Best Practices and Tips for Mobile App Testing 

Developing technology isn’t a cakewalk. With so many advanced features and functionalities, a mobile app is a collective effort of multiple teams and detailed development processes.   

Since so many different resources are involved, it must be ensured that best practices for mobile app testing are implemented. These practices will ensure the app is bug-free to avoid future multiplications or app failures. This saves time, stress, and costs that come with errors or failures in the future.   

So, if you are in the middle of a mobile app development process or planning to build a mobile app for your growing business, then be with us as we share some of the best mobile app testing tips!  

Let’s start with types of mobile app testing.  

Types of Mobile App Testing  

There are multiple tests that are run on mobile apps to evaluate the overall health of the application. Thus, they make some of the best mobile app testing practices.  

Some types of mobile app testing are:  

• Usability testing: This is a crucial practice to test the user experience of the mobile app. Factors such as intuitiveness and navigation are checked to ensure user-friendliness of the app.   

• Functional testing: This test checks whether all the app functionalities get executed as planned and required.   

• Compatibility testing: This test is done to check the compatibility of the app with different operating systems, devices, browsers, screen resolution, network environments, as well as hardware specifications.  

• Security Testing: Security is a huge differentiator when it comes to the vast mobile app pool. Thus, through this mobile app testing trick, the QA (Quality Assurance) team checks whether the app data is from hackers and under different device permissions. This also involves mobile app vulnerability testing to identify threats, vulnerabilities, and risks related to the mobile application.   

• Operational testing: Operational testing evaluates the pre-production operational readiness of the mobile app. This testing involves checking backups, and the recovery time in case there’s a loss of any data, as well as verifying disaster recovery mechanisms.  

• Performance testing: Performance testing is done to ensure that the app, both native and hybrid, works or performs well under multiple situations such as various loads, network connectivity, document sharing, battery consumption, etc.  

• Service testing: It helps you know whether your services work correctly online and offline. So, it should be a part of your checklist for mobile app testing. It’s also one of the mobile app testing techniques that checks an API’s functionality, reliability, performance, and security.  

• Storage testing: This testing is concerned with storage-related functionality. It checks the efficiency of processes such as storing and retrieving data from the storage, addition/deletion as well as updating data on the hard disk, etc.  

• Installation testing: This test checks the proper installation of the app as well as whether the updates are implemented correctly or not. Enlistment of the app features in the document is also checked during this test run.   

• Regression Testing: A mobile app lifecycle involves the addition of features and micro functionalities as the app grows. This may create bugs and hence, this testing identifies such bugs in both, functional and non-functional domains.   

These were some of the key mobile app testing runs that ensure the performance and security of apps.   

Let’s now look at some more best practices for mobile app testing in the next section.  

Best Practices for Mobile App Testing  

Mobile app testing is a crucial step in a mobile app development process. Doing it meticulously while building the app saves big bucks in the future.    

Mobile app development is a service that has grown in leaps and bounds in the past few years. Android and iOS app development is allowing businesses to reach wider audiences and gain more visibility as well as engagement.  

However, no business wants an app that is not well-functioning and profitable. Testing for proper implementation of features and functionalities as well as bugs and vulnerabilities is not an option but a must.   

Hence, below are some mobile app testing tips and tricks that would allow businesses to launch a flawless mobile app: 

1. Understand your customer and mobile app  

Understanding the app type, functionality, and system architecture as well as the end-users is vital before testing. This requires referring to the documentation in order to understand business ideas as well as app architecture. This would highlight the basic errors or defects.   

Understanding the type of app would help you construct suitable test cases and enhance overall test coverage metrics.   

Moreover, knowledge about customers or end-users is important in order to make informed business decisions. It further helps to define and outline the support policy and develop and fine-tune UX as per the end user’s engagement patterns and behaviors. if you know how the end user engages with your app. All this helps in building a relevant test strategy.   

2. Run usability and UI tests  

User experience is an important aspect of a mobile app. The more comfortable the user is to navigate it, the more positive the experience is. This would make an app hit among its users along with the functionalities offered.   

Therefore, usability tests should never be ignored or left out.   

