Mobile App Development, Mobile App Development Testing, Mobile App Security Testing, Mobile App Testing best practice, Mobile App Security Checklist
A thoroughly tested app can help prevent many quality and security vulnerabilities. Testing your mobile app is as important as developing an app. Deploying the app without testing it might create many issues, like bugs, errors, poor customer experience, and abandonment and uninstalling of apps.
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Like a robust mobile app development strategy, you need a mobile app testing strategy that helps streamline the whole testing process. A well-tested app offers high-speed performance. Also, it helps to ensure the app’s functionality, security, performance, and speed. It provides a smooth user experience while functioning as expected. With modern testing tools and environments, testing an app is a continued process rather than something that starts once the development part is over.
When your app is thoroughly tested, users will have a better experience and might abandon or uninstall it. Furthermore, they might install a different app in the future. You must not let this happen; retaining unsatisfied customers is challenging.
Table of Contents
What Is Mobile App Testing?
Mobile application testing ensures that the app functions correctly and as expected. It is a process of evaluating and verifying an app’s performance, functionalities, and performance. Developing a mobile app can unlock many possibilities for businesses. When you invest your blood and sweat in building a next-gen, feature-rich, and superior app, testing the app thoroughly is your responsibility, or all your effort will be in vain.
Developers or quality analysts use various testing tools, methodologies, and environments to test the app at different levels. They will use multiple manual and automation testing methodologies for the mobile app development testing process. Some methods are unit testing, functional testing, user research, verification and validation, compatibility testing, etc.
What Are The Practical Benefits of Mobile App Testing?
Developing a mobile app allows businesses to encash users’ attention and trust. Hence, it is of utmost importance that the mobile app perfectly and accurately caters to all users’ expectations. Let’s understand some benefits of mobile app testing.
Ensures App Quality
Once the app is thoroughly tested and all the errors are addressed, the app stands the test of time. Thanks to quality, performance, and speed, users will enjoy the whole app experience. The app will shape a personalized journey for individuals when tested inclusively.
Mitigates Security Vulnerabilities
Security is a major concern for businesses as such attacks might harm the brand’s reputation. Users who share susceptible data with the app expect fair use without privacy breaches. Hence, it is a moral responsibility for businesses to perform mobile app security testing. When you test the app, you can identify and address security vulnerabilities. It will mitigate security issues and offer a safe user experience.
Enhances User Experience
Another benefit of testing the app is its high-quality user experience. The UX is one of the factors that determines the app’s success. With a poor user experience, you cannot expect to meet your business goals. A tested app helps businesses to offer a fascinating experience.
Compatibility
Another reason to get your app tested is to ensure high-end compatibility across various platforms and devices. Also, developers can identify and address compatibility issues during the development stage.
Reduced Development Costs
Mobile app testing also helps reduce development costs, as modern testing tools identify errors and bugs earlier during development. Also, a tested app will receive fewer bad reviews and complaints, saving time and costs.
Better Brand Reputation
A tested app helps win brownie points through loyalty and trust. A trusted app will get more downloads.
Early Bug Identification
Developing the app in a testing environment helps developers identify bugs and errors earlier before they interfere with functionalities.
Competitive Advantage:
When you deploy an app that is tested thoroughly, it will give you a competitive edge over your rivals.
Types of Testing Environments
There are mainly two types of testing environments. Emulators/ Simulators and Real Devices.
Let’s understand both of these environments in brief:
Emulators/ Simulators
It is a testing environment where a virtual testing device is run on computers to mimic a smartphone’s features and behaviors perfectly.
There are primarily two types of virtual devices: emulators and simulators. Emulators mimic the hardware and software of the target device. On the other hand, simulators mimic only the software part of the target device with various configurations in the real-time environment.
The best part of this testing environment is that it allows quality analysts to test the app across various devices and OS versions. It is an ideal environment for the beginning stage with continuous iterations and testing cycles.
Real Devices
Real devices are smartphones or devices used to run the software in a real-time production environment. As real devices are used in the testing environment, it gives a more accurate view, reliable outcomes, and superior UI/UX validation compared to emulators and simulators.
