Seven Ways to Speed Up UI Test Cases

UI testing is essential for modern software development. What your users see and interact with has never been more important, so creating and running these tests is essential. However, running UI test cases can be incredibly slow, and a poor UI/UX experience can drive away users nearly immediately.

But just because it’s slow doesn’t mean you can’t speed it up. So we’ve got seven tips for bringing some velocity to your UI testing, helping you cross the finish line in style.

Six Standard Approaches for Speeding up UI Test Cases

UI testing isn’t perfect, and it comes with some downsides that you can’t get around. You can speed up your UI test cases with the following six standard approaches.

Parallel Testing

One of the simplest ways to speed up your testing is to run more tests — specifically, by running tests in parallel. You can increase speed and efficiency with parallel testing while expanding your testing coverage. Plus, you can use it to create a shorter feedback loop and get results faster and more often.

Setting up parallel testing doesn’t have to be complicated, either. Most CI servers have built-in tools to support it, saving you time upfront. You’ll need to find a way to split your UI test cases, whether based on criteria such as suites, classes, or anything else you have in mind. Then, it comes down to having the resources available to run these tests concurrently, and you’re all set for success!

Visual Regression Testing

Naturally, one of the most significant parts of your UI is how it looks — that’s the whole point of a UI, anyway. But these visuals can often get shifted around or broken or completely lose their shape on some screen sizes. To spot these issues, testing teams have come up with visual regression testing.

It's similar to regular regression testing; however, the tests grab screenshots of your application as they run. With those screen captures, your teams can see how the tests run and how your UI test cases respond visually. That way, you can see how elements move and shift during use and help to make sure that nothing gets misaligned or broken through your user’s journeys.

Cross Browser Testing Strategy

Not all browsers are created equal, and not all your users are running on the same one. Adequate testing across all major browsers (and their different versions) ensures your UI looks and responds as intended.

But you can’t simply test all of them.

Instead, you should look at what versions your users are coming from, the most popular versions of these browsers, and what functionality may not be included. That way, you can ensure the bulk of your user base can still use your application instead of spending resources to fix an issue that very few people may experience.

Preload Test Scenarios with Cookies

Cookies have far more use than tracking users and making every website give you an annoying popup. You can use them to see how your application changes and remembers your users' preferences, speeding up your testing process by starting your tests already logged in, data storage, tracking, and toggling features on and off.

Use An API Layer Where Possible

APIs run the tech world today and have become the backbone of modern application development. And since your UI functions entirely around your API, using it in your tests makes sense, too.

By calling your API in your tests, you can validate how your UI test cases return results or data for your tests. Plus, you can use it to set up your test suites ahead of time by ensuring you have the user profiles required or just clearing test data once created.

UI Automation

Automation is a developer’s best friend and is incredibly handy for your UI testing. You can include automation tools like Selenium or Watir to create UI test cases that run entirely without you. Plus, they all support nearly every browser and operating system, so you’ll always be able to run what you need.

These tools are packed to the brim with features, too. The ability to self-heal failing tests, record and replay inputs, and even object-based testing makes creating and maintaining tests easy.

How to Speed Up UI Test Cases with Launchable - Lucky #7

While the first six approaches offer incremental steps to speed up your UI tests, they aren’t the fastest or most scalable. 

UI test cases, including those using Selenium, suffer from lengthy execution times, resulting in inefficient utilization of testing machines and delayed feedback for developers. Consequently, this leads to increased costs and slower overall speed.

Launchable's AI-driven test intelligence platform tackles this challenge by intelligently selecting the most relevant tests to run. This approach allows teams to significantly reduce test execution times and shift subsets of tests earlier in the development pipeline. As a result, the overall costs are lowered, and delivery times are accelerated, promoting faster and more efficient software development processes.  

Accelerate your UI test cases with Predictive Test Selection.

Predictive Test Selection allows your teams to drill down to the finer details of how your tests are running. Launchable uses that data, paired with a machine-learning model that analyzes your git data, to help you decide what tests you should — or shouldn’t — run. That way, you’re always ahead of the game and can save time and resources by only running the tests that need to run.

Cure unhealthy tests with Test Suite Insights.

Unreliable test suites can be a massive slog for your QA teams, taking precious time to analyze and fix them whenever they fail. But with Launchable’s Test Suite Insights, you can monitor and analyze your tests' performance, giving you accurate data about the changes to your tests and spotting flaky ones to be fixed.

Stay alert in the fast lane with personalized Test Notifications.

Instead of being bombarded by a plethora of alerts and disruptions, Launchable’s Test Notifications can put a stop to that. Instead, you can set up customized Slack Test Notifications to keep you and your team in the loop but only disrupt your flow when the build breaks or it’s time to merge.

UI Test Case Wrap-Up

Optimizing your UI test cases ensures a smooth and fast testing cycle. By combining these strategies with the power of a tool like Launchable, you can quickly blaze ahead of your release goals. A quick and effective testing process leads to a better user experience, so always ensure you keep up the pace.