Eating your own dog food

Everyone is doing more with their technology, so making sure your new website, app or software meets your clients expectations has never been more important.  In the lead up to the launch of the new Buitech website, we have been “eating our own dog food”.  We have tested our new website across a range of browsers, desktops and mobile devices, but of course we can’t test every single device, operating system or browser combination exhaustively.  So, how have we increased our confidence in the website and reduced the likelihood that users will easily find an issue with the site? How have we reduced the risks and what approach have we taken?

We reviewed our own requirements for the website to:

  • Be Responsive: Resize and function just as we planned across devices and browsers
  • Perform well: Deliver a smooth user experience, not too fast or jerky, not frustratingly slow
  • Be secure: Be a safe place for people to visit, free of adware, spam and other nasties

We then selected the most used operating systems/devices and browsers using some of the publically available statistics and settled on:

  • Windows, Mac OS, IOS and Android
  • Desktop, Laptop, Tablet and Smart Phone
  • Chrome, IE and Edge, Firefox and Safari

The aim is to mitigate risk, but you can’t test everything.  Consider the 34 combinations of testing required against the last three versions of each Operating System with the current version of each browser across each type of device … and that’s without considering different PC manufacturers, varieties of Mac, iPhone and iPad or the different Android devices from Samsung, Sony, HTC etc.

 ChromeIEFirefoxSafariEdge
Windows 10 
Windows 8.1  
Windows 7  
Mac OS X 10.11  
Mac OS X 10.10  
Mac OS X 10.9  
IOS 9  
IOS 8  
IOS 7  
Android 6 (Marshmallow)   
Android 5 (Lollipop)   
Android 4.4 (Kit Kat)   

We’ve learned a lot by “eating our own dog food”, we have increased our confidence in our website and reduced the likelihood that users will easily find an issue with the site.

If you want us to “give you confidence” as you develop and improve your technology, please get in touch with us via www.buitech.co.uk, emailing info@buitech.co.uk or by calling us on 0330 223 3036.