How to Effectively Test and Debug Your Mobile App?

What is Mobile App Testing? Why is It Important for Your App’s Success?

Mobile application testing is one of the phases of the mobile app development life cycle. It ensures that the product developed is working properly and has the highest quality possible.

Mobile app testing refers to validating a mobile app for Android or iOS for its functionality and usability prior to releasing it publicly. Testing an app helps to know whether the app is able to fulfil its business and technical objectives or not.

Testing teams test mobile apps across a wide variety of distinct network bandwidths, screen sizes, and operating system versions. Doing so ensures that the mobile app performs accurately across different device configurations.

Types of Testing

Testing mobile apps is an extensive process. There are several forms of testing. Functional testing, unit testing, black-box testing, regression testing, and prime path testing are just some of the many forms of testing available.

There are a galore of different forms of testing. Nonetheless, all of them can be categorised into one of the two following types:

1.Automated Testing

This form of testing requires little to no human intervention. A plethora of tools are available for automating testing. Today, we have tools available that automate one or more aspects of different forms of functional and non-functional testing.

Using automated testing tools requires little to no human intervention. It enhances the coverage, efficiency, and productivity of software testing. However, one thing to note is that you can’t automate the entire testing regime of your mobile application.

2.Manual Testing

This type of testing is performed manually by the testing team. In simple terms, it is the process of verification and validation. The behaviour of the mobile application or software is tested and compared to the requirements specification.

Unlike automated mobile app testing, where you need to have knowledge of programming languages, tools, and other testing frameworks, manual testing allows you to prepare a test document while performing manual testing.

The Importance of Testing Mobile Applications

Each form of testing puts the mobile application under some kind of testing to gauge the quality of relevant features. The ultimate goal of creating a mobile app is to increase business outreach. Nonetheless, users are unlikely to use it if it is faulty or difficult to use.

No business wants their customer to abandon their app and switch to a competitor. There are high chances of users facing critical issues with an app that is not adequately tested.

This might yield a bad user experience, especially for new users. For them, the first encounter might make or break the deal.

An unexpected app crash or functionality bug can lead to immediate app uninstallation, which, in turn, can decline your potential customers and revenue.

In numbers, 80% of users uninstall an app that doesn’t meet their expectations while 50% of users uninstall an app that occupies too much storage space. 48% of users uninstall or abandon an app if it is slow. Thus, you can prevent app uninstalls by ensuring it has value, doesn’t occupy much storage space, and is fast.

Since mobile testing ensures that an app works ideally, delivers value, and isn’t slow, it helps an app to stay in business.

Mobile Application Testing Strategies

A mobile application testing strategy helps you to optimise the efficiency of your testing efforts. These are some of the best mobile application testing strategies to follow:

• Ask relevant questions – like how to test the mobile app on the desktop and how to perform unit testing on the mobile app – prior to putting a plan into action.
• Be clear about the extent of device fragmentation and the requirement for the right tools and frameworks.
• Restrict using emulators and simulators in the initial phases of testing. Don’t just rely solely on them for doing mobile app testing. Apps that aren’t tested on real devices have a high risk of malfunctioning and delivering bad user experiences.
• Don’t take a pass on beta testing, which is the testing done by a selected group of real users. It is an excellent form of testing to gauge user experience and usability and make necessary changes to the app ahead of its release.
• Test early and don’t wait until the entire code is written to start testing. Agile methodologies add testing to all phases of software development and make it more efficient.

These approaches make mobile app testing more efficient and accurate. Hence, they should be a part of your QA strategy.

How Mobile App Testing Benefits Your Business?

The number of mobile users was 3.6 billion in 2016. It will surpass 7.8 billion by 2028, which is more than two times growth.

Mobile technology is a continuously evolving technology, which makes it continuously difficult for mobile apps to be tested to ensure ideal performance across mobile devices and OS versions.

The growth of mobile devices also supports the development of advanced mobile apps that make business services more accessible. Therefore, mobile businesses need to ensure that their mobile apps are optimised for advanced smartphones.

Rigorous mobile app testing is what ensures that a business offers a mobile app that performs ideally on different mobile configurations. It also helps to validate the appearance and functionality of apps across devices.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid During Mobile App Testing

There are several common problems that businesses might run into not because of insufficient testing but because of an incorrect approach to testing. These are:

• Avoid starting testing the app before knowing its intent. For doing so you need to answer these questions:
  • What is the app supposed to do?
  • Who is the targeted audience?
  • What are product managers and management-level executives expecting to achieve from the app?
  • What are the user expectations?
• Don’t try testing everything simultaneously. Start with the most important thing first.
• Don’t just test on emulators and simulators, use real devices too. A viable option is a device cloud.
• Your sole focus shouldn’t be on the user interface. Focus also on the backend services and APIs.
• Never proceed to test without a plan. This is because modern apps have many features, and thus, can’t be comprehensively tested without a proper testing plan. A plan lets you decide what features to test in each sprint and the testing types that need to be performed.

Conclusion

A detailed, well-thought-out, and comprehensive mobile app testing plan ensures that your mobile app performs well, generates good revenue, and keeps users hooked.

You can hire an experienced mobile app development company to ensure that you develop an app that is thoroughly tested and delivers optimal performance across different mobile devices and versions of mobile operating systems.