As more than half of the world population is using mobile applications, enterprises are driven to provide the best user experience to their customers. As the digital world relies heavily on mobile apps, enterprises must ensure that their apps do not cause their customers to get stuck at any stage while using mobile applications. As the competition is extremely high, the slightest flaw will lead the customer to uninstall your application and switch over to your competitor’s services. To ensure a seamless and top performance mobile app experience, enterprises must consider mobile application testing. In this blog, we will discuss what is mobile application testing, various mobile application types and necessary mobile application testing practices to provide high performance of the mobile applications.
What is Mobile Application Testing ?
Mobile application testing is the process in which a mobile application is validated for its functionality, usability, stability against variable network conditions, compatibility across various platforms etc.
Mobile application testing can be manual as well as automated and ensures that the application works as intended and meets the business requirements as well as user expectations.
Why is Mobile Application Testing Important ?
As per resources, mobile application usage continues to surge since long ago. Infact as compared to laptop desktop or tabs, mobile devices usage has been consistently growing since many years. Hence it’s important to provide a good user experience for all mobile applications.
If you are not aware of the mobile experience your users are receiving, then you miss on how well your application serves a large and growing portion of your users. This might lead to dreaded one-star app reviews and negative feedback on social media.
Mobile app testing ensures your mobile experience is strong, no matter what kind of app you’re using or what platform it is developed on.
What are different types of Mobile Applications ?
Mobile apps are essentially categorized into three types:
Native mobile apps: These apps are designed only for a dedicated platform i.e. Android, iOS or Windows. Their greatest advantage of Native apps is that they are easy to use as well as easy to optimize.
Web apps: These apps basically run on web browsers and can be accessed in both desktop and mobile devices. Web apps do not require separate download unlike Native apps. Web apps can work on different mobile OSs like Android, iOS, or Windows.
Hybrid mobile apps: These apps are both native and mobile web apps. Hybrid apps can be installed/downloaded or accessed through browsers on devices .With the ever-increasing need for these mobile apps across industries, businesses should ensure that they are end-to-end tested, leveraging mobile app testing.
Difference between iOS and Android Testing
| Parameters | iOS Testing | Android Testing |
| 1. Type Of Operating System | Close Source OS that makes use of XNU kernel built in C/C++ and Objective-C. | Android OS, developed by Google, is an open-source OS and makes use of the Linux OS as the kernel’s foundation is built in C/C++. |
| 2. Variety Of Devices: Many Or One | Consists of Less variety of Devices, hence easy to test. | Consists of a wide variety of devices hence challenging to test. |
| 3. Software Updates | It’s easier and quicker to install updates. | Receive the updates late, not frequently and it is difficult to install the updates. |
| 4. Screen Sizes And Layouts | Less variety of screen layouts and resolutions hence iOS testing is easier. | Wider range and variety of layouts and screen resolutions resulting in challenges while testing. |
| 5. Screen Resolution | As the range of screen resolution is limited there is lower chances of bug detection and inaccuracies. Hence iOS testing is easier. | Diverse screen resolution, resulting in higher chances of bugs and inaccuracies. Hence testing becomes challenging |
Strategies to make Mobile Application testing Simpler
1.Cross platform Testing:
The number of device browser and OS versions and their updates keeps on increasing over time. As customers have the choice of using their favorite version of platforms at the drop of a hat, it’s imperative for organizations to develop applications which are complicated across a wide range of platforms and device combinations. Cross browser testing ensures the compatibility and seamless functioning of applications on various platforms. Hence implementing a proper cross browser testing process is essential to ensure that your application works properly across various platforms.
2. Functional Testing:
Functional testing is a major part of mobile application testing as it validates whether the application is developed as per the software requirements. Each function in the application is compared to the corresponding requirement to ascertain whether its output is consistent with the business requirements and end user’s expectations. It also focuses on testing user flows within the app, as well as each feature that comprises each user flow. Customers expect that each app will be flawless in its functioning. If they encounter a flaw, they will usually not think twice before uninstalling the app. There are multiple usage scenarios that must be included in mobile app functional testing, but some of the major ones would be:
- Whether app installs and launches correctly
- Whether users can sign-up and log into the app easily
- Whether text boxes, buttons, menus, and icons function accurately
- Whether pop-up menus and the push notifications render correctly and appear at the right intervals
3.UI and UX Testing:
UI/UX determines the experience of the customers while using mobile devices, hence UI/UX testing must be on-priority checklist to ensure best user experience. A good UI ensures ease of use, consistency, logic, accessibility, and compatibility to the end-users. UX testing involves testing multiple aspects of the user experience to determine the best way for the app and its elements to interact with the audience. It is a mandate to ensure the following checkpoints while performing the UX testing :
- Easy navigation throughout the application
- Seamless and fast transaction. Flawless navigation
- Adequate access to product information for customers
- Incorporating user feedback and customer support
4. Performance Testing
As the performance of each app impacts its acceptance and popularity among the users, it’s important to focus on it. Performance testing checks the application’s response time and latency to track and predict performance under various situations.
5. Network Connectivity Testing:
When high speed internet or office wifi or a broadband connection is used, a significant number of customers are experiencing spotty connections at different network speeds. This inconsistency in network connections leads to high latency or poor performance while switching between variable network speeds. Hence applications must be developed to ensure good performance in variable network speed.
6. Application size and storage testing :
As applications and its updates consume too much space in the device, storage is a primary concern for many users today. Hence testers must focus on optimizing the size of the app. The apps must be developed to ensure that its size does not consume excessive space without compromising the usability and offerings of the app. Also, testers must ensure that the updates or new releases do not increase the application size.
Conclusion:
Mobile application usage is already high worldwide and bound to increase in the coming years. With the increased complexity and various technologies, it is vital to test apps thoroughly before we release them into the market. Testing the apps thoroughly becomes all the more important because of the need for high quality apps to succeed in the competitive market of mobile and web applications.
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