First of all, just what the heck is QA?
Quality Assurance (QA) is a way of preventing mistakes or defects in products and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to customers.
Sounds pretty important right? Well, it is! I can hear you now though, “Ahhh! Not more process!” Before you run away just remember: process is only worthwhile if it makes your job easier, allowing you to put out a superior product while saving time and effort. Everything else is a waste of time.
The QA process can be your best friend and ignoring it can be your nightmare. Is it worth the effort? Can’t you just muddle on without a process? Without quality assurance, so many things can go wrong, such as:
Spelling Errors
Would you trust a company who put out marketing material riddled with spelling mistakes?
Grammar Mistakes
Would you trust a company who didn’t know your from you’re or its from it’s? We even wrote a post about how grammar mistakes really grind our gears.
Broken Links
Would you trust a company who’s website was full of broken links?
What happens when a customer looks at a website, ad, or product with any of those issues? The value someone places on your product and/or company takes a nosedive…not what you want.
It is important to have a good QA process for every step of your project, no matter what or who it’s for. This ensures satisfaction, that the content is being conveyed appropriately, and the value of your company to customers does not go down – onwards and upwards!
So, how can you ensure you’re doing the best possible QA? The details of your plan will vary depending on the industry you’re in and the project you’re working on, but a few general tips we can give you are:
- Don’t leave it all until the end. Reviewing as you go will help you catch issues before they snowball.
- Have more than one person proofread your content.
- Define milestones for your project with the expectations of the product at that stage.
- Have a good test plan. Planning now will save you headaches in the future.
- Break your testing down into phases. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Testing a small set of features will allow you better focus.
- Keep your project priorities handy. Always remember what the big, important things are.
These are just a few tips for making your quality assurance process run more smoothly and ensuring that your next ad doesn’t accidentally encourage cannibalism.
