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Website bugs can be as much of a pain as real bugs are to website viewers. And little though they might sound, their impact on online casinos and the gambling industry can mean the difference between high bounce rates and high conversion rates. That’s why finding, fixing and reporting bugs is so crucial that companies are willing to pay high fees to make sure their websites, programs and systems are working efficiently and as intended.
But what exactly are website bugs, and why are they so important to track? This guide by QWERTYLABS shows everything you need to know about these bugs, their types, how to find them and how to fix them.
Software bugs refer to any defects or errors in a computer program, website, software or hardware system. They can come from various instances like lack of collaboration between developers, incomplete testing and lack of real user condition testing. That’s why website bugs are nearly inescapable during the software development stage. With that said, the general rule is that the fewer bugs, the better.
After the initial development, programs will go through an extensive debugging phase where bug hunters are tasked to look for flaws that may be exploited or cause inefficiencies.
As more people started using the internet in the 2000s, companies started creating or employing web development teams to create pleasing, informative and secure websites that establish brand reputation while valuing user experience. Not only did these developers create these websites, but they also maintained them by fixing and reporting bugs.
Teams of developers and bug hunters need to find, report and fix bugs throughout and after development because any vulnerability could lead to a cyberattack. These attacks could compromise revenue, sensitive user data and company data. Putting these attacks into perspective for banks and government websites makes this threat easier to see and more important to thwart.
Bugs can come from any development stage, from the front end to the back end. Thus, they can affect elements on various pages and grow complex. To distinguish these bugs, we listed down the classifications and types of bugs on a website you might find below.
Picture taken from Thunkable
Functional bugs are website issues with a software's performance, such as the following:
When you perform an activity and the website does not respond, you can classify this as a functionality problem. It's worth noting that these functionality problems will have differing severities, from low, high to critical. Low severity means that the bug is of no concern but is present, high means that the site still works, but some users are inconvenienced, while critical means that the bug leads to a major loss in users.
Compatibility issues happen when an application is incompatible with hardware or an operating system like macOS or Windows OS. It also occurs when programs are not mobile-friendly and cause problems for mobile users.
Testing for inaccessible elements, responsive design and other compatibility issues is mostly done after other initial tests, such as functionality and usability tests because its errors aren't as obvious as others. With that said, compatibility errors are a continuous concern that devs address because operating systems are frequently being updated for security and user experience reasons.
Picture taken from Hobo Web
Performance bugs are issues that lead to inefficiencies like slow website speed loading, platform instability and taking up more processing space, leading to a lag in page load time. Because of the gravity of these symptoms and how they affect users, performance issues are more easily detected and are a higher priority on issues that need fixing. Many teams anticipate performance bugs, so they set aside devs dedicated to testing and fixing performance bugs.
Photo taken from Shake
As the name implies, visual bugs have much to do with how users perceive a program or system. These types of bugs could range from misaligned texts and mismatching information to overlapping designs. Although these bugs may seem minor issues at first, it’s key to remember that appearances and aesthetics help build a brand’s image. In short, a messy website or program could lead to a user doubting the service and switching to a competitor brand.
With how common and severe cyberattacks are becoming nowadays, security bugs are a priority for development teams. Security bugs refer to any issue related to the vulnerabilities of a brand or client's data and experience on a page. Poorly secured software not only puts user data protection at risk but also harms the organisation's general reputation, which can take a long time to repair.
Dev teams must prepare for multiple cases to protect from criminals adding malicious code or block bots from spamming access to a site. Many of these scenarios are tested, and security practices are always reviewed to ensure that a program has no security bugs, can defend itself against innovative attacks and can detect newer attacks in the first place.
Picture taken from Baymard Institute
A usability error can prevent the software from performing to its full capacity or render it completely useless which makes it a crucial error to find and fix before the software is launched or used. In software testing, examples of this error cover issues like not being able to log into your own account or difficulty in navigating the page. This presents barriers to the user's experience which then makes it harder for them to engage with a brand.
Ultimately, this lack of usability might even motivate users to seek out an alternative service. Thus, it’s best to use the best website navigation guide to prevent this kind of bug.
Picture taken from Mail Genius
When scrolling through a website’s page, you might find broken elements caused by outdated links or inaccuracy in the page’s elements like missing content. These inconsistencies are all forms of content bugs because they all refer to errors within the page like texts, labels, media and links.
