As per the sources, 6.3 billion smartphone users across the world. These statistics are the clear testimony of the mobile application industry being thriving and still growing at a steady rate, without any signs of slowing down in the foreseeable future.
The growth in the mobile application usage is directly proportional to the demand of new feature updates and any miss on the timely deliveries leaves the customer-base unhappy and dissatisfied. Hence mobile application testing is the aid for organizations to maintain the performance of mobile applications and to provide best user- experience.
Additionally the frequently updating device, OS and browser updates adds to the challenge of Mobile application testing.
So in this blog we will discuss some effective strategies to boost your mobile application testing performance:
1. Involvement of QA team from the earliest stages of development lifecycle:
While setting a roadmap for mobile application testing/development, involvement of QA team in the earliest stages of development lifecycle is mandatory. Incorporating this step will facilitate identification of pitfalls during the planning and designing itself to eliminate last minute bugs
Hang-ups in delivering seamless performance to its users.
2. Cross platform Testing:
Nowadays, as multiple options are available for customers to choose between the best OS, device and browser of their choice, making mobile application testing more challenging than ever. The challenge is to develop an application compatible with a wider range of devices, os and browsers. First thing first, the QA team needs to analyze the right combination of devices used by its customer base and target market. Once you have gathered the correct data, make sure that the application works seamlessly across all the combinations of devices, OS and browsers used by the user-base.
3. Security Testing:
Security issues are one of the key concerns for application users as they provide sensitive data like bank details, local information, credentials, passwords etc leaving these data vulnerable to threats. Hence it is mandatory to execute security testing in order to validate application’s resistance towards malicious users. For deploying effective security testing, it’s necessary to implement a robust and well defined strategy., hence while developing a security testing strategy, it is crucial to consider the following factors:
- Understanding the environment or the platforms supporting the application and identifying the vectors that the attackers might use on the specific OS
- Defining multiple lines of defense that include mobile app testing tools with static, dynamic, and forensic analyses and apply them together to delineate different ways an attacker can hack the application
- Developing the test scenarios from an attacker’s perspective that enables one to understand better the weaknesses and pitfalls and how the attacker might exploit those
4. Network Connectivity Testing:
Although users might be using high internet speed office wifi or a broadband connection, still a significant number of users are experiencing spotty connections and low internet speed. 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.
5. UI/UX Testing:
Designing an excellent UI/UX is the most important checklist while developing a mobile application. A good UI ensures ease of use, consistency and logic, accessibility, and compatibility to the customers, hence UI testing is the most critical part of mobile application testing. In fact in UI testing factors like compatibility and ease of use are tested to find out how the application interacts with the end-users. On the other hand, 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 through the application
- Seamless and fast transaction
- Adequate access to product information for users
- Incorporating user feedback and customer support
6. Battery Testing
Today we have smartphones, having applications that support transfer of several media like images, videos, texts etc that leverage the heft amount of battery, hence battery usage is a special concern for every user. So, QA testers should run multiple battery test features to identify the parts of the apps that drain the battery the most and accordingly eliminate or modify those. So make a point to
7. Application size and storage testing:
With applications and its updates consuming too much space in the device, Storage has become a primary concern for users. Hence testers must focus on optimizing the size of the app to the extent without compromising the usability and offerings of the app. Also, the testers must ensure that the updates or new releases do not increase the application size to an extent that users refrain from installing the app.
8. Application permission testing for privacy
You must have noticed a lot of apps seeking permissions for collecting some data or asking for access to your accounts like (social media) to collect your basic info. Such activities do make the users vulnerable and raise privacy issues. In fact, some years back 215K apps were removed from the Play Store for requesting and collecting user data that had privacy violations.
9. Testing the application upgrades scenarios
App upgrade testing should be on-priority checklist during mobile application testing. It ensures that the app doesn’t crash on the upgrade. During upgrades the most critical point is to retain data saved in exact preference/order the user had saved in the previous versions. For example in banking apps, food delivery apps, transport apps, the data saved by the users like card details, addresses, contact information, and much more, should be appropriately retained with every upgrade.
10. Performance Testing
As a large number of the population is using mobile apps , there is tough competition in the market. Also the performance of each app impacts its acceptance and popularity among the users. Performance testing thus becomes a principal element in the app testing pipeline where the testing team, therefore, should check the application response time and latency to track and predict performance under various situations.
11. Using cloud based test automation tools
As mobile applications have become popular worldwide, enterprises have to deliver high performance to a large number of audiences. Along with maintaining a huge customer base, organizations need to fulfill the dynamic needs of customers and deliver on time. Additionally, the new device OS and browser versions getting frequently updated, add to the challenges for mobile application testing. Hence leveraging a cloud based test automation platform is the solution to multiple mobile application testing challenges. The greatest advantage is that it’s highly scalable, accessible 24/7 and the cloud based architecture is quite convenient and cost efficient as compared to the physical labs.
Conclusion:
As the number of mobile application usage is increasing steadily across the globe, the need of mobile application testing is becoming more relevant and necessary. With digital transformation, enterprises are looking for more agile solutions in order to be a consistent mobile application testing solution provider.
Hence organizations are leaning towards cloud based test automation solutions to provide qualitative and on time deliveries.
It’s highly recommended to stick to test automation solutions which are convenient, qualitative and quick and hence none other than cloud based testing solutions for mobile apps falls under that bracket!
