How Businesses Achieve Success Through Mobile App Testing
Very few people these days turn on a computer to visit your business’ website. Instead, they would prefer to have it at their fingertips, and that is where mobile apps become relevant. Mobile apps play an important role in making businesses successful, and many who have recognized the scope of mobile apps have already developed one. However, simply developing an app has not made any business successful. Before it reaches the audience, the app has to be tested for its performance and to detect errors and risks.
Here are some mobile app testing best practices that can help your business gain a place in the market:
Keep track of customer behavior.
Users tend to expect more from mobile apps than from web or desktop applications. Therefore, it is necessary to know your customers and their expectations. This can help save the additional time being wasted on elaborated testing. Instead, the QA team can focus on testing the features of the app that are more important to your users.
Websites are also more prone to false data with accidental browsers, casual interest, and even your competition, muddying the waters of your traffic analytics. Apps tend to be a lot more direct with the users (who are much more likely to be real customers), therefore making your behavioral analysis much more accurate.
Group mobile devices according to priority.
As mentioned above, the statistics regarding targeted audience will give you an idea about their expectations and preference. This also applies to identifying the type of mobile devices the users prefer. You can then create mobile device groups and prioritize them accordingly. This makes it easy for the QA team to test the compatibility of the mobile apps with the devices.
Do not neglect standard testing methods.
Make sure that the testers you choose are well versed in software testing terms and techniques. After all, the functional and non-functional testing skills for web and desktop applications apply to mobile app testing too, though with slight differences.
Test with a variety of data networks.
Your mobile app may need Internet connectivity to work, and the type of data network each user has may differ. They may range from fast data networks like 4G or Wi-Fi to slower networks like EDGE or even GPRS. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the features of your mobile app work smoothly with each of these data networks irrespective of their speed and transition from one network to another. This will help enhance user satisfaction.
Test in multiple languages.
If you plan to make your business global, it is important that your mobile app supports different languages and is localized professionally, (don’t get a translation from fiver.com and drop it in yourself). It is important to test the languages because the characters and word size may not be the same for different languages, e.g. if you plan to use Chinese, you need to pre plan to have about 30% free space from that of English. Knowing this in advance will save you a lot of hassle later down the line.
Test against every hardware feature.
Mobile devices come with loads of hardware and sensors that enable interaction with users and surroundings. Therefore, it is necessary to test the compatibility of your mobile app with those sensors and hardware. It will ensure the smooth performance of the app’s features against the different hardware features that include camera, storage, microphone, etc.
Test the app’s ability to withstand interruptions.
Unexpected interruptions such as calls, messages and so on may come while using mobile applications. Therefore, it is important to test if the mobile apps can withstand such interruptions and work smoothly after they are over. While performing the testing, testers have to focus on identifying app crashes, freezes or UI malfunctions. At the same time, testers have to keep checking the battery consumption as well.
Once the battery charge drops below 10-15%, some mobile devices go into a battery saver mode, deactivating some hardware features on the go. Testing at these levels may reveal hidden bugs.
Test updates and install/uninstall processes.
For an app to stay in the market for long, it should be updated from time to time and must function smoothly after being updated. The QA team must ensure that the app works well even after it has been updated to the next version. Also, they must look for app crashes while installing and uninstalling tests and ensure that the entire app data is removed from the device storage once the app is installed.
Test app usability.
User expectations regarding a new app will be quite high and, therefore, in order to avoid the app from crashing in the market, it is necessary to test the usability. All features, error messages and other notifications of the app must be easily understandable. Make sure that the testers are well acquainted with the different platform guidelines and ensure that the app meets the required guidelines. The best way to test the usability of an app is to test it with real users. Alpha/beta testing helps in identifying the glitches in the app from the user’s point of view.
Limit app permissions.
Mobile users are very particular about their private data and will not like it if the app asks permission to interfere too much. Ambiguous permission requirements will lead the user to uninstall the app eventually. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the app asks only for those permissions that it actually needs.
