A Descriptive Client Guide For Mobile App Testing To Consider In 2023

Avantika Shergil By Avantika Shergil  |  Sep 8, 2022  |  App Development Mobile App Testing
A Detailed Mobile App Testing Guide

“It’s hard enough to find an error in your code when you’re looking for it; it’s even harder when you’ve assumed your code is error-free.” — Steve McConnell, author, Code Complete

The same goes for UI, performance, security, and functionality where you cannot afford to miss the quality quantification. Mobile app testing is essential throughout the app development process from app conceptualization and coding to designing and delivering to produce a quality application. Testing helps you find what’s in the bottle that you don’t know.

Otherwise, there’s a chance that the apps might get rejected from app stores if they don’t meet standards or even if they get past the review process; users of the app might leave bad reviews on the app store; users take no time to uninstall crashing or slow loading applications. It’s a death knell for mobile apps. This is when the need arises to find and hire the best mobile app development company that can help you to build a high-quality mobile application that has undergone rigorous testing.

The rising need for QA & testing in the IT industry accounts for capturing 50% of the market share that’s expected to grow to $70 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 6%.

The figures are signaling a lot about the future of testing. We will cover all aspects related to testing in this mobile app testing guide. Let’s dive in!

Why app testing is all-important?

App testing is a way to minimize all the defects and enhance quality that keeps users engaged, satisfied, and happy while using the app from all aspects. Here we have enlisted reasons for determining the importance of app testing.

Make the functionality works flawless

Adding several functionalities to the app doesn’t guarantee that it will be favored by the users because the features make sense and appeal to the users only when they perform as expected. Mobile app testing ensures that functionality works as defined in the scope.

Improve UI

UI plays a vital role in engaging and delivering a brilliant experience to the users. It requires crafting the app’s UI wearing users’ lenses and testing if it’s enticing the users across all the platforms and screen sizes with no resolution issues. UI compatibility testing

Ensure quality

The vulnerable app that may even put a dent in the users’ device security is never favored by the users. The case is not different for app crashes. App testing ensures that the app is usable, secure, and qualitative in all aspects.

Enhance user satisfaction

The mobile app testing guarantees that the app fulfills all the functional and non-functional requirements that satisfy the users to the core.

Mobile app testing checklist- the important features that must be included

The mobile app testing is not a run-of-the-mill job. The app testing needs to be done thoroughly so that no aspect of the mobile app is left untested. The features that should be a part of the testing checklist-

  • OS, platform, and browser compatibility
  • Features compatibility
  • Network compatibility
  • Graphical user interface
  • App navigation
  • Battery consumption
  • Memory usage
  • App installation
  • App performance

The step-by-step process of mobile app testing

The mobile app testing brings expected results to the table only when it’s executed properly in a step-by-step manner.

Analyze testing needs

At first, the QA & testers team decides what needs to be tested in a mobile app. It helps in defining the test scope and coverage from functional to non-functional requirements.

Identify testing type

When the things to be tested are documented, the next step forward is to decide which test to perform on a variety of features, design, security, and others. It organizes the testing process when actual testing begins as the best testing tools selection is done initially.

Develop test case

The test cases and automated test scripts are created for every feature, UI, or other aspect to ensure everything gets tested under the testing umbrella.

Execute the tests

Leveraging years of experience, testers define how the test will be executed- manually or automated. Based on the testing type decision, the testing tools are selected to speed up the testing process and increase the time-to-market of the app.

Track and fix the issues

After test execution, the testers can identify the issues such as bug detection, crash problem, and others in an app and fix them instantly to make the app flawless. The detailed report provides complete data related to issues, whether they are fixed, and other problems. It helps in making data-driven decisions.

Different types of mobile app testing

Mobile app testing gives you the best results only when you know what types of testing tools to use and when to use them. Here, we have briefed different types of testing strategies in detail that determine the business benefits of using them.

Manual testing

This testing type involve manually executing test cases, reviewing the app completely, and then fixing the errors in the app. The app is tested on usability, functionality, and performance aspects leveraging human intelligence. It helps businesses to get the flaws in the app detected and fixed that are beyond smart automated testing tools. The patience, open-mindedness, and creativity of human testers play a vital role when the problem gets complex.

Exploratory testing

It’s a dynamic testing type that facilitates testers to interact with the app they want, in addition to specific parameters assigned in a planned way to achieve desired goals. The exploratory testing is a boon for businesses when they require some changes in the app in real-time. this testing enables delving into the depth of the app and provides rich insights where automation testing fails.

Automated testing

It’s a testing process where pre-scripted test cases are executed leveraging automation tools to speed up the testing process while increasing productivity and efficiency. The initial cost of automation testing is a little high but improved efficiency makes it cost-savvy in the long run. With documentation of all the defects, the team can together resolve the problem faster, thereby reducing the time-to-market of the application, which is healthy for businesses.

API testing

As users access mobile applications from different devices anytime, anywhere, there’s a dire need of making APIs work as expected to ensure seamless user interaction. API testing helps in identifying if the API operates correctly from security, performance, functionality, and reliability aspects.