This testing environment is highly suitable for performance, usability, and regression testing.
Types of Mobile App Testing
There are many mobile app testing methodologies available to test the app thoroughly. We will discuss all of them in brief here:
Functional Testing
It is a fundamental type of testing that primarily tests each app function and ensures that it functions properly. Also, it tests various user flows within the app, and the features comprising user flows. Quality analysts must ensure functional testing is done across multiple usage scenarios.
Some tested functions are text boxes, buttons, menus, icons, push notifications rendering, signup, login, app installation, app launch, etc.
Interruption Testing
How would the app respond when some unforeseen interruption happens? In such a scenario, the app should pause momentarily and return to its original state. Interruption testing analyzes how the app reacts in such scenarios and what can be improved to ensure the overall experience does not affect users.
Some common interruptions are incoming phone calls, messages, low battery, the charging state, shutdowns, OS upgrades, etc.
Localization Testing
Localization testing is about testing the features independent of the device’s location. Many apps have localized features that must perform optimally based on the device’s location. Various studies prove that localized apps perform excellently in the global market. Localization testing ensures that localized features perform and function perfectly in the correct location.
Speed Testing:
Does your app load instantly? Does your app have different loading times on different devices? You need to work on it. For example, Android has various devices with other specifications and features. You must ensure that the app loads instantly on all devices. However, checking the speed for multiple devices might take time. Hence, you can use various testing tools available for developers.
Memory Leak Testing
An app needs to return the memory once a function has been performed. Sometimes, an app might fail to return the memory, and it is called a memory leak. In such a scenario, the app might fail to function. Mostly, memory leak happens due to programming bugs. Hence, it is vital to test the app for Memory leaks. The developers test the app’s performance on devices with different memory capabilities.
Usability Testing
The app must be user-friendly and easy to use. Usability testing is all about checking how user-friendly the app is. It tests the app’s usability, intuitiveness, and the seamless user experience. Primarily, usability testing is performed with actual customers on real devices to get genuine feedback. Sometimes, quality analysts use real-like case scenarios to test the app’s usability.
Performance Testing
A mobile must perform excellently on various devices and conditions. The app is put under multiple scenarios and non-optimal conditions in performance testing to check whether it performs well. Some tests are device performance, network performance, API/server performance, recovery capabilities, etc.
Security Testing
Have you tested all the aspects of the mobile app security checklist? Data security is one of the hot topics across the globe. When users share their personal and confidential data, they also expect privacy. You must adhere to data security guidelines and regulations to avoid unnecessary hassles. Try to deploy all the security measures to ensure the app is highly secure and safe. Test the app for security to find and address vulnerabilities.
Mobile App Testing Practices and Strategies
Various mobile app testing best practices and strategies can help developers streamline the testing process and build user-friendly, high-performance, and speedy mobile apps. Let’s check out them.
Cross-Platform Testing
If you are developing a cross-platform app, users will expect the app to run seamlessly regardless of the OS version they are using. The app must perform optimally on Android and iOS devices. Hence, cross-platform compatibility is a must. Cross-platform testing ensures the app runs excellently on various OS versions.
Early Testing
Earlier, developers used to test the app once the development phase was over. This is not the case anymore. The agile testing approach is far more practical and cost-effective. The agile development approach allows users to test the app during development to identify and address bugs and other issues.
If a bug is not identified during development, fixing it later on will affect the cost and time. Testing early can prevent minor bugs and errors from affecting functionalities. Also, the agile testing approach helps achieve regular feedback, quality maintenance of code, and a continuous delivery pipeline.
A Finest Collaboration Between The Dev and Testing Team
It is another thing to keep in mind during mobile app development. A seamless communication between developers and testers can help streamline the whole process. Failing to do so might result in unnecessary chaos and failures. Keeping everyone on the same page will enhance productivity and efficiency and mitigate risks.
