Blog | 3 Essential Techniques You Need to Know

Mobile testing is a process that ensures the usability, functionality, security, and speed of the mobile application are consistent and up to the mark for the app going live. This specific testing validates the application passes all the client’s requirements before being released to the end user. There can be situations where a mobile tester just feels this could have been better after the app is live in the Play Store. Mobile testing can be challenging due to the multiple environments and operating systems involved. Hence, it is recommended to follow some techniques to master mobile testing given a short delivery timeline. These techniques can shorten the testing cycle by adapting smart strategies that will promise commendable testing outputs.

Let us get a sneak peek into the three crucial techniques to follow before the app ventures into the market.

1. Manual Testing for Mobile Apps

This type of testing is carried out manually by the testers to verify the mobile application’s behaviour against the client’s requirements. The manual testing involves running the app on multiple environments which could be a relatively time-consuming process. All critical functionalities are tested in multiple environments to ensure there is no mismatch and work as defined in the requirements. Finding the device and testing it is tedious. Hence, identify emulators online and perform mobile testing on the desired environment to ensure it is working fine. The second approach could be testing on a real cloud environment that consists of a range of Android and iOs mobile devices.

Device fragmentation is an important aspect of manual mobile testing as testers find it tedious to identify the platforms. For this, they can arrange a call with the clients to know their desired platforms and also research the web to find the most frequently used platforms and pass the information to the developers to design the application accordingly.

2. Mobile Test Automation

Mobile test automation has reached a huge innovation in recent years by promising maximum test coverage and time-saving. There are so many tools in the market to achieve maximum test coverage in the developed mobile app.

1. Appium

It is a famous open-source framework meant for automated mobile testing. Developers can run Android applications on the Appium tool via the WebDriver interface. This high-end tool comes with a provision for testers to create test scripts in multiple languages that can be run across multiple platforms. The test scripts can be reused for Android and ios platforms thus saving a hell lot of time for the testers.

2. NightWatch

This popular framework is run and maintained by BrowserStack. The main purpose of this automation tool is to run the test application on simulators and real devices to know if it’s working as expected by the client.

3. Calabash

Calabash is an exclusive mobile test automation framework that works hassle-free on versatile languages. The mobile testers can use APIs to activate native applications that run on Android and ios devices.

4. Espresso

An innovative automation test framework that manages the UI test results for Android applications. Both developers and testers can get benefited from this tool as developers can create mimic scenarios on the go and validate the behaviour of the application. The tool generates UI test cases that can be helpful for testers as it saves their efforts and time.

5. Selendroid

An independent test automation tool for running both native and hybrid mobile applications. Just like Selenium which can perform cross-browser testing on multiple platforms, this tool can simultaneously run auto-generated or manual test cases on different devices.

3. Performance and Manual Testing for Mobile Apps

Performance is the key aspect for any mobile app to become trending in the app store because customers tend to get attracted towards faster apps than slow ones. A testing approach that validates the behaviour of the application under high loads and multiple users accessing it. This is also a kind of stress testing to validate how the app behaves when a huge pressure is put on it. Such behaviour can enhance the performance of the application and provide reassurance to the end users that the app can withstand maximum load without any interruption in speed.

Research has proven that performance testing via automation tools has fetched better outputs. The dedicated testing team can run the automation test cases on the tool to verify the mobile application response time and accuracy. Test on critical scenarios like asking multiple users to access the mobile app concurrently to check the load time and speediness of the application. The behaviour of the application is evaluated under stressful conditions like this to find how well it will scope in the market when released into the play store.

Conclusion

In the current modern era, delivering superior mobile applications is necessary to make your apps stand out in the competitive market space. Test all possible scenarios in all devices to avoid missing out on important functionalities in the apps. It is suggested to assess whether the application needs manual or automation test techniques based on the risks involved.

Development and testing teams must work in a collaborative manner to rule out bugs in production that can affect the credibility of the teams among the customers. Apply the popular test automation framework-oriented tools to identify potential risks if any associated with the mobile app. Mastering mobile automation testing plays a vital role in the career of a tester as it can lead to tremendous growth as a result of delivering reliable and user-friendly mobile solutions. Hope the above-listed three important techniques will help you in achieving the testing goals in a healthy way to climb up the professional ladder as a successful mobile tester. Practice them vigorously to deliver brilliant mobile apps to the real world that can transform the lives of people.