Unfortunately, because testing gets left to the end of the project, it's often the first thing to be cut when a project overruns. But it's important to ensure your website performs as expected. However, the key to testing is to be clear on what performance levels the website has to accommodated. Without this, it's difficult to perform meaningful testing. Like anything, without clear goals, the best path to achieving the outcomes is equally unclear.

The other thing to remember with testing is that there are a number of levels to be considered beyond just getting the client to sign off on the look and feel of the site and have it pass user acceptance testing. The lower levels such as the processor and memory usage also need to be considered, otherwise you can very quickly run into trouble if the website becomes popular.

The key is to understand what levels of performance are required so that you can put the appropriate testing in place to ensure the end solution meets those levels. Having...