Furthermore, UI testing for various platforms should also be done as some platforms come with their own set of guidelines to make UIs more interactive. For example, Apple has its own UI guidelines. Apps that fail to meet Apple’s usability criteria are right away rejected. Therefore, usability and UI tests must be run for every mobile app.   

User experience is paramount for mobile apps. It can make or break the success of your brand as users always prefer apps that are easy to use and functional. Care should be taken while conducting mobile usability testing for best results.  

Below are the basic usability and UI tests that must be conducted for your mobile app:   

• Ease of understanding for documentation  
• Complication levels of the app logic  
• Ease of navigation  

3. Functionality testing is equally important  

Functionality is also extremely important in a mobile app and so is its testing. An app with incomplete or inadequate functionality will push the users away from the app since their purpose would remain unfulfilled.   

Thus, testing the app on multiple platforms or devices of different screen sizes for functionality becomes important. Ensure to cover all the specifications and run compatibility tests on different platforms to check if all the key functions are thoroughly executed across different platforms or devices before launching a mobile app.   

4. Choose real-time scenarios for testing  

Testing in real-time conditions is important to ensure the app is ready for adversities. Testing the app for bad/unstable networks, various time zones, GPS locations, irruptions caused by incoming calls, SMSs, alarms low-battery warnings, etc., is vital.   

These apps should also be tested in different data networks as well. Wi-Fi, 4G/5G, or LTE are some of the fast networks that are different from the slower networks such as GPRS and EDGE. 

Thus, it must be checked if the app functionalities work well with various network speeds and handle transitions from slower to faster networks.  

Additionally, test the app on the real device to check all the possible scenarios in the testing cycle. The app should be further tested against all the key hardware features and sensors such as such as proximity, ambient light, gyroscope, touch-less, location, etc.  

Since these sensors could be used within an app, QA testers must understand all the sensors and how to leverage them. Sensor-related scenarios such as varied environments or light circumstances, must be checked for the particular sensor in use.   

The testing should be done both manually and through automation.  

Furthermore, the app must be tested on emulators and simulators for enhanced debugging. However, this step should not replace testing on real devices but complement it.   

5. Do not forget app permission testing  

This is often missed due to overwhelming development processes. Testers often fail to test the various combinations of permissions, which ultimately hampers the UX.  

For instance, a messaging app that allows users to share media files, but the storage permission has been set to ‘no’ for the same. In such a case, the user would not be allowed to access the camera despite the sharing provision, resulting in a negative user experience.   

This makes testing every permission an important testing practice.   

6. Upgrades monitoring in the OS  

The app must be monitored for any operating system upgrades and updates. It should not create issues for the user if the operating system is upgraded. Hence, the QA testing must include monitoring operating systems for any upgrades.   

7. Prompt and frequent testing  

It is always beneficial to test often. Testing from the early development stages and at various project milestones results in a well-functioning and stable app. Moreover, performance tests should be done frequently as testing just once does not offer complete information.   

Performance testing in fact is a success only after frequent tests. Prompt and frequent testing allows the development team to identify errors, glitches, and bugs early enough to fix them without any significant cost investments.   

The following must be considered while testing: 

• Performance tests, white-box, and load testing should be automated.   
• Reoccurring tests should all be automated.  
• Leverage crowd testing, whenever suitable, for time efficiency.   
• Try and schedule manual tests post crucial design or development cycles.   

8. Break the testing process into smaller units  

Dividing the development process for testing is important to make testing easier, more focused, and more effective. Breaking down the app testing into smaller units can help the team to test specific functionalities or modules with ease.   

This method allows QA testers to implement targeted testing that could be very beneficial for the app working.   

Conclusion  

While these best practices for mobile app testing are extremely important and beneficial, they could be overwhelming and could completely go wrong if put into the wrong hands. Thus, it is important for the business to meticulously implement these practices for the desired results.   

These practices require seasoned QA testing professionals who know what they are doing. But where to find such experienced and reliable QA testing services?    

You will find them right here! Yes, you have heard it right!  

BigOhTech offers the best QA testing services a dedicated development team and testing professionals who work collectively and ensure that the mobile app is stable, reliable, and bug-free.  

To know more about our QA testing and other services, visit our website or get in touch with us today!