Functional problems
Working with functional problems on a website is crucial for several reasons:
Boost SEO and build trust
- User Experience (UX):
Broken links frustrate visitors, leading to a poor browsing experience. This can increase bounce rates and reduce user engagement. - SEO Impact:
Search engines like Google penalize websites with broken links, lowering their search rankings. This reduces visibility and organic traffic. - Credibility and Trust:
Broken links can make a website appear outdated or poorly maintained, damaging the brand’s credibility and trustworthiness. - Conversion Rates:
Broken links on product pages, contact forms, or checkout processes can directly impact sales and conversions.
Broken images
Squidler finds links to missing or broken pages, both by identifying status codes and network errors, but also by looking at the content of the target pages, as many single-page applications and other dynamic rendering techniques don't respond with proper status codes.
Broken links
Broken images are much like broken links — pointing to resources that don't exist or that can't be shown. In many cases this results in an ugly frame with a small icon inside.
Dead ends
Pages with no internal links, i.e. links followed during Squidler tests, are considered dead ends. Pages that don't show any such links within a few seconds trigger this problem.
Incorrect restoration of scroll position
When navigating from one page to another, and then navigating back, some pages fail to restore the scroll position to where the user started. Especially on long pages with lots of scrolls, like product listings or social media websites, this can be very confusing and frustrating for users.
This problem also applies to forward navigating of the browser history.
Images displayed with incorrect proportions
A common issue in responsive layouts, is that images get squeezed out of proportion. This can also happen if you explicitly set incorrect dimensions that don't match the actual image dimensions.
Slightly horizontally scrollable pages
When some elements that are too wide cause the layout to overflow, there's unindented horizontal scrolling. This often happens at certain viewport widths or specific dynamic content, like long words.
When there's a relatively small horizontal scroll, Squidler considers it a problem.
Broken pages
Broken pages are those where the server responded with a status code indicating a bad request or server error. Squidler can also identify pages without such status codes, but where the content indicates a broken page.
Blank pages
Blank pages, those without any visible text or media within a particular viewport, are considered problems. This is because they indicate a problem with the page, such as a missing resource, JavaScript errors, bad responsive layout, or other rendering issues.
Missing titles
A missing title on a website refers to the absence of a title element in the HTML code of a web page. The title tag is crucial as it defines the page’s title, which appears in browser tabs, search engine results, and when bookmarking a page.
Code visible in content
With many programming languages, frameworks, and frontend rendering technologies, there's a risk that code snippets or other technical artifacts end up visible on the page. This can be a security risk, or just look bad or be confusing.