Basecamp optimizes UI testing workflows with automated visual testing

THE CHALLENGE

Basecamp lacked visibility into the visual integrity of their website on each deploy

As one of the Internet’s most beloved business tools, Basecamp is used by nearly 3M people worldwide from freelancers to global enterprises. Basecamp’s lean team is one of the most agile and innovative in the industry, valuing simplicity, clarity, ease of use, and honesty above all else. To maintain its products’ customer experience, Basecamp utilizes the best practices for development including test automation and continuous integration.

Even with test tools and workflows in place, Basecamp lacked visibility into the visual integrity of their website on each deploy. Time-consuming manual testing was the only way to gain that visibility, and visual regressions were still an issue. Basecamp needed to ensure that their website not only functions well but is visually perfect across browsers and screen widths.

As a self-serve business, visual regressions in Basecamp’s web properties have the potential to disrupt their sign-up flows, and in turn, their bottom line. To ensure they weren’t releasing visual regressions, Basecamp knew they would need to augment manual testing with automated reviews.

THE SOLUTION

Percy’s automated solution gave Basecamp visibility across their entire website without having to test manually before each deploy

To take the guesswork out of shipping code free of visual bugs, Basecamp integrated visual testing into their stack and development workflows. Basecamp leveraged its existing Buildkite pipeline to integrate with Percy. They added visual testing automatically to every CI build, giving them snapshots across each page and state of their website.

For a property viewed by millions of users across various touchpoints, cross-browser and cross-device testing was a must. With Percy, pages, and components are rendered across both Chrome and Firefox, and at each responsive width. With Percy’s GitHub integration, the Basecamp team is alerted when visual changes are detected. Knowing what has and hasn’t changed on each pull request gives them the power to deploy with a level of confidence not possible otherwise.

Before using Percy, the Basecamp team had to check all their website pages manually for visual regressions. With automated visual testing, it’s easier and faster for them to know with certainty that their website always looks as it should.