If you have a public website or web app for your online business, you are going to need a testing tool to make a seamless experience for your end users. Every company has adopted some type of testing tool to test their website with different aspects like performance, regression, security, cross-browser compatibility, and more. But while selecting any tool, people always have one question on their minds: "Is this the right tool for my business?"

The market is full of testing tools with specific testing functionalities that lead to the tricky situation of selecting the right tool to fulfill testing requirements. You need to do a comprehensive analysis and give it a quick try before spending money buying the testing tool. Here are a few questions you must ask yourself before selecting a testing tool to embed in your software testing life cycle.

1. Is This Tool Fulfilling Your Testing Requirements?

Are you running an e-commerce, SaaS, tech service business? Based on your business, you will have multiple testing requirements. Will you need performance testing, regression testing, load testing, cross-browser testing, or security testing, or do you have your own set of requirements? You need to create a clear picture of testing needs and look for a testing tool which will be helpful to fulfill them.

If you have a SaaS product with an audience across the globe, you will require a testing tool which offers features like functional testing, visual UI testing, and cross-browser compatibility testing of your web application. In such a case, a tool like LambdaTest can be helpful to you. It is one of the best tools to achieve these testing needs.

Will, you require customized reports for your test sessions? Try out the analytics and reporting feature of the testing tool and see if it can be integrated into your testing flow.

2. Can the Testing Tool Readily Integrate With Your Testing Workflow?

Integration with test management and bug tracking tool is one of the primary requirements of any QA department. Check whether the testing tool which you are going to buy for your team is easily integrated with existing other management and communication tools.

Let’s take an example of an automation testing tool. If you are going to buy a new tool for web automation, see if the tool is able to integrate with CI/CD tools for continuous deployment, bug management tools like Jira, Asana, or Trello, and supports various test automation frameworks for different programming languages you are using in your current testing workflow.

So, before finalizing a tool look for all the integrations that it provides it can help to integrate easily with your workflow.

3. Who Can Use This Testing Tool? Is Any Special Skill or Prior Knowledge of Any Programming Languages Needed?

This is an interesting one. Who other than your QA specialists are going to perform testing? Does your CEO or product manager or anyone with a non-tech background perform testing with the testing tool you are going to have in your system? You must have to check whether using this testing tool requires any special training, skill, or specific tech knowledge. It is necessary to have an intuitive testing tool which can be handled by anyone in the team without the need for prior knowledge or extensive research.

Some software testing tools have proprietary languages and syntax which require some amount of training and expertise. You need to figure out a tool which aligns properly with your team’s area of expertise or requires only basic knowledge, as arranging a training session for a tool becomes really difficult when the time is of the essence.

4. Can This Tool Automate the Testing Process? Is It Efficient?

Today’s advanced technology is moving towards automation testing to shorten the testing life cycle and decrease deployment time while minimizing the efforts put in the testing process. However, this is a bit tricky! You can not just automate everything. You need to chalk out a proper test management strategy and see what all can be automated and what can not. For this, you need to start by checking your testing requirements to see if you have many test scripts to test repeatedly, long testing suites which require a lot of time if tested manually, or thousands of elements and modules to test on your web app. If these are among your requirement, you need some automation testing tools to achieve this faster.

5. How Much Effort and Time Will It Require to Start Testing?

Ease of use and time required to get started with testing are some of the major factors while selecting a software testing tool. The testing tool should have intuitive navigation so that any new developers can easily understand the steps to perform testing. Also, you need to see how much effort and time will be required for downloading, installing, setting up, scripting, and more before running a test session on the testing tool.

6. Who Should I Contact in Case I Face Any Issues While Installing, Using, or Assessing the Tool?

Customer support is one of the important elements in your checklist while selecting a testing tool. They should have proper support to customers by multiple means like chat support, email, and phone calls. You should evaluate the support before finalizing the tool. Also, you can go through online review websites to check how a particular testing tool provides customer support for their users in case help is required.

Selecting a testing tool for your project or company requires probing. It is a very important process, so you should evaluate it properly in order to avoid unplanned surprises after you set up and pay for it. You must ask these questions before purchasing a testing tool as they might help you find a testing tool which is the best suited for your business.