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6 Best Testing Techniques for Mobile Applications

What are the biggest quality assurance challenges and the best mobile testing techniques to address them? Our QA engineer Yulia Sosedova provides a detailed answer in this post.

March 5, 2018
Yulia Sosedova

In 2017, users worldwide downloaded around 197 billion applications; some of which were the typical type you use on your device everyday without even thinking about it: social media, messengers, and games. Others were much more practical and down to earth apps for work, communication with colleagues and business partners, tracking your bank accounts, and organizing your lifestyle.

With such a versatile assortment of programs on your smartphone, you must certainly have some experience choosing an app to suit your needs, and you probably know, at first glance, which application will do. But, have you ever thought about what makes a good app so attractive and trustworthy? We know the answer: they were thoroughly tested during their development and quality assurance process. The app, whose performance was carefully checked on various devices, cannot but fulfil the first and foremost requirement – to look and work properly; however, mobile testing methodology is a very complex issue. In this article, we will help you understand its major pitfalls, advantages, and possibilities for you to perform your app checks seamlessly.

Reasons Why Your App Fails

There are plenty of reasons why an application may fail on the market. An experienced developer, who wants to create a really useful and attractive app, should know all of them and test all these risks carefully. The most common are problems such as:

To avoid these problems, you need to be aware of all the possible challenges and run profound and careful testing.

Biggest Testing Challenges

All types of testing for mobile applications have their advantages and drawbacks, and it may sometimes be difficult to perform testing seamlessly. There are a lot of mobile application testing challenges which may prevent you from running the process smoothly. The biggest include:

To deal with all those challenges successfully, you need to choose appropriate iOS and Android app testing techniques, along with diverse testing strategies. With constant trial and error, you will find the best solutions for your applications, and we will be happy to help you out.

Best Mobile Testing Techniques

Mobile app testing may involve many issues, and the ones that we have described earlier are only the most prominent. One of the biggest challenges that developers faced while checking their apps’ performance in 2017 was truly quite simple – lack of time and resources. Despite the fact that application testing methodology usually takes lots of time and effort, they are absolutely necessary to perform to achieve a great product. Here, we offer you six types of testing for mobile applications that have proven to be the most needed and successful. They help developers not only test their products, but also gather new ideas on how to improve existing technology. For that reason, there are now many different kinds of processes for mobile app testing. Best practices include:

Cloud-based mobile testing

In 2017, more than half of IT companies around the world claimed they use cloud test environments for performance and security testing. Indeed, this testing technique is one of the most renowned, globally, as it can create an almost flawless web environment for running productive testing procedures.

Pros:

That is why this type of testing is very effective for large-scale projects with a huge but unstable number of users from different places. Cloud testing can predict the future functional performance of such apps under a heavy load. However, it does have some disadvantages, too.

Cons:

Automation Testing

Automation testing remains one of the most effective testing techniques for mobile applications, as it has many undeniable advantages.

Pros:

Any developer performing manual testing may make a mistake, though, on the contrary, a series of well-scripted automated tests will provide a desired result.

Cons:

Alpha and Beta Testing

With an incredibly high level of competitiveness in today’s technology market, any app developer understands how important it is to meet the needs of the users and satisfy all their wishes. To attract as many users as possible, and leave them happy and loyal to your product, you should not only investigate markets and develop reliable economic strategies, but also test your app on real users before releasing it to the open market.

That is why Alpha and Beta testing are performed. They have many crucial advantages. To start with, Alpha testing is performed internally within the company, and the testers are usually its employees. Beta testing, on the contrary, is done by real users – a limited number of people, who give their feedback about the program’s performance.

Pros:

However, nothing is perfect and Alpha and Beta testing have their drawbacks, too.

Cons:

L10N and I18N Testing

We have already mentioned here how important it may be to adjust your product to the needs of users all over the world, and this includes some efforts for proper localization and internationalization. This is why it is necessary to check the application’s functionality, especially if the information it operates with is in different languages and comes from different places. Here, I18N testing means partial compliance with foreign data, as the core of information remains in the native language (usually English).

L10N testing includes I18N and some other adaptations.

Pros:

In other words, if you are oriented within an international market, with L10N and I18N check you can make your application work well for someone in England, Japan and Russia, all at the same time.

Cons:


UX/UI Testing

We have already told you how dangerous it may be for a developer not to consider an average level of his users’ UX. Mobile applications should be created with regard for a users’ abilities. If so, it may significantly reduce its failure risk level, and even cost (as non-productive design and development procedures are usually cut off after being disapproved by testers). Therefore, several types of UX/UI testing should be conducted, including:

As all the other testing techniques we describe here, this type also has its major advantages and drawbacks.

Pros:

Cons:

A/B Testing

Last but not least, let’s discuss our final type of application testing methodology: A/B testing. As the title implies, this testing technique includes creating two different variants of the same app feature with a consequent evaluation of the performance of both of them. Usually, there are special groups of testers created to perform this type of mobile testing. Best practices of A/B testing imply running different app scenarios and immediate implementation of significant changes that the users approve. This technique can be very useful, not only technologically, but also economically.

Pros:

Cons:

Conclusion

In this article, we have provided you with some useful information about the most popular and successful mobile application testing techniques, which are essential to perform to get a really valuable and user-friendly product. These methods will also help you increase your revenue and attract new users. For further support, innovative ideas and professional help with developing and testing your applications, do not hesitate to contact us at EGO creative media solutions!

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