The number of mobile applications generated daily is increasing. Without a doubt, many mobile apps tackle real-life problems, but it would be absurd to devote all of your time and energy to thinking and developing an app just to have it rejected by so many people due to faults or errors in the app. That is why it is critical to test the app before releasing it to the public. We’d be talking about the best practices for mobile app performance testing.
What is mobile app performance testing?
Mobile performance testing is understood as the systematic process of preventing, detecting and correcting defects, is the most effective tool to ensure the quality of our mobile applications. This testing tool can come in various categories, such as; mobile app performance testing, mobile game performance testing etc.
What is Mobile App performance testing?
App development is not complete if they are not tested. By consistently running tests on your app, you can verify the correctness, functional behavior, and usability of your app before releasing it publicly. Apps like mobile performance meter can be found on Google Play Store or Apple store. You should always check their functions and capabilities before downloading.
Is mobile performance meter safe?
I get this message all of the time from my audience, because they are scared if it would affect their phones, or somehow make their phones vulnerable. I get it, most iPhone users don’t worry about this, because iPhone built a strong resistance to viruses and Trojan apps.
However, Android users, on the other hand, are not guaranteed their safety, so I understand if you’re worried if mobile performance meter Google play apps would put your phone at great risk. Well, the truth is most of these apps are safe, you can do due diligence to check their reviews to see what other users are saying.
What should I test in the mobile app?
Mobile app testing stages
- Documentation tests
- Functional testing
- Usability tests
- UI (user interface) tests
- Compatibility tests
- Test of performance
- Security tests
- Recovery tests
What are the types of mobile application tests?
Types of mobile app tests
- functional testing
- Acceptance Tests
- Maintainability Tests
- Usability Tests
- Accessibility Assessment
- Performance and Reliability Tests
- Web Security Tests
Functional testing
Check the conformity of the software with respect to the expected behavior, detect defects in the software and make an objective assessment of its functional quality.
Acceptance Tests
Determine whether or not the software product meets the acceptance criteria, with respect to user needs, project requirements, and business processes. These tests guide the process of formal acceptance by the user, client or other authorized entity, to determine whether or not the software product is suitable for use in the production environment.
Maintainability Tests
Implementation of continuous integration systems, to carry out static code review, with the aim of knowing its intrinsic quality valued in terms of source code metrics, adaptation to programming language standards and compliance with good practices.
Usability Tests
Heuristic evaluation by inspecting the application interface, and reporting strengths and weaknesses, with the aim of proposing improvements.
Usability tests with users are based on the observation and analysis of the behavior of real users using the application.
Accessibility Assessment
Accessibility consultancy per the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility / Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), through the audit and evaluation method that combines the automatic and manual review of a website, following the WAI methodology (web accessibility initiative).
Performance and Reliability Tests
Determine if the system meets performance requirements. Locating “bottlenecks” in the architecture and infrastructure, the operational limit of the application under load and concurrency conditions, predicting and projecting the behavior of production equipment and detecting functional defects that only occur under stress conditions.
Web Security Tests
Based on the methodology and guidelines proposed by OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project). It consists of intrusion tests and vulnerability analysis, as well as advice and review of results after the analysis has been carried out.
The mobile app testing lifecycle is a set of operations performed by the testing team to verify that the mobile app or product is of high quality. It refers to a set of procedures for testing mobile applications.
It also specifies what testing activities need to be performed and when they need to be completed. Each action in the STLC process is carried out in a planned and systematic way, and each phase has its own goals and outcomes.
The stages of the mobile application performance testing are as follows:
Requirements Analysis: The first step in the mobile application testing lifecycle is requirements analysis. The Quality Assurance (QA) team decodes the needs related to what we will test and determines the testable requirements at this stage.
Test Planning: The most important part of the mobile application test lifecycle is the test plan, where all test strategies are created. This step is also known as the test strategy step. The test manager is active in this phase to determine project effort and cost estimates.
Test case development: After the test planning phase is completed, the test case development phase begins. This is the phase of the testing where the test team takes detailed notes on the test cases. Besides test cases, the test team prepares test data for testing. When the test cases are completed, they are reviewed by members or the QA manager.
