Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
Importance of Testing Apps Before ReleasesImportance of Testing Apps Before Releases

App testing is a technique for determining whether the actual product complies with expectations and is error-free. The objective is to identify flaws, gaps, or missing requirements compared to the specified requirements. Mobile App testing is a must because app development in the IT industry has constantly progressed, and so many new apps are being released every day. It is challenging for the testers to quickly get maximum test coverage with the many OS-Device combinations. Testing each new release of an app is difficult for the testers, especially when the customer base is significant. It is difficult to test the features of an already tested app. So, to mitigate the risks of brand image getting affected, pre-launch testing becomes critical. 

You can release a better app with low-risk possibilities by adhering to a structured procedure where you undertake field testing, A/B testing, crowdsourced testing, or leverage your community to test the app in real-world scenarios.

We need to test the app before release because:

  • It is important to check the backward compatibility and ensure enhanced app quality with every new release.
  • It is carried out to ensure the new app release will not only give your customers a better experience but will also function smoothly with new configurations, old and new data, user cloud usage, and device compatibility.
  • It helps identify the occurrence of potential risks before the app launches and reaches the customers.
  • It includes checking the issues related to the functionality, performance, compatibility, security, the overall stability of the app, etc.
  • It is essential to test apps before they are released to assure the data security of the users and the organization. This protects the app from data breaches.
  • If any flaws are discovered during testing, they can be repaired before the app is released. An example of a fault that could negatively affect user experience is the improper alignment of text, banners, icons, etc.
  • An excellent product will be delivered to clients thanks to pre-release testing. It is a prerequisite for any app to be released on the market.
  • Early testing of any IT project enables you to make long-term financial savings. Fixing bugs is less expensive if they are discovered earlier in the app testing process. It is a significant benefit of app testing.
  • The optimum user experience is made sure of through preliminary UI/UX testing. Every app’s primary goal is to satisfy its user.
  • It is critical to consider data network speed when evaluating applications before release. Applications need to be tested on various cellular and Wi-Fi networks at various speeds. The speed and data capacity of a network can affect how quickly a page loads, and some features, such as augmented reality, require a faster network.
  • Pre-release testing helps to reduce that cost because it is useless to spend marketing resources on user acquisition if your software still has critical bugs that limit consumers from using it properly.

Top Three tests before Releasing a Mobile App

As we have understood the importance of testing a mobile app pre-release, let’s overview the top three tests before releasing the mobile application in production.

Performance Testing

Bad performance will lead the user to uninstall the app in no time! Performance testing basically measures the “stable performance” and speed, response time, stability, reliability, scalability, and resource usage of a software application under various workloads. The main purpose of performance testing for mobile apple is to identify and eliminate the performance bottlenecks in the software application.

There are various types of performance testing types as mentioned below

Load Testing: tests the application’s ability to perform under predefined user loads

Stress testing: here testing is performed under extreme workloads to see how it handles high traffic

Endurance Testing:  is done to make sure that mobile applications can handle the expected load over a long period of time.

Spike testing: it tests the application’s reaction to sudden large spikes in the load generated by users.

Volume testing: in volume testing, the objective is to check software application’s performance under varying database volumes.

Scalability testing: The objective of scalability testing is to determine the mobile application’s effectiveness in supporting increase in user load.

Security Testing

Security issues hold key concerns for application users as they provide sensitive data like credentials, passwords, bank details, local information leaving these data vulnerable to threats. Hence it is mandatory to execute security testing in order to validate application’s resistance towards malicious users etc   While security testing, following security concerns must be taken care of:

Data Storage

It’s very necessary to store sensitive information or authentic data in encoded form. Hence make sure to store data in encrypted form and with the help of various tools you can encode the data later.

Authentication

Every application uses a default certificate for authentication which can be easily hacked and hackers can see the entire source code of the app . The source code can be further used to extract sensitive information from the app.

Data Leakage

Do make a note of protecting your log data as it may print sensitive information in logs. For example, after connecting the app with a log analyser, anyone can see the information getting printed in the log. Mostly username and password can be extracted by reading the log history.

Functional Testing

Functionality of an application is its backbone. Functional testing is a type of app testing that validates the application against the functional requirements/specifications. The functionality of an app should be tested properly against the business requirements stated by the client. The purpose of Functional tests is to test each function of the mobile application by providing appropriate input and verifying the output against the Functional requirements. There are multiple types of functional testing like Unit Testing, Smoke Testing, Sanity Testing, Integration Testing, White box testing, Black Box testing, User Acceptance testing, Regression Testing to validate the functionality of the application and ensure that all the bugs are eliminated before the app release.

Why is Continuous testing Crucial?

Mobile application industry is very dynamic, hence to ensure that dynamic demands of the customers get delivered on time, testers need to accelerate their testing cycles along with qualitative results. Here cloud based continuous testing comes into picture. In continuous testing the application quality is validated at each step and only then passed to the next step. Here testing starts from the earlier stages and hence feedback is also provided quickly. This way testing cycles get accelerated and as application is validated at each step, we get qualitative results at the end of test cycles.

As test automation tools are leveraged for continuous testing, rapid automation takes place. For rapid automation, even AI and ML powered tools can be leveraged for 10x testing speed.

Conclusion:

There are so many unique users in the world. People rely on apps for nearly everything. It is important to remember that an application’s functionality and overall user experience depend on its capacity to operate correctly across a range of configurations, which act as layers the app must pass through before reaching the end user. If the application is not working properly, they won’t use it or they might stop using it. A great user experience is necessary to stay competitive. The application must undergo extensive testing with real-world circumstances before being made public. The application can never be error-free because every user is unique. 

By admin