By Joel Hirano (ERNI Switzerland)
In today’s digital economy, your product is only as good as the experience it delivers. That experience must be flawless across an increasingly fragmented landscape of devices, browsers and operating systems. A login form that fails on Safari, a layout that breaks on older Android phones – these seemingly minor issues can erode customer trust, increase support costs and ultimately impact your bottom line. Digital leaders who treat cross-browser and cross-device testing as a strategic priority – not just a technical task – are better equipped to protect their brand, optimise user journeys, and scale with confidence.
The challenge: Fragmentation of devices and browsers
A few years ago, the focus in web projects was clear: a desktop website had to function in two or three major browsers. Today, the situation is far more complex. The market is more fragmented than ever. Users access websites via Android or iOS smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, smart TVs and traditional computers – using Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge or even outdated versions of Internet Explorer.
In addition, there are different operating system versions, screen sizes, input methods (touch, mouse, keyboard) and network conditions. This diversity creates new problems for quality control. What appears perfectly fine on an iPhone 14 running iOS 17 might not work at all on an older Android device running Chrome.
The asynchronous nature of browser updates adds to this complication. Safari releases updates at a slower, more cautious pace than Chrome and Firefox, which release upgrades every two weeks. It takes more than just visual tests for developers to account for feature gaps, experimental APIs and legacy behaviours.
From bug fixing to brand protection: What’s at stake
Digital friction is more than a technical issue. It’s a business risk. Broken interfaces or misaligned layouts can lead to:
- Abandoned transactions
- Increased customer service demand
- Lower Net Promoter Scores (NPS)
- Brand erosion
In competitive markets – especially in industries like finance, e-commerce and MedTech – users won’t wait for a patch. They will switch to alternatives that work seamlessly the first time.
The solution: Scalable, automated cross-platform testing
To address this complexity efficiently, leading digital teams rely on test automation platforms that combine scale, speed and realism. Two tools stand out:
BrowserStack: Cloud-based, realistic and scalable testing
BrowserStack enables testing across hundreds of real devices and OS/browser combinations – without the need for internal infrastructure.
Advantages
- Instant access to actual devices.
- Wide range of OS and browsers, including legacy platforms.
- Integration with CI/CD workflows such as GitHub Actions and Jenkins.
- Providing help with automated Selenium/Appium-based scripts and live testing.
- Geolocation testing and network simulation.
BrowserStack makes it possible to create excellent, realistic testing environments that replicate how actual people interact with a product. It is especially useful for platforms that interact with customers, like banking, e-commerce and SaaS apps.
Playwright: Open Source and developer-friendly
Microsoft’s Playwright is designed for developers who are more technically oriented. The tool supports several browser engines, including Chromium, Firefox and WebKit, and allows automated UI tests to be developed in Python, C#, JavaScript or Java.
Advantages
- Open source, meaning there are no license fees.
- Support multiple browsers from a single API.
- Complex interaction simulations, including file upload, drag, hover and geolocation.
- There are headless and headful modes for visual feedback.
- Integrated video, screenshot and trace tools for debugging.
Playwright functions at a lower level, giving it more control over time and network behaviour than previous frameworks such as Selenium. Because of this, it is ideal for modern apps that primarily utilise dynamic rendering and asynchronous JavaScript.
BrowserStack and Playwright: A powerful combination
Together, BrowserStack and Playwright offer a powerful combination: scalable test execution on real hardware with developer-friendly automation logic.
Even if Playwright and BrowserStack are strong tools, they are only a component of a bigger ecosystem.
Combining both solutions is becoming more and more common. BrowserStack runs the tests on actual hardware in the cloud, while Playwright manages the automation of the test logic. Playwright’s integration with BrowserStack allows companies to benefit from both code-based automation and device diversity.
Real-world impact: A banking use case
After releasing a mobile update, a digital bank received a spike in support tickets – users on Safari couldn’t log in. Internal QA had only tested on Chrome.
Using Playwright scripts and BrowserStack’s real-device cloud, the team simulated the login journey across iOS devices and quickly identified a validation issue related to the input mode attribute on WebKit browsers. The issue silently broke the form in Safari.
Results:
- The fix was deployed across all devices through updated automated tests
- Login success on iOS improved by 18%
- Support tickets dropped significantly within two weeks
Strategic best practices for effective cross-browser testing
Conclusion: Failing to test today means losing users tomorrow
In a world where user expectations are higher than ever, technical excellence is no longer optional. Cross-browser and device testing is a key enabler of digital reliability, brand consistency and customer satisfaction. The investment in scalable, automated QA processes pays off through reduced friction, fewer defects and a better digital experience – on every screen, every time.
To explore also another fundamental aspect in the development of test solutions for functional testing dive deeper into one of our previous articles Sophistication in Test Automation: From Page Object Model to Screenplay Pattern.