What is App Testing?
While building an app, several processes are involved which ends up with testing the app. Applications for mobile devices are tested for functionality, usability, performance, compatibility, and much more. Testing is the most important part to make sure you finish building an app that hits the peaks in the market after its launch and satisfies the client’s needs. After performing all types of testing, the possibilities of flaws are reduced to a significant extent. Undoubtedly, an app having no flaws will be liked by users and there’s a high possibility for the app to be top-rated in the market.
Mobile app testing can be done automatically or manually. It helps you ensure that the application you’re delivering to the client meets all business requirements as well as users’ expectations.
Why Mobile App Testing is Important?
In this era of increased mobile phone usage, people are spending most of their time using mobile apps rather than using desktop or web apps. As an app developer, it becomes mandatory to deliver perfectly fine apps that give the ultimate user experience to the users. This can only be made possible if the app is tested well and all the improvements or suggestions are valued at the end.
If you’re not giving importance to app testing, you can’t expect your app to have high ratings when it is launched. You can’t have idea what problems or flaws people are facing while using your app. The app testing can be done before and after the launch to make sure the app has no bugs left in it.
Challenges of Mobile App Testing
According to a report by Statista, in 2021, the total number of downloaded apps was were230 billion. These numbers will increase in the upcoming years without a doubt. This phenomenal growth in the mobile apps market is pointing the mobile apps to be more useful and bugless. Despite there are several challenges for mobile application testing that are as follows:
- Variation in Screen Sizes
- Security Issues
- Context Awareness
- Mobile Network Issues
- Different Operating Systems
- Mobile Phone’s Battery Capacity
- Mobile Application Types
These are some of the common challenges which interfere while testing an app. We perform different types of app testing to make sure it gives its maximum performance.
Tools for Mobile Application Testing
Mobile app testing tools are much helpful in reducing the time and efforts of the developers by helping them diagnose errors that occur in the app.
Before we head over to the types of mobile app testing, let’s have a quick look at the tools available for app testing.
Some of the commonly used testing tools for Android and iOS are:
Types of Mobile Application Testing
There are several types of app testing involved to deliver high-performance apps. Some of them are as follows:
● Performance Testing
The performance of your app defines its success. You need to make sure your app is giving its maximum performance.
Moreover, performance testing is the response or ability of the app to perform under specific conditions. These conditions could be:
- Apps with stress / load levels of traffic
- CPU Utilization of your app
- Stability of your app for longer period
- Network Switching Test
- Data Loads Conditions
● Compatibility Testing
Compatibility testing validates the performance of your app on different devices that differ in size, resolution, version or hardware. In addition to this, compatibility testing also values:
- Operating System Configurations
- Database Configurations
- Network Configurations
- Mobile Phone Configurations
● Functional Testing
Functional testing helps you determine some of the basic functions and evaluate how they are working. It helps you determine whether your app is working the way you wanted it to work. It includes:
- Social Networking
- Desired Targeted Audience
- Fields Testing
- Constant Feedbacks
● Security Testing
Every user demands the privacy of its data and protection while using your app. It also validates the developer to examine the security options, vulnerabilities, or penetration testing that makes your app more secure. These are all determined to find out security weaknesses within the app.
With the exponential increase in mobile app usage, security of user data and privacy has become more challenging. The cyber attacks come into action exploiting vulnerabilities in the app which intimidate the user-friendly environment. Hence, we perform security testing.
● Usability Testing
It is more like a general test of your app that how it experiences using the app, how the features inside it are working, and if it is giving a satisfactory user experience. It also determines how easy-to-use your app is.
Usability testing is all about making your user feel satisfied while using the app. Having a smooth user experience of your app will add value to your business and increase your app ratings too.
● Localization Testing
No matter when, where, and how you use an app, it should work perfectly fine. It should meet local regulations and even legal requirements. This is where localization testing comes in. It makes sure that your app translates to the respective regional language accordingly. In addition to this, aligning the app with the local language, religious sentiments, and cultural values are some of the intentions for performing localization testing.
● Network Testing
An app must respond properly under different network conditions. This includes switching networks in-between 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and Wi-Fi.
When carrying out network performance tests, it is important to have a controlled environment and systematic parameter variations. Some of the parameters in the test environment include: mobile devices, mobile applications (native or mobile web site), type of interaction, time of day, etc.
● Interruption App Testing
Last but not least, interruption testing. The purpose of this test is to check behavior or the app’s performance when an interruption occurs. These interruptions could be:
- Incoming Call Alerts
- Push Notifications
- Low/full battery pop-ups
- Updating OS
- Intentionally disturbing the network connection
Wrapping Up
App testing is not an easy task. You’ll get to know about it when you jump into it and have to make sure that the app works perfectly on thousands of mobile phones.
I have compiled the most common app testing procedures and I hope you’ll find all of these to be useful for you as these are the extract of our 5 years of app development experience.
