Businesses spend millions of dollars on customer acquisitions. Bad experience at any stage of this acquisition funnel turns away customers. The more customer travels in this funnel, the higher the costs involved.
A mobile application that is usually offering your product or potentially the last stage of the funnel can make a significant difference in this regard. That's why it's mandatory to carry out mobile app testing before finally presenting it to your customers.
This testing phase is generally centered on optimizing the customer experience. An unpleasant customer experience moves away 59 percent of valuable customers, and 55 percent end up going to your competitors.
It means your whole customer acquisition sits in favor of your competitors. That's why you should prioritize mobile app testing to ensure everything goes as planned at the final stage of conversion.
This article covers how to run mobile app testing so bugs and errors are gone before customers see them. If you'd rather hand it off, our QA and product engineering teams run this kind of testing as part of a full build. But before going into that, let's first talk about what mobile app testing is.
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What is mobile app testing?
Testing mobile applications is a process of evaluating the quality and performance of a mobile application. The goal is to ensure that the application meets the business requirements and user needs.
Mobile apps are generally developed using one or more programming languages, such as Java, C++, Objective-C, etc. These applications can be created with or without an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Developers use testing to identify bugs in their code before releasing an application to the market, allowing them to fix those issues.
Mobile application testing can be performed manually or automatically. Manual testing involves testers interacting with the application manually, while automatic testing involves automated tools that perform tests on apps automatically.
Why is testing mobile applications crucial?
The following statistics demonstrate the importance of mobile application testing:
- 8% of clients delete or uninstall a subpar application.
- 48% of customers will uninstall or abandon a slow app.
- 50% of users are likely to remove an app if it takes up too much space on their device.
Testing your mobile app thoroughly and consistently helps you improve the quality of your app. This, in turn, will help you gain users' trust and strengthen your brand image. In addition, mobile app testing has the following benefits:
Better UI/UX
You must ensure that your application looks good and works well on different devices. Testing is essential to confirm this. You can use various tools like emulators to test the layout and appearance of your application on different screen sizes, resolutions, operating systems, etc.
Proper functioning
Mobile applications are prone to crashes due to memory leaks or poor coding practices. Before launching your application into production, you must ensure that all known bugs have been fixed. You must look out for any bugs or errors while running automated tests on your application so that you can fix them before they become widespread problems for users.
Use user feedback
You can also use mobile application testing to collect user feedback about how they interact with your application. This feedback can improve your app's current features and future iterations.
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15 things to check out in mobile app automation testing
Here are some things you should check out when conducting mobile app automation testing:
1. App gestures
It's essential to check out how well gestures work within your app. For example, does it work if someone tries to pinch-to-zoom or swipe between screens? Likewise, if you attempt to swipe through photos quickly or double-tap on things, does it do what you want?
2. Notifications
A user needs to know when new notifications are available on their device. Notifying the user about any new notifications should be completed on time. If there is any delay or error, it can lead to poor user experience and eventually result in loss of customers.
3. Visuals
This refers to how good an application looks and behaves on smartphones or tablets. The application must look good on all devices, so your target audience will find it appealing enough to use regularly. Also, bugs should only affect their user experience and make them feel satisfied while using your application.
4. Mobile app automation testing
Mobile app automation testing can be done in two ways with the help of mobile app automation tools like google mobile tester:
- Manual testing: this is useful for determining if your mobile app has any bugs or problems. However, it's a time-consuming process and requires manual intervention from a tester. It's also challenging to perform regression testing with this method.
- Automated testing: with automated testing, you can run tests on multiple devices simultaneously while they run in the background of your computer system. This allows you to scale up your testing efforts and ensure that your application works across multiple platforms and devices without any errors.
5. Feature toggles
The feature toggle enables or disables a feature based on certain conditions. For instance, if you want to launch a new feature on your website but you are not sure about its performance or how your users will like it, you can use this feature to enable it only for some users and disable it for others until you get feedback from them about their experience with it. Then, when all goes well, you can enable it for all users on your website.
6. Security vulnerabilities
Security is one of the most vital factors when designing an application. There are numerous methods by which an attacker can take data from an application or conduct other malicious actions. You need to check for all these vulnerabilities in your mobile application before launching them on the market.
7. Navigations
A mobile application must navigate through different screens smoothly without glitches or problems. If your app fails to navigate correctly, it will frustrate your users, and they will stop using it eventually. So, check all possible navigations while developing an app so that users can easily use it later!
8. Accessibility
Accessibility refers to the ease at which users can use their phones without facing any problems. For example, if there is no audio support on your phone, people with hearing disabilities won't be able to use it properly even though they want to!
9. Cross-platform compatibility
Check if your app works on all major platforms, such as Android, iOS, Windows, and Blackberry. Ensure it has been tested on at least one platform before being live on all platforms. This will help you avoid issues when your app goes live for users across multiple platforms.
10. App permissions
Ensure that your app only requires a few permissions from users. For example, if there's no need for an application to access someone's contacts or microphone, don't ask for it by default – let them choose what they want to allow access to!
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11. Usability
The next thing you should check is the usability of your mobile app. It should be easy to use and understand for users. You can ask some people to use your app and then ask them questions about their experience with it. If they need clarification or help with using it, there is something wrong with your mobile app design.
12. Ensure speed, scalability & stability
Your mobile app must run smoothly on different devices and networks without problems like lagging or crashing. You can check this by testing your app on various devices (iPhone, Android, etc.) and networks (WiFi/3G/4G). This will help you identify any problem areas before releasing the product in the market so that no one has any issues while using your application.
13. Test the GUI
A critical thing to check out during mobile app testing is the GUI (Graphical User Interface). The GUI combines graphics and text, providing instructions on how to use an application. It also contains all the controls users need to interact with the application.
14. OS updates
While you can't predict when Apple or Android will release their latest operating system versions, ensuring your app still functions as expected after an update is essential. So, in ios app testing, you must check whether any new functionality has been added and ensure that everything works as intended after installing the update.
15. Network coverage
It's not enough to test how your app behaves on WiFi networks since most people use their smartphones while out and about - even if they don't have access to WiFi. Ensure your app doesn't crash when it loses connectivity or when there is insufficient signal strength or high latency.
Final Words
Regardless of which app testing steps you go through, you must know what you want to test and for what purpose. Ultimately, your mobile app testing checklist is more about maintaining a comprehensive look at your app and ensuring everything is going well.
After reviewing this list of testing areas, you can ensure that your app is ready to be tested and released. Outsourced mobile app testing takes much of the burden off of a company's shoulders. A third party like App Tensions will handle the bulk of the work, freeing up an organization to focus on other projects.
At Apptension, we offer your company a comprehensive range of services, from early idea generation and discovery to post-launch maintenance and marketing. If you need an experienced team for your next mobile project, reach out today.