Test Environment Setup: A critical aspect of the mobile app testing lifecycle is the test environment setup. A test environment is a mobile application and hardware configuration that allows test teams to run test cases. It allows tests to be performed with correctly configured hardware, mobile application and network.
Test run: The test run is the next step in the mobile app testing life cycle. Running code and comparing expected results to actual results is called test execution. When test execution begins, test analysts begin executing test scripts according to the project’s testing strategy.
Test Cycle Completion: Test Cycle Completion is the final phase of the mobile application’s testing life cycle. This includes identifying and analyzing end-of-cycle criteria based on test coverage, quality, cost, time, critical business goals and the mobile app for each team member.
Steps to ensure success in mobile app testing
The exponential increase in the number of mobile devices and the complexity of domains makes it imperative for companies to plan an effective mobile application testing strategy. When mobile users interact with an app, they expect all of its functions to work efficiently.
If apps fail to meet expectations while in use, they abandon them for good and switch to a competing app.
Users have a low tolerance for slow apps, so when it comes to an app’s success, quality is key. Solving mobile app quality assurance issues can be expensive, but hiring a mobile app testing company can be a proactive and effective strategy to ensure quality.
Companies need to build intelligent testing and QA solutions. For mobile apps, companies should develop a formal testing strategy to ensure:
- Teams follow agile methodologies
- Fast response support in new app versions
- Identify and resolve bugs in an application efficiently
- Handling of multiple platforms, network interactions and operating systems
- Understanding End Users
Most testers make the mistake of testing an app without putting the end-users into consideration, and this is a common mistake. Building an application without a proper roadmap can lead to disaster for a company. It is one of the main reasons for applications to fail when testing is insufficient to understand end-user expectations of an application.
Finding out what users expect in function and performance from an application is crucial. The best way to do this is by researching users, learning what types of devices they have and how they interact with those devices. Mobile apps that are to be used globally must meet user preferences and expectations. It’s important to work on the UI design and also consider the features of other apps in the same domain.
- The responsibility of QA experts
QA testing includes analyzing not just for a program that runs as expected but also to ensure that its performance and design are appropriate and applicable for the purpose. While product managers are the actual proprietors of judging an application’s performance, QA professionals ensure that an application’s quality is maintained in all aspects.
They check that an application executes its duties using essential metrics, and designers ensure that any performance gaps are addressed appropriately. To acquire the required outcomes from an application, QA professionals bridge the gap between the design and development teams.
- Collaboration within the team
Integrating testers and QA professionals with the development and design teams is another crucial step in establishing the correct mobile app testing strategy. Testing an application from the start of the product development process and achieving user criteria are all part of quality control. Experts in quality assurance guarantee that the finished mobile app satisfies the initial user interface criteria and assess how well it functions.
After conducting the requirements meetings, the design teams conduct their meeting and then submit the product for development. Then the QA works closely with the developers as they are involved in the development process from the beginning.
They perform mobile app testing to ensure their testing strategy works most efficiently. This integration between teams allows you to define and achieve quality goals for an application development process.
- Automation Test
Managing all of the testing processes cannot be possible without the aid of automation testing. Apart from the fact that there are several combinations of phone versions, OS, network types and background software, testing and managing all of these through a manual process with limited time is nearly impossible. Automation testing is the more efficient way for organizations to handle mobile app testing.
Automation testing tools are used by QA teams to get the best testing coverage for mobile app testing. Automation testing is used to detect how an app reacts on several phones and with several changes made. The user interface and user experience might change when there are changes made to an app, which is why it is important to test them more often.
- Definition of time releases
Setting your release time and schedules might make your QA work more efficiently, however, it would be ridiculous to set a very short period. There should be enough testing to ensure that the quality of the app is not compromised.
What most companies don’t understand is that their mobile app is the war-front of their business. Companies that allow their users to give feedback on their apps should outsource the mobile testing task to a mobile testing company.
Mobile testing is not just about fixing bugs, there is more to it. The QA team takes their time to run the app through every phase of the testing process to ensure that the app meets the expectations of the end-users.