Best Practices for Website Testing

For Testing a website below are guidelines I found useful from my learning's till date

1. Functionality Testing - Verify the features/functionality of the site
2. Acceptance Testing - This is event driven, User can interact the site in several different ways. It is very important to cover maximum user scenarios to ensure no defects at integration layer
3. Localization Testing - Check the website if it is available in several languages. Useful tip - Google Chrome suggests translation to english when you open Non-English Locale Sites. You can use this to read/understand by translating the content to English.
4. Layout Testing - Verify the look and feel of the UI. No overlapping sections in the page. Refer the Tool
Layout detection tool, Layout Detection Tool Intro Video
5. Cross Browser Testing - Verify the UI of the website in multiple browsers. Useful Read Top 10 Free Web Apps to Test Cross-Browser Compatibility
6. Cross Platform Testing - Testing across browsers in different platforms Windows/Linux/Mac. Good Read Useful Tools for Testing Cross Browser Compatibility
7. Broken Links - Verifying Links in the page are not broken - Useful Tools. Tool1, Tool2
8. Spell Check the contents of the page. Good Read Top 10 Free Online Spell Checkers
9. Verify the page load time across different browsers. Good Read Top 10 Tools to Test Website Speed
10. Security Testing - Verify Security of the website is not broken or can be compromised with special attacks. Check for XSS. Tools to check  both at code level/site level are available. 10+ Free Web Application Security Testing Tools
11. Slow Network Traffic - Check for the Page Load time, Look and Feel in Case of Slow Network Traffic. Useful Tool BrowserMob Proxy - Free Tool to simulate slow network traffic
12. Usability Testing - How much does it Actually meets End User Requirements. Is it user friendly. Usability Testing Guidelines
13. Web Test Automation - For Website Test Automation you can check Open Source Tools Selenium, Webdriver
14. More Reads - Guidelines and Checklist for Website Testing
15. Open Source Test Automation Framework Using Selenium. This underlying framework can be leveraged and developed to support automation for existing website - Tracking Selenium Commands Using C# and SQL Server 2008. Framework Code Available in Selenium Tracking
16. Very Good Ebook on Selenium for Web Test Automation. Link
17. 7 useful tools for web development testing
18. Selenium Online Training
19. Next thing to look is Automating Regression & Functional Test Cases. You can automate functional test cases based on priority. Based on production defects / changing features this can be updated
20. Capture production events of customer acitivty on the website. Top 10 worflows can serve as input to performance test scenarios. Based on distribution of it, performance test scenarios can be developed from it to simulate production work load.
21. Twenty essential firefox addons for testing
22. Traffic Squeezer - Open-Source WAN/Network Optimization and Acceleration Solution
23. Few tips for quality web page testing
24. Cross browser testing – The truth is in the numbers

Happy Reading!!