems. Some apps can cover all these functions in one environment, but you may need multiple tools.
Test for Varying Network Conditions
Many tests fail to consider how a site may perform on each browser across different network conditions. The average download speed in Delaware is 256.95 megabits per second (Mbps), while users in more rural states often see speeds more than 100 Mbps slower. Even within one area, latencies and bandwidth can vary throughout the day, so failing to account for varying conditions will produce unreliable results.
You should employ testing tools that let you simulate different network speeds, latencies, and traffic levels. Testing both the high and low ends of this spectrum will help you identify whether your site may encounter issues on some browsers in poor conditions.
Cross-Browser Testing Is Essential
Running an effective website today means ensuring it works well for a diverse user base. Cross-browser testing—especially on often-overlooked platforms—is critical to meeting those needs. Review your user base, testing processes and, goals to see where you may need to make your workflow more comprehensive.
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