Considering to the wide advantage a mobile app can put right to your shores, there is an insanely incredible amount of time and effort required in order to display it how it is. But what takes the things to the aisle is the testing, yes QA it is. Quality Assurance is the most important part of the cycle of software development. Talking about mobile testing it is time consuming and expensive and accounts to high notes of criticality. Critical in terms of ensuring customers with a positive user experience when they are hitched to your mobile application.
But why app testing?
App testing is pivotal because you can’t separate the two entities- mobile app development and app testing.
It all boils down to the fact that you may be having the coolest, beautiful and most useful mobile app that is delivering the infinite amount of value but if it takes 20 seconds to load and the functionality on which you have put your entire efforts is broken, sadly you comes out to be in the back seat.
After all, mobile app testing is all about offering a delightful user experience by finding the loopholes and errors in the mobile app that may hurdle the path of the customer from having a smooth user experience.
There is a huge amount of customer dissatisfaction and bad mobile app performance. Apps that does not match with user expectations and unleash some uncanny results take no time to get out from user’s mobile phone. Though by the years a huge amount of data is collected over the customer’s bad response on the mobile app, the results have not even improved and gone from being bad to worse now.
In this regard, app quality assurance plays the winsome role in mobile app development. From letting you experience healthy mobile experience to even detecting the issues primarily.
Let’s find out some end to end testing strategy to make sure your mobile app testing accounts for a flawless mobile app. Stay hooked!!
- Top notch device selection:
Before the mobile app testing actually takes off, there is a fine device selection. The prior step that takes place in mobile app testing is by choosing the ways to test the app. This is one of the primary aspects of mobile app testing which is crucial as it considers the reach of your app and the potential market.
Device selection also accounts for two active choices of selecting the gadget model and choosing between emulators and substantial devices. It depends on the following factors:
OS version: Testing mobile app on stable OS versions
Screen resolutions: use a mix of screens to test by size and resolution
Form factors: test for form factors if the app is compatible with smartphones and tablets
Selecting the device model is imperative as the basic Mobile App Testing strategy.
- QA tester sticks to the entire process of mobile app development:
Understand the power of QA tester who plays an unstirred role in the entire process of mobile app development. Testers are engaged within weeks of starting the testing stage and functions to the end. From the ideation process to every new feature added, a tester’s role is impeccable.
- Properly defining the test scripts:
For the success of QA strategy, test cases or test scripts should be defined properly. They say “app quality assurance is to make sure everything works and well tested.” Well, this is the biggest loophole as everything cannot be tested.
While improvising the mobile flow or adding new features, a detailed set of documentation should be given to the testers for carrying out the app testing. Here test scripts should be clearly documented and well received by the testing team.
- Unit testing:
This is the task force of mobile app developers but many a times testers also take an active participation into this. Unit testing is nothing but the practice of testing the basic functions of the code so developed.
Here a unit is the smallest testable part of the mobile app application.
- UX testing:
As mobile app development takes a significant part of designing, the user interface so built by the UXA and the designing team should match the final implementation.
But this testing has set many failures. Yes, even the experienced testers fail to find the exact implementation. A team of highly skilled QA testers is required to detect the app discrepancies. Different fonts, different lines and different format, there are too many different succumbing to app testing for UX.
- Device testing and emulator testing:
As found in mobile testing, one has to decide between device testing and emulator testing. For rapid and efficient testing device emulators are used on the initial stage of development specifically in the agile development environment.
Device emulators are
- Cost effective
- Useful for basic app functionality testing
- Useful for feature development
- Great for network bypass, a pseudo-live environment, and test scripting languages.
If you are using emulator devices it doesn’t mean you do not require physical devices for testing. It is same ways imperative and allows the application functionality in real life.
Actually, mobile testing is a perfect mix of emulator testing and physical device testing leading to quick and efficient results.
Here for physical device testing, beta testing is the bliss. “Beta testing gives you the admittance of real world testers, real devices and real networks”
- App Testing on Cloud:
An infinite number of scenario operations are created in cloud-based mobile application testing. Although the combinations are easier to manage, it is a desirable option for testing mobile applications.
It is basically a web-based testing environment where an application can easily be deployed, managed and tested. It is great in diminishing project cost and offers high ROI.
Cloud testing gives a highly synchronised and pre-configured architecture for testing with no additional tools, server settings and licensing. This makes it a cost-efficient process that even supports complex applications.
- Connectivity to network:
In-app testing, network connectivity is another aspect and is completely unignorable. Not one, but many mobile apps require network connectivity for proper functioning. Therefore, actual network environments are required to detect the real picture.
The industry has to offer a multitude of network simulation tools that test mobile against network speeds, bandwidths limitations, connection drop outs, and more. It is indeed, that the effective network simulation tools enhance the testing and adds exceptional value to it.
“Remember, for an app to come brilliantly, a consistent app performance across various network environments should be retrieved”
- Test for manual and automated:
Between manual and automated testing, the winner is critical to track. As found, automation is the key to successful regression testing during development stages. But this testing requires a substantial amount of initial investment.
Scenarios where an application is growing and mobile development cycle is long, it is used only there.
In mobile app development, making use of manual testing hold a higher importance. This includes manual testing of various mobile operations of SMS, calls, low battery, alerts such as emails and roaming. The other intricate features so used in mobile apps can only be tested by manual testing.
- Performance testing for mobile app:
How one can ignore the performance and scalability issues of the mobile app? As users today are extremely handy with their phones that the access is now limited to their smartphone giving rise to a huge data being stored on their phones. But have you ever though that with the wide storage and features so run on the phone, the app performance doesn’t decrease?
Therefore, testing should be done accounting to various scenarios and particularly the adaptability with the huge data on phone.
For server side component, testing the app with increased number of users also holds a considerable importance.
- Security testing:
Considering the scary stats, security testing on a mobile app has just become imperative. The survey opened the eyes of many with
- 100% of a popular iOS and Android apps got hacked
- 50% of organizations imparting zero budgets for app testing.
Today, users are worried about the data and credentials stored on their mobile app which makes them vulnerable to threat and data hacking. A quick QA test on the data security of the user should be checked. The basics should be there
- All web data to and fro from the app to the server side should be protected.
- Make sure that data does not get leaked through log files
- The information so sent is over secure channels and remains encrypted at all times
The final conclusion
Implementing a Mobile app testing strategy is of paramount importance as detecting the loopholes in the very first place can save the app performance on the longer run and impart more benefits to the app in terms of performance and user adaptability.