This can be harmful to your content strategy regardless of whether it follows the current content marketing trends or not. That’s why it needs to be fixed early on.
Having bugs in websites causes vulnerabilities that third parties might take advantage of. This could then lead to big consequences and complications in casinos like game disruption or valuable data theft which can negatively affect their reputation.
Aside from that, a lack of efficiency in casinos caused by bugs negatively impacts players’ trust in a casino brand and devalues their experience as a customer. In the long run, brands might see fewer clients depositing and betting on their platform due to negative reviews on casino review sites. That’s why preventing and fixing bugs as soon as they show up is of utmost importance to casinos. It’s a must in the website QA checklist for casinos.
Remember that casinos deal with a lot of money and user information which makes bug fixing a big priority and constant effort by dev teams and QAs. This especially becomes more important if a casino focuses on its VIP and high-roller audiences. Devs need to ensure that bugs are kept to a minimum to enhance the clientele’s user experience (UX).
The methods of fixing website bugs for casinos involve a lot of procedures or changes from dev teams to big stakeholders. As such, we’ll be looking into the standard 8 step-by-step procedures when it comes to fixing a website bug below:
The first step to finding bugs on a website is to identify where, what, and the severity of the bug. These bugs can be communicated from user reports or code reviews submitted, checked and passed to a developer for further inspection. If a dev does find a bug, they can check error logs in the program that reflect erroneous system behaviour and finally make a report on it according to how urgent the bug needs to be fixed.
Devs and QA teams can then prioritise the bug according to the severity of the problems it causes once they’re identified. Other minor bug-fixing efforts may be put on a backlog if the bug presents a threat significant to user information, brand reputation or partner relations.
Identified bugs are then reproduced so team members can analyse them themselves and generate test data faster. This way, the team can then quickly find the best solutions to fix the bug.
Other members of the team are responsible for documenting and investigating the code by putting it into a codebase and database records. Keeping track of the code gives devs a basis of what the code initially looks like and helps future teams track the updates made. Good documentation of the code also helps research and development teams create better guidelines for what they expect from a system or program’s code.
Once members have thoroughly investigated the code and seen the vulnerabilities with it, they can start developing code modifications for it within the boundaries of a system’s configuration. Remember that different people will use various devices and the bugs they find might only apply to certain devices and operating systems. By setting the fixes to a particular system configuration, devs get to narrow down the scope of how to fix the problem.
Once a potential fix has been made, it goes into the testing phase where other devs can verify the limits and repairs that the fix makes. Not only do these teams try to see if the bug is resolved, but they also make sure that the fix doesn’t create new problems or mess with other elements in the system. This validation system makes sure the fix addresses the problem itself and keeps the site functional and up to brand and user standards.
If the fix is accepted, teams will then coordinate with other teams like server maintenance teams and public relations teams to move on to the next step, fix deployment. Finding the right time to release a fix can be quite difficult because it inconveniences the user with system, website or program downtimes. That’s why brands or companies must first alert their clients before deploying a fix and make sure they understand when maintenance will occur and when a service might not be available. They can then plan accordingly instead of being further inconvenienced.
Deploying a fix doesn’t mean the end for dev teams because they’ll still have to monitor the results of their efforts on the system. Data from website analytics and detailed user feedback are important for devs to determine if their analysis of the issue, response to the bug and fix deployment was a success.
All these suggestions, insights and calls-to-action from security firms and developers are built from years of defending and learning from cyberattacks. It’s why we have such sophisticated safety implementation protocols today. However, security doesn’t stop there because the field is always looking for improvement points like faster bug detection, bug elimination and efficient development.
Trust that you won’t have to worry about these issues when you work with us in protecting your brand online. Keep your casino platform safe with the help of our team of experts at QWERTYLABS. Contact us today to learn more about our services!
The most common types of website bugs fall under the functionality category. One example of this is formed on a website that doesn’t submit or doesn’t get registered in a database due to things like a faulty button.
Bug fixing is critical because it keeps a site running smoothly and delivers the correct information or services to the intended users. Not fixing a bug could render the site vulnerable to third-party attacks and jeopardise both the user and the brand.
It’s best to use reputable tools that are quick and efficient. For this, we recommend tools to find bugs in websites like Jira or Bugzilla.
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