It’s important for a web developer to keep in mind the compatibility issue of a website on different browsers and platforms. For instance, you design and develop a website using Mozilla Firefox on Windows Vista. It displays perfectly fine and the scripts work as desired. And then you found a Macbook on the street and decided to take it home. You switched it on and launched Safari to view your website. Alas, why is the top banner aligned to the left, not centered? Why are your DIVs in a mess? Why is there a Javascript error on the user login page? Welcome to the world of Cross Platform Browser Testing.

So you badly want to see how your newly created website displays on other browsers and platforms?

Check out BrowserShots.

They’ve got a whole load of different browsers and on top of that, 4 different Operating Systems for you to test on (Linux, Mac OS, Windows and BSD). One good thing is that they include all versions of a browser – if you want to test your site on Microsoft Internet Explorer, they’ve got all the way from IE4 to IE8 for you to do your compatibility testing. Some of the not-so-well-known browsers included in BrowserShots are Dillo, Epiphany, Konquerer, Minefield, SeaMonkey and Shiretoko. Another great feature they have is that you can specify which JavaScript, Java and Flash version you want for your testing and also choose a certain screen size and color depth. And the best thing, BrowserShots is free.

1. Go to www.browsershots.org
2. Enter your website URL in the textfield “Enter URL here”, e.g. http://www.google.com
3. Check the browsers you’d like to test your website on. By default, they’ve checked a lot, so I always click “Select: None” below and do my own re-selection.
4. There are 5 drop-down menus below which are additional parameters you can choose if you want to be more specific in your testing.
5. Click “Submit” and you’ll go to a page where all your browsers and their respective Queue Estimates (how long you have to wait for BrowserShots to process the screenshot of your website on that browser) will be displayed.
6. As the note states at that page, your screenshots will appear here when they are uploaded. Reload this page or bookmark it and come back later. It may take quite a long time depending on the amount of browsers you’re testing on.
7. Once the screenshot thumbnail appears, click on it to view the enlarged image.

Here’s a list of other websites which provide cross platform browser testing tools:
1. BrowserCam – http://www.browsercam.com
2. Litmus – http://litmusapp.com
3. CrossBrowserTesting – http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com
4. BrowsrCamp – http://www.browsrcamp.com
5. Net Renderer – http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer
6. Multi Safari – http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari

So that’s it, you’ve just learnt a great and easy way to test a website on multiple browsers and operating systems!

browser testing

For helpful knowledge about the topic of website traffic – make sure to go through the site. The time has come when proper information is truly only one click of your mouse, use this chance.

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Split testing is a unique type of testing carried out to improve the online businesses. Those who’re not familiar with the term don’t really understand its relevance with the online business, while those who know its power essentially take all the pain to carry out split testing to the maximum possible level.

Since the term split testing isn’t so self-explanatory, let’s try to analyze its actual meaning and relevance to the business with the help of a simple example. Considering that you own a local retail showroom that sells electronic items such as microwave ovens, you can adopt vivid kinds of sales and marketing strategies, such as impressing the customers with your live demo of the product, educating them about its benefits, and there are other venues to do the same.

However, the end result is indeed achieving higher sales, and in case you feel that another nearby store is doing better than you, it is always possible to discover the areas of improvements to come out on top, and be the best in the business. As a result, you may even learn from your competitors, and concentrate upon the smallest things that could be capitalized on.

Creating a system that identifies the faults in a product is the better way, instead of changing the things for every three weeks. The main idea of this split test is to identify the problems existing in the product. With this split test one can find out the characteristics of your item such as ads, landing pages and others. It also gives a sketch of the product at its non working side too.

Hence, you may carry out split testing on your Google AdWords advertising campaign, and check the conversion rates, by monitoring the difference in your best performing AdWords campaign and the rest. Even if you feel by changing the background colors, the font size or font family of the Ad URLs, the best performing ads have generated 1% higher profit, it could be worth your time, to incorporate these changes to the rest of the campaign.

Remember, getting a flawless product is all about continuous improvement, and split testing helps you to approach that nearly-flawless product within a short span of time. Even running the best advertising campaign is a part of the strategy, and overall marketing plan, so paying attention to the most successful ad formats may be worth your time. These small things can surely make a big difference as a whole.

The business that you do online either succeeds or fails miserably, based on the split test you take. Apart from the working and the results of its working, internet gives you very little information. By doing a split test effectively, the results can be effective. Your pages on the web will be more effective when you do your split test for what it is really intended for.

Justin Harrison is an internationally recognised Internet Marketing expert who recently published a detailed guide on split testing. For more information visit: http://www.splittestmasterguide.com

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