Mobile app testing can be seen as very time-consuming and difficult given the huge number of mobile devices as well as different screen sizes and orientations that must be tested on. Here I will give you 5 quick wins that you can use on your mobile app testing journey to have wider test coverage and more effective mobile testing 📲
1. Understand your audience
It may be hard to select which device and browser combinations to test on. Using data gathered that reflects the types of users, what devices they use the app on, orientation, most used functionality among other analytical data can help the test team evaluate the highest priority and shift focus to those areas 🔍 This data is typically used by product/sales to determine new features or how features are performing, however, it can also be utilized by QA to help guide their testing.
I have been on projects where data has been used (browsers and OS combinations along with revenue generated) to determine the priority of pretty specific bugs that were hard to reproduce and fix 🐞 In mobile testing new phones come out each year with several different screen sizes, focusing on those that are of a higher priority is ideal and will help to save time.
2. Automate repeatable tests
Mobile test automation when done right can reduce the time spent on doing regression and testing multiple screen sizes and devices. It is important that you consider if test automation is right for the project. Factors such as the length of the project and available automation engineers should be taken into consideration as test automation requires time and a lot of effort. It does have great rewards though and can see your project benefiting from faster time to market, increased mobile device coverage, and more testing of different orientation and screen sizes.
Another important thing to consider is that some test automation frameworks allow you to test on both iOS and Android while others only allow one. If you have a cross-platform app consider using a framework that will help to reduce the amount of code that you will have to write and allows your test automation code to be cross-platform as well 💪 (a great example for such a platform is TestProject that’s not only cross-platform, but even enables automating iOS on Windows machines, without any Xcode or macOS required).
3. Visually validate your mobile app
Visual validation allows you to check for any deviation from the expected layout and UI design of your mobile application. Different tools are available in today’s market using AI technology to provide checks for UX, localization, usability, responsive design, and cross-device testing on mobile and web applications.
Instead of spending lots of time with the human eye checking for alignment, font sizes, responsiveness on multiple devices, and layout amongst the many other testings that we normally do on mobile apps, we can use visual validation to make this easier, faster, and more accurate 👁🗨
4. Use simulators/emulators
Simulators and emulators can be used to save on the cost of using real devices. Services such as Sauce Labs/BrowserStack provide a wide variety of devices that you can use at a fraction of the cost of purchasing all those real devices. There are new devices released each year and it is very hard to keep up while still ensuring that you are testing on what your end-users will be using. Use cloud solutions/local emulators to get a wide variety of devices. These devices can be combined with your automated tests to increase your mobile test coverage 💡
5. Use real devices to test interrupts
Interrupts such as notifications, phone calls, messages, dropped internet, phone auto-locking or an alarm going off happens every day to real users and it is critical that you will test these on your mobile app and ensure that it works or based on the scenario fails gracefully. There are a lot of interrupt scenarios that can be tested and if your mobile app does not handle these well then it can frustrate users and cause them to use other alternatives.
These were my top 5 wins for mobile app testing 🥇
If you have more valuable tips & tricks share them with us in the comments below 📱