WebDepend had worked with Greystar across several projects throughout 2025. Towards the end of that year, Greystar contacted WebDepend again with an urgent problem: repeated issues were being encountered across several of their main websites. Users navigating from Greystar’s student accommodation and professional rental marketing sites through to the rental application portals, which are separate web applications, were regularly running into problems completing applications. These issues were being reported by real users, causing disruption to the business and its prospective tenants.
What began as a planned six-week engagement in late 2025 extended into early 2026, and through a series of contract extensions continued through to the end of May 2026, a total engagement of approximately six months. The primary objective was to establish daily end-to-end testing across multiple sites and user journeys to catch application issues as early as possible, supplemented by the development of an automated testing framework to provide broader, more systematic coverage.
WebDepend deployed a team of up to three testers across the engagement, with clear roles split between daily manual testing and automated framework development:
Testing was carried out daily across the major desktop browsers on Windows and macOS, and across mobile devices on both iOS and Android. A performance review was also incorporated into the daily end-to-end testing to monitor the performance of the rental application steps over time. Browser and device compatibility was covered throughout the engagement.
Over the course of the engagement, WebDepend raised over 200 bugs across the daily testing and broader exploratory work. Key findings included:
WebDepend’s involvement in raising and feeding issues to both the marketing and development teams, retesting fixes, and improving the overall application process was recognised internally at Greystar as representing a significant quality improvement.
The daily end-to-end testing regime gave Greystar consistent, reliable visibility over the health of their rental application journeys throughout the engagement. With over 200 bugs raised and fast feedback loops in place, critical issues were caught and resolved quickly rather than being discovered by users. This protected both the business and its prospective tenants.
The Playwright automation framework delivered a comprehensive set of building blocks covering thousands of potential combinations of properties, lease terms, rental units, and instalment plans - a scale of coverage that would not have been practical through a person testing alone. The framework was fully demonstrated to the Greystar team and comprehensively documented, enabling the Greystar India team to take ownership and continue building out further tests independently.
WebDepend also helped Greystar build internal testing capability by mentoring a junior tester hired during the engagement, and by handing the automation framework over to a more senior tester within the Greystar India team. The quality improvements achieved over the six months were highlighted internally as a significant positive outcome, and Greystar have indicated they may well engage WebDepend again for future testing needs.
The final positive outcome, this time from WebDepend’s perspective, is that one of the digital agencies responsible for building some of the marketing sites were so impressed with our work that they have since become a client of WebDepend’s.
