AUTOMATED SELENIUM TESTING FOR THE QUALITY ASSURANCE OF MEKELLE UNIVERSITY WEB SITE

Abstract

Websites serve as critical platforms for administrative, academic, and communication functions in higher education institutions. However, many institutional websites in Ethiopia, including that of Mekelle University, face persistent challenges such as outdated content, inconsistent navigation, broken links, and poor mobile responsiveness. Manual quality assurance is labor intensive, error prone, and insufficient to ensure consistent performance across diverse devices and user interactions. To address these limitations, this study develops an automated testing framework using Python and Selenium WebDriver to systematically evaluate the functionality, usability, responsiveness, and content accuracy of the Mekelle University website. The design and execution of nine test cases (TC001–TC009) addressed navigation, form validation, authentication, content verification, responsive design, homepage content verification, and link validation. The results show that the navigational components (TC001–TC003) are generally reliable and offer consistent access to the main sections of the website. However, the failure of form validation testing (TC004) revealed a significant flaw in data entry operations. This failure resulted from a combination of automation-related problems, such as uneven HTML structure and unstable element locators, and website-side issues, such as missing elements and unresponsive buttons. This mixed outcome demonstrates that while Selenium works effectively with well-structured underlying web components, interacting with poorly developed or dynamically loaded form elements reduces its ease of use. Content verification (TC006) exposed discrepancies in page titles and footer components, while authentication testing (TC005) confirmed that the website currently lacks a login feature for authenticated access. Homepage content verification (TC008) further identified accessibility issues, particularly the absence of a working mobile navigation menu. Responsive design testing (TC007) showed generally acceptable behavior across devices, and link validation testing (TC009) revealed that 5 out of 53 hyperlinks failed (9.4%), indicating broken links that undermine reliability and user trust. Overall, the study demonstrates that Selenium-based automated testing is effective in detecting usability issues, content inconsistencies, and functional flaws across large portions of the website. At the same time, the mixed results from TC004 highlight an important limitation: Selenium’s accuracy and ease of use depend heavily on the quality and consistency of a website’s underlying HTML structure. Thus, the findings emphasize both the value of automated testing and the need for improved web development standards and continuous quality assurance practices to enhance the reliability, accessibility, and overall user experience of Ethiopian higher education websites.