Infrastructure Readiness
Determine the testing environment to be used before the development starts. Also, keep the testing infrastructure ready for the QA team to save time and effort. Ensure that the selected testing environment meets all the specific requirements. Examining all these criteria while choosing the right testing environment will help ensure a smooth and seamless testing process.
Define Your Testing Goals
You must define your testing goals first. For example, you must prioritize your core features to test them first. Identifying your core functionalities will ensure a direct testing process. Also, remember the budget and timeline while designing a testing strategy.
Choose The Devices Carefully
Do you want to test the app on emulators/ simulators or a real device testing environment? No matter your environment, you must carefully choose the emulators and devices for testing. Research about the market, Android and iOS guidelines, and other available resources can help you select the proper devices for testing your app. Also, there are cloud-based testing platforms available for testing purposes. Select the testing environment and devices carefully after evaluating the time and budget constraints.
Embrace Automation
Most development companies now use automation testing tools to test mobile apps. For example, regression testing is a repetitive process, and automating it can help save time and effort. Furthermore, tools like Appium and Selenium can help automate basic features and functionalities. Integrating automated testing into a development process can allow for finding and addressing bugs earlier. Automated testing tools run tests after each code change to detect functional or technical bugs or errors in real-time.
Don’t Neglect Network Conditions
Will your app perform optimally under a low network connection? You must test the app under various network conditions, such as WiFi, cellular data, speed variations, etc., to ensure a smooth performance. Also, you can check out how an app performs and reacts to a slow internet network. You can think of speed optimization techniques in prior.
Implement Iterative Testing Cycles
Iterative testing cycles help address all the issues during a particular development phase. Here, developers fix the bugs detected in the early testing before moving to the next phase.
Document Everything
Documentation in mobile app development can reduce costs and improve efficiency and productivity. The answer to what to document is simple: everything you find necessary.
For example, documenting which programming language is used can also help delivery managers when they assign tasks to someone who is not a programmer. Some documents that you can create are test case specifications, software requirement specifications, test design documents, test strategies, test summary reports, bug reports, error reports, test data, test analyses, etc.
Never Forget Beta Testing
Beta testing involves hiring a few individuals and asking them to test the app and offer feedback. It is similar to usability testing in that you get genuine suggestions and feedback from individuals. When you launch an app globally with different time zones, languages, and races, it is crucial to go for beta testing to ensure that no unnoticed bugs or defects are still in the final version. Also, for testers, beta testing saves their time and effort in working on piled-up defects.
Use Real-User Scenarios
Testing your app with real-world user scenarios will help you understand the possible expectations of users from the app. Also, it will help to test the app similarly in a way that users interact with it.
Use a Cloud Service To Test The App On More Devices
A cloud-based testing approach helps developers access a wide range of devices and platform versions to test the app. Keeping an inventory of all possible devices you want to test the app is not feasible. A cloud-based device management platform helps you there.
Don’t Forget Emotional Engagement
Millennials wish to connect emotionally with the product or service they deal with. There are hundreds of mobile apps available on app stores offering similar services. However, a few of them appeal to the audience emotionally. Even if people have downloaded the app on their devices, there is no guarantee that they will use it regularly. That is where the emotional connection plays an important role. Test the emotional connection while testing the app in real-time with many actual users who can offer genuine feedback.
Keep Refining and Optimizing
Various testing types can help refine and optimize the mobile app. For example, if you want to check key delivery milestones, you can go for alpha/beta testing. Similarly, A/B testing can help you determine what end users want from your app. Optimization testing can help make decisions on UI/UX design, navigation, and functionalities. Also, a fake-door testing method can help understand which new features people like at the early stage of mobile app development.
Conclusion
Testing the app is no longer an option for businesses. You need to test the app to open the doors of opportunities. In an era where user experience plays a crucial role in determining the fate of mobile apps, deploying the app without testing it will invite chaos and failures. It is integral to mobile app development and must be handled with extreme care. You need a solid mobile app testing strategy to ensure that the app shines in all the departments, such as user experience, performance, speed, navigation, loading time, etc.
