Mobile devices look incomplete without mobile apps. If mobile devices account for communication, apps drive engagement.

This is why businesses worldwide develop mobile apps to reach their potential prospects, establish personalized interactions and attain business growth.

And how to make sure your mobile app is perfect and persuasive to customers?

The answer lies in the standards of mobile app development process. A thriving mobile app is the product of flawless app development methods and rigorous testing format.

Through the entire process of mobile app development and testing, consumers are the biggest influencers.

Hence, your app testing must integrate customer’s perspective and business objective. Here is all you need to know about precise app testing process:

Types of Mobile App Testing

To maintain the technical aspects of the app, we recommend these major types of mobile app testing:

• Usability testing – Checks the mobile app for its ease of use and overall user experience.

• Compatibility testing – Tests the application across various mobiles devices, browsers, OS versions and screen sizes.

• Interface testing – Tests the appearance and navigational aspects of the app such as menu options, buttons, tabs, white space, responsiveness, bookmarks, history, settings, etc.

• Services testing – Tests available services of the application in online and offline mode.

• Performance testing – Tests the performance level of the application (battery usage, file sharing speed, data usage) when switching its network connection from 2G, 3G, 4G to Wi-Fi.

• Operational testing – Tests the data backup, loss and recovery options in case of battery problems or app upgrading process.

• Installation testing – Checks the installation behaviour of the app by installing and uninstalling it on different devices.

• Security Testing – Tests if the application is capable of protecting private information of users or not.

Mobile App Testing Strategy

Mobile application test strategy ensures all the standards of quality and performance are properly maintained. It usually contains:

1) The Device Selection

While choosing the device for testing, the main consideration should be of popularity of the devices. Run your eyes through the market to figure out which devices are widely preferred by users. Clients or app developers are the deciders for this.

Apart from popularity, other factors that drive the device selection could be:

• Operating System
• Form factors
• Screen resolution
• Memory capacity
• Connectivity

Testing must be handled across all widely used OS versions for different screen size and resolutions of devices in use. Check the functioning and compatibility of apps for various memory and connectivity options for accurate analysis.

2) Emulators

Emulator is a system where the app is passed from one environment to another without making any changes to the original version.

Emulators duplicate the features of the app and give a real system to work on. The use of emulators is conducive to primary stages of app development as they assist with:

• Agile testing with great efficiency
• Basic app functionality testing
• Network bypass,
• Creating an artificial live environment
• Test scripting languages.

During various phases of mobile app development, three major types of emulators needed for testing are:

• Device Emulator
• Browser Emulator
• Operating systems Emulator

Some of the free open source mobile device emulators are:

• Mobile Phone Emulator
• iPad Peek
• BlueStacks
• MobiReady
• Screenfly
• Responsinator
• Jar of Beans

3) Cloud Computing For App Testing:

With cloud computing, application testing gets further easier to manage with infinite combinations of testing scenario. Devices are run on multiple systems or networks enabled by internet to deploy, test and manage applications. In order to run tests, it creates a simulated web based mobile environment for a developer to access on-demand mobile devices.

Benefits:

• Automatic Backup and easy recovery and restoration of app data.
• Gives the advantage of unlimited storage capacity
• Highly synchronized, efficient and pre-configured structures
• No need for creating time-eating on-premise test conditions
• Quick, location-independent and full access on different devices
• Controls project costs and increases ROI
• Speedy and quick deployment.
• Supports most complicated mobile apps with huge scalability
• Quick and easy online solutions for defects found
• Can support multiple for running the same script
• Reduces TTM (time to market) and accelerates testing pace

Demerits:

• Due to third party services, users have limited control and access over various functions for testing

• Since the set-up is entirely on internet, unstable network connections compromise testing process and functioning

• The entire set-up is on internet, which means security risks and chances of data theft are high

4) Automated and Manual Testing

When it comes to effective regression testing in development phase, automation testing wins over manual one. However, automated testing comes with significant amount of investment.

Choose manual testing if:

• The application has new functionality
• The application needs not more attempts of testing

Automated testing is preferred when:

• There are repeated attempts for regression tests
• There are complex scenarios that may consume more time if manually executed

There are two types of automated testing tools:

• Object based mobile testing tools (e.g M-eux test, Rapise, Ranorex, ClicAutomate, Batik)
• Image based mobile testing tools (e.g Egg Plant, AppVerify, AppLoader, Sikuli, JAutomate)

5) Network Configuration

Network testing for mobile apps validate the application consistency on various popular network connections such as 2G, 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi.

Network connectivity plays a vital role for apps that are hugely dependent on its online status. There are many mobile apps that need proper internet services to ensure healthy functioning.

This requires QA testing experts to test mobile apps for real network environments to measure application’s actual behaviour.

To simulate network environment, many handy tools are available that helps check app’s performance against network speeds, connection failures, bandwidth limitations and other practical scenarios.

Testing process gets more precise with network simulation technique as it determines how the mobile app under the test will perform in real-time network conditions.

6) Mobile App Performance Testing

Mobile application becomes complex software when it gets integrated with a device environment and interacts with its various functionalities. Therefore, it is advisable to test the application for its practical performance when run on the device.

Users store ample amount of data on their devices that have generous storage capacity. This is likely to mean that your mobile application’s performance is subject to the volume of albums, files, messages, images and other content in the app. This is highly important when your app houses user-generated data.

For this reason, the app must be tested for its behaviour and responses in heavy-content scenarios. If the application has a component on its server, the performance must be checked for varying number of users.

7) Mobile App Security Testing

Security of user data is the most crucial part when it comes to building expectations of app usability. Users are so quick to disapprove your application if they encounter security loopholes or vulnerabilities in your app.

Users are possessive about their credentials, so you must remain careful about providing unbreakable security standard for your mobile app.

Some of the checkpoints of mobile app security testing are:

• Secure network protocols
• SSL data encryption for enhanced security
• Storage of payment information inside the app
• Number of steps or permission levels for full access
• Use of quality and high-security certificates
• The process of user authentication and its complexity
• Number of permissible login attempts

For your app to meet high security level, it must encrypt intimate credentials of users such as username and passwords. To strengthen the security, mobile app development companies nowadays use several modern authentication methods and testing scenarios where apps are tested on Proxy servers.

Special Test Case Scenarios

Some of the other essential scenarios for which your mobile app should be tested are:

• Battery usage: To monitor the battery consumption while app is being run on mobile devices.
• Data requirements: To determine the data required for installation and check if the users with a limited data plan can download it.
• Response Speed of the application: To checkthe application for the time it takes to respond on different devices against parameters like memory capacity, network types, etc.
• Functionality of the application: To ensure application runs healthily and does not collapse in adverse or changing network conditions.

Your Takeaway

It is hard to build a perfect mobile app without fostering the clear idea of precise mobile app testing. The app testing steps discussed above are core essentials of smooth mobile app testing strategy that drives success.

However, there are many other real-time scenarios that come to challenge the developers and testers throughout the various stages of development. Careful selection emulators and physical devices, manual checking and exhaustive app testing strategy create a ground for launching a high-quality app.