It helps businesses to avoid integration difficulties, user frustration, and loss of revenue by detecting the bugs in the app at an early stage before they impact the GUI. The application language independence and broader test coverage enable identifying issues across servers, interfaces, and databases irrespective of technology leveraged.

Black-box testing

Black-box testing is a good way to analyze the app’s functionalities without knowing the source code or internal implementations. This testing helps in determining if the functionality provides the desired output. The language independence and test cases designed right after specifications determination help in bringing unbiased results.

The user-centered view helps businesses to get the app tested and delivered that’s liked by the users.

White-box testing

In white-box testing, with a clear view of internal structure and source code, the testers run the code with pre-defined input to validate pre-defined output. When there’s a gap, the bug is declared. So, the testing aims for validating code, completing app testing, and verifying expected outputs.

The testing eliminates the need for QA as the developer can see the issue and fix it that saves the communication cost with QA and waiting for QA as well. With clearly defined rules, businesses can ensure that the entire app gets tested thoroughly.

Functional testing

Functional testing determines if the app’s functionalities work against the app’s functional requirements and specifications or not. It helps businesses to ensure the bug-free app is released that meets all the users’ needs and keeps them satisfied while ensuring quality and security at the core. Various types of functional testing are performed during mobile app development for the best results.

  • UI testing
  • Smoke testing
  • Integration testing
  • User acceptance testing

Usability testing

Testing the app’s user-friendliness is all-important to ensure the app enables users to navigate through or use the functionality the way they expect. Usability testing with design thinking helps in improving the app that delivers optimal user experience. It saves a lot of time and resources by finding and fixing flaws in the prototyping stage. Also, it unlocks immense opportunities where businesses can innovate and gain a major competitive advantage. The unbiased opinions make the app user-centric.

Performance testing

The users have accustomed to speed and if your mobile app fails to perform optimally, the users take no time in abandoning the app with stall performance. The poor performance hit the businesses hard in the back pocket. So, performance testing is a panacea.

Performance testing ensures that users remain happy by monitoring the app’s performance under different load conditions to see how the app handles load and remains stable. It answers if the app is scalable or not, which is a great deal for businesses.

Security testing

Developers ensure that the app developed is theft-proof following all the security measures and knowing app security threats beforehand. However, the cyberattacks are growing at the same pace as the mobile app penetration is increasing in the market.

It’s essential to test the app for security and cement all the points that allow fraudsters to make the app vulnerable. Security testing helps businesses to better manage risks, reduce downtime that occurs in detecting bugs, save costs for recovery and remediation, adhere to compliances, build user trust, and give peace of mind.

Compatibility testing

This testing involves reviewing and comparing functionality and design across various devices, hardware, operating systems, networks, and others. This testing helps businesses meet the users’ expectations for the best experiences on every device, platform, configuration, OS, and more.

How advanced mobile app testing tools help in improving app testing?

In the dynamic world, with changing users’ preferences and evolving market conditions, it’s essential to test the mobile at a higher level to meet next-gen users’ demands. The technologies integration with application testing services drives the best outcomes.

Automation speed gets increased

As the app development proceeds, executing functional test suites are not apt, but the testers need to run all test cases from the beginning to fix the bugs. The AI or RPA technology integration helps in identifying the reduced number of test suites that need to run and fix the issues immediately.

Extend test coverage

The advanced technologies- AI, RPA, and ML extend the testing scope to memory, file content, data table, and other sensitive areas to make sure the app performs to the notch.

Guarantees preciseness in testing

RPA bots are known for accuracy levels and expected as more precise than humans. RPA bot integration with manual testing brings error-free results.

Scriptless test automation gets possible

The need for having QA with good experience or testing specialists gets eliminated when RPA bots are used for testing. The RPA bots are powerful enough to run scriptless test cases for mobile app testing.

Diminish testing costs

The mobile app development cost guide determines how much app testing costs you. Do you know if the app testing cost can be reduced? Yes, you heard it right. Whenever the mobile apps are tested, the source code gets modified after bug fixing. It’s a time-consuming process. AI and RPA technology automates regression testing thereby saving a lot of time and cost.

Summing it up

Mobile app testing is emerging as an important mobile app development segment that cannot be considered an afterthought. That’s where businesses unaware of the importance, nitty-gritty, and types of testing get into trouble. Such a mobile application testing guide for businesses, like the one above, helps them know everything about testing.

Avantika Shergil Avantika Shergil   |  Sep 8, 2022

An enthusiastic Operations Manager at TopDevelopers.co, coordinating and managing the technical and functional areas. She is an adventure lover, passionate traveler, an admirer of nature, who believes that a cup of coffee is the prime source to feel rejuvenated. Researching and writing about technology keeps her boosted and enhances her professional journeying.

Subscribe

Enter your email

Connect Now

    Full Name
    Email Address
    Contact Number
    Your Message
    7 + 3 =