Web Metrics in Software Testing

Last Updated : 22 Sep, 2023

The web page metrics are used in measuring various attributes of any website effectively. The table given below provides some of the comprehensive web page measures that influence usability. There are various measures or metrics that can be measured in web testing like finding the audience page views, pages per session, devices they are using, types of traffics like direct, indirect, organic, search, and also site content or site speed, etc.

Measures of Web Metrics:

There are a lot of things that you can measure for growing your website or a business so that there can be more traffic or users available on your website. Some of the best examples that you can measure in your website using the tools available in the market are given below:

Site Traffic: This is the most common metric that every developer or businessman checks for its website growth. It gives us a good indication of your website if it is growing, or declining. It also shows you the various traffic sources like unique visitors or repeats visitors, etc.
Bounce Rate: This is also another important metric when monitoring your website for success. The bounce rate tells you the percentage of visitors who leave your website immediately after clicking on it or after arriving. So, thus it means that if the site has less bounce rate then there will be a great growth of the site otherwise the site is not at a good performance.
Session Duration: The session duration tells us about how much time a user was active on the website. If your website gets a higher number of clicks, then the session duration will also be higher. As per Google Analytics, if the user is inactive on the website for 30 minutes, it assumes that the session is closed.
Site Speed: This metric helps the user to see how much time a page is taking to load. It is calculated as the average page load time.
Pageviews: This metric shows which page of your website has more traffic or more views. If you have the idea that which content of your page is most liked by the user, then you can improve or add more content like that so that you can have more traffic.
Conversion Rate: This metric is calculated as the number of conversions divided by the total number of visitors. It is a very important topic for those that have a sales website as if they know about the conversion rate of their website, then they can increase their sales profit through this metric. For example, if the site has 100 uniques users and has sales of 25 users, then the conversion rate will be 25/100 = 25%.
Devices Sources: This metric shows the type of devices(PC, Mobile, Tablet, etc) a user is opening the website. It can help you in optimizing the website for each device or the operating systems they are using.

Types of Traffic Sources:

We know that website traffic is the most essential metric that every person checks who has a website as it shows how successful the website is. The traffic sources are divided into 4 categories:

Organic Traffic: It is a type of traffic that comes from various search engines that a user has searched for. This traffic is the most natural source that a website has earned. It can be increased by applying a technique called Search Engine Optimisation(SEO).
Direct traffic: It is a type of traffic in which the user directly comes either by direct the full URL or by searching the website name. This traffic consists of the regular visitors of your site.
Social traffic: It is a type of traffic that comes from various traffic sources like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Referral traffic: It is a type of traffic that comes when your website is linked with some other website or comes if the website link is attached to a blog post or any other method as a means of referral.

Now let’s see what are types of metrics used in testing a website. For ease of understanding, the attributes or metrics can be majorly categorized into three categories:

1. Page composition metrics: The composition of a page consists of the arrangement of all visual elements on a webpage like links, words, percentage related to how much size does the page consuming, etc. For measuring the various attributes in a page we test various metrics in the web app page component. Some of the common metrics are shown below with their description.

S.No.	Metric/Attributes	Description
1.	Number of words	Checks the total words on a page
2.	Body text words	Checks the words that are body Vs. display text
3.	Embedded links	Checks the links embedded in text on a page
4.	Readability	Checks the reading level of text on a page
5.	Navigation percentage	Checks the total portion of a page given to navigation
6.	Page size	Checks the total bytes for the page and images
7.	Animated elements	Checks the animated images and scrolling text
8.	Length of link text	Checks the words in the text for a link

2. Page formatting metrics: There are various metrics that need to be tested in a webpage as it defines how well a website is formatted and how many styles, colors, tables, or screens are used in the website. Some of the common page formatting metrics are shown below with their description.

S.No	Metric/Attributes	Description
1.	Font styles	Checks the type of fonts used
2.	Types of fonts	Checks the total emphasized text
3.	Number of font sizes	Checks the total font sizes employed
4.	Text clustering	Checks the text areas highlighted with the color
5.	Number of colors	Checks the total colors employed
6.	Frames	Use of frames
7.	Number of tables	Checks the total tables added on a web page
8.	Number of screens	Checks the total scrolls required on the screens

3. Page Quality or Assessment Metrics: For measuring the quality of any website or to assess a website, we have to check various things that include the links quality, the speed of loading and downloading, the quality of the images on different browsers, etc. Some of the common metrics are shown below with their description.

S.No.	Metric/Attributes	Description
1.	Information quality	Content appropriateness like tone, etc.
2.	Link quality	Checks the relevance of the links.
3.	Layout quality	Checks the alignment and balance.
4.	Download speed	Checks the time needed for a page to fully load.
5.	Image quality	Checks the image appropriateness, size, and resolution.

Most of the page composition and page formatting attributes can be easily determined but the difficulty in other one metric i.e overall page quality or assessment metrics needs a separate team or an individual such as a web designer or a web developer. As the web apps differ from each other in various things like the page content, size of the page, the quality of page, reliability, screen, etc. The attributes shown above demonstrate the quantitative web usability metrics that can provide useful insights into distinguishing features of web pages. These metrics give us some ideas about the thoroughness and effectiveness of web testing.

Benefits of Web Metrics:

If the website is properly tracked, the web metrics does more for your web app than just give you reassurance like the following benefits:

The metrics help us in determining the direction
It also creates a focal point
It helps in making small or large decisions
It determines the website performance
It also provides real-time user data

Popular Tools for measuring Web Metrics:

There are various tools available in the market used in measuring the website metrics or traffics. Some of the most popular tools used in measuring the web-metrics are given below: