Software testing is an important step when designing a website or developing a program. Testing the usability and functionality of your website is important because if your web site does not function properly you may loose potential customers or traffic. Software testing normally involves performing actions on a website or executing a program in order to find bugs and glitches. It also assesses how well the software or website will perform given different variables and determines if it can handle the amount of expected traffic when in operation.

Software testing only determines if the software will function properly under the conditions that the test simulates so it is possible that a bug or glitch can be overlooked until a visitor in an untested situation reports it. Software tests simulate the operation of a program or website by a user and then provide feedback on how the program functions and if it functions correctly. Software testing can also include examination of the code used to write the website or program to see if there are any errors or incompatibilities with different browsers or operating systems.

The applications used by visitors to interact with a website must be tested from different operating systems and browsers as well as from computers with different specifications and with different variables that it might encounter from different users. Performing software tests without a software testing tool is almost impossible because there are so many different conditions and variables that need to be tested.

There are many software testing tools available that allow software developers and webmasters to test their software and websites under many different conditions with different variables. Software tools such as JMeter, Loadrunner, Webload, Selenium, RSpec, and JUnit simulate how a typical user would operate the software or website from many different operating systems, browsers, and under other variables and allows the developer or webmaster to see if the software or website functions correctly and find any bugs or errors.