QA Testing for Mobile Applications

For many businesses, custom mobile apps are seen as one of their most important tools for the future. That’s because modern customers access the internet primarily from their smartphones–and thus interact with most businesses through their mobile phones.

By creating a successful mobile application that meets their customers’ needs, businesses can increase customer loyalty, boost profits, raise sales volumes, and collect valuable data that can be used for predictive analytics.

Companies that are interested in developing a custom mobile app for the public should focus heavily on quality assurance (QA), one of the biggest predictors of success in any mobile app development project. To do this, executives should build a strong in-house development team or collaborate with a trusted software testing outsourcing company to ensure a successful, error-free final product.

Why is Testing Important for Mobile Apps?

QA testing is incredibly important in any software development project and even more important for mobile app development. That’s because smartphone users are notoriously picky about the mobile apps that they install and keep.

Research has found that smartphone users will delete an application for a range of reasons. Some of the most common is that it doesn’t satisfy user expectations, there are better alternatives available, it takes too long to load, and it only works well with fast internet connections.

Companies can improve their mobile app results by understanding the most common consumer complaints and ensuring that their apps do not have these problems.

Meeting End User Expectations

The primary goal of any software development project is to meet end-user needs. The end users may be workers using the software internally, or customers and clients using the software to engage with the company and purchase products or services.

Regardless of the target audience, mobile applications need to meet end-user needs. The most successful and savvy companies use extensive QA testing and end-user feedback to ensure that their applications are a hit with the right people.

Managers can improve the odds of success for the mobile app development projects by soliciting end-user feedback during the development and testing process.

Avoiding Costly & Embarrassing Data Breaches

Study after study has found that ensuring data privacy is one of the most pressing challenges for executives now and in the immediate future. In fact, American CEOs rank data privacy as their number one “external concern” for 2020.

Cybersecurity is such an important priority because of the growing threat of malicious cybercriminals. Research has found that the number of cyberattacks continues to increase every year in both number and sophistication.

What’s more – cybersecurity experts have found criminals attempt to break into a new computer “every 39 seconds on average.”

Business owners and executives can improve the quality of their software and reduce the likelihood of data breaches by testing their software thoroughly using a combination of the following QA testing types.

Types of QA Testing

Functional

The first step in QA testing is functional testing. This straightforward approach seeks to assess whether all of the components of a piece of software work correctly.

Engineers need to begin with black-box testing, which determines whether software functions correctly without actually looking at the app’s code itself. This allows developers to see whether the software works in general. The details will be investigated in the next step.

During black box testing, developers verify the user interface and workflows. They’ll also ensure that information is being stored correctly in the database.

White box testing is the next step in the functional testing process. During this stage, QA experts will verify that the internal code, overall design, and data structure are written correctly. Engineers will perform loop testing, statement coverage, and basic path testing to ensure that all is in order.

Performance

Another key type of mobile app testing is performance testing. This is designed to measure how the software performs under real-world conditions, or under a high workload.

This type of software testing is extremely important because it shows developers how their product will perform when end users push it towards, and past, its performance standards.

Software engineers should look at mobile application performance speed, reliability, data transfer rates, and workload efficiency to assess its performance. In addition, both stress and load testing are essential steps in this process. They’ll help development teams understand how their software deals with rising workloads and those that exceed its predicted capabilities.

In addition, first-time project managers can use enduring testing to see how their mobile apps perform under high workloads for extended periods.

Usability

Usability testing is perhaps the most important type of testing for mobile applications. That’s because these projects typically succeed or fail based on their user experience and interface design features.

Mobile users, in particular, are easily turned off of applications that perform poorly. In fact, research has found that customers form an opinion about a website or application in a fraction of a second. In addition, a full 38% of customers will leave a website or application if the content looks ugly.

Companies can conduct usability testing by working with a large group of manual testers. These workers do not require any technical skills or development tools. They’ll simply assess the software by acting as an end-user and manually checking for broken pathways, frustrating design layout, and poor user experience.

The easiest form of usability testing is referred to as hallway testing. It involves gathering a group of employees, such as those passing by in the hall, to serve as mock end users. They’ll manually go through the app and explore it in the same way first-time end-users will, providing the user design team with valuable feedback.

Security

Security testing continues to be one of the most important types of QA testing for both desktop and mobile applications. It remains so important because the threat of cyberattacks continues to grow every year.

As a result of this dangerous climate, smart executives and business owners are investing heavily in QA testing in all of their software development projects. Companies can improve their QA security testing efforts by hiring a cybersecurity specialist or finding a trusted software testing or outsourcing company to collaborate with for the long term.

Businesses should ensure that potential security specialists or outsourcing firms are familiar with common cyberattacks and their associated defenses, such as fishing, spoofing, SQL injections, and more.

In Conclusion

Quality assurance may just be the biggest predictor of success for any mobile software development project. That’s because the modern smartphone consumer has come to expect that their devices and applications will work flawlessly, no matter what.

Business owners can help increase the odds of success for their next mobile development project by investing heavily in QA from the outset, whether this involves hiring these specialists full-time or as-needed through a software testing outsourcing company.

In addition, project managers should pay special attention to the four most important categories of QA testing. By integrating each approach into their QA efforts, managers will reduce the number of bugs and improve end-user reactions.

This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.