How to Create a Robust Mobile App Testing Strategy?

Mobile App marketing is getting trickier day-by-day, as it is being widely used by various businesses to promote their products and services in this challenging digital economy.

One of the key challenges is to keep up the attention span of the mobile application users and retain their interest in the offerings/services. There is a need to build applications that provide consistent and defined experience to its users. The mobile applications market is massive and has an opportunity for multiple types of business. However, making an impact at the right time and in the right way is a challenge that every business faces.

The key factors that determine the marketing impact for a mobile app strategy are App Store Dynamics, marketplace demand, and evolved user behaviour. Consumer preferences and choices keep on changing and there is a need for app developers to keep on evolving with that. However, this cannot happen suddenly; enterprises need a proper strategy to make the application evolve effectively.

There are some key factors to consider while building a comprehensive Mobile Application testing strategy.

Build a comprehensive testing strategy

While testing mobile applications, it is critical to build a comprehensive testing strategy. This helps put together the appropriate and relevant factors in place. Moreover, it helps the team to decide on a relevant strategy for testing. For instance, if test automation will be an effective approach. If yes, decide on the kind of automation tool that should be adopted to achieve enhanced test coverage and induce uniformity to make the testing efforts effective.

Get security of the application on priority

As per Gartner predictions for 2017, about 75% of mobile security breaches will be due to application misconfiguration. Experimentation and innovation are key for building robust applications and implementing a relevant technology stack. At the same time, it is important to build a testing strategy that puts security in the forefront of the process. Cyber Security is a growing concern, where cyber-attacks are a big scare for applications.

When Security testing measures are taken into focus, there are fewer chances to miss out on any aspect related to the application. Moreover, it helps enterprises to cater to the growing security needs of the applications.

Focus on early testing and continuous testing

Contemporary testing methodologies reinforce on testing way ahead in the development cycle, where both development and testing teams are equally responsible for ensuring the quality of the mobile application. Methodologies such as Agile, DevOps, and Shift-left induce testing early in the development lifecycle. This not only ensures quality but helps to eliminate errors early and saves costs and efforts.

The idea of continuous testing is to enable continuous testing and frequent releases. Methodologies such as Agile and DevOps enable frequent updates to the application, which is necessary for a competitive market scenario.

Test on actual devices

Implementing emulators and simulators is an option that enterprises leverage to simplify and accelerate mobile application testing. However, in order to get credible results and real-time feedback on the application, it is recommended to test on real devices. This requires good infrastructures and investments, however, external resources (mobile labs) can also be leveraged for testing mobile applications.

Test on specific devices and technology stacks

While it is recommended to test the mobile application for its compatibility on diverse devices and networks; it is equally important to choose the relevant devices as per the nature of your application and its target group. The mobile testing strategy must define the relevant devices, operating systems, and network configurations. This will make the testing process much more achievable for testers and developers. A defined scope enables teams to define the expected outcome from the testing efforts, and also saves on unnecessary infrastructure costs.

Take a check on battery consumption with the application

Today Mobile Applications need sourcing of information from various third party sites/sources. So, you need to be vigilant about battery hungry applications. If the application ends up sucking high battery power, it might impact the download of the application by users. It is important to incorporate this aspect into your mobile testing strategy, where developers must try to develop applications that are much more battery-friendly.

Conduct tests to make the Mobile Application market ready

There is no defined way to make a mobile application hack-proof and robust for the users. The best way out is to conduct the required tests to build the application’s resilience and resistance towards external threats. It is recommended to build a mobile testing strategy that involves security testing, stress/load testing, performance testing, regression testing, functional testing and any test that could be relevant for the application.

The intensity of the respective tests will totally depend on the nature of the application and the target group. Nevertheless, it helps to ensure that the application performs as expected and is secure against any risks in the cyber space.

Develop Application for local as well as global audience

Every application today provides location-based results for the users, which is expected from any business/user application. The application should be built with a global perspective and at the same time customized for each user. During the testing process, it is critical to ensure that it supports diverse languages and demographics. Preferences of every type of user must be considered while developing the application’s scope.

In Conclusion

Mobile Application Testing cannot be defined in a specific way, as there is no particular way to testing an application. Today, testing and development take a common path to build an application. This not only ensures quality but also accelerates time to market with cost-effectiveness. On the whole, the Mobile Testing strategy must resonate with the business objectives that you need to achieve with the application.