Imagine that you are in the process of creating an app for your brand, and, for budgetary reasons, you decide to launch it to the public before doing any sort of quality assurance (QA) testing. Now your app is full of bugs and glitches making your users very unhappy. You might be thinking to yourself, ‘I would never launch an app without properly testing it first.’
Believe it or not, QA testing will often be cut or overlooked during the app development process in order to meet budget constraints. Sometimes clients might see quality assurance testing as an unnecessary additional expense instead of an essential part of the whole app development process, which in the end leads to a much more unstable product when this essential step is postponed or ignored.
Quality assurance engineers test and analyse software to identify and eliminate bugs and errors before the program is fully operational. The quality of the app is assessed so that it functions for the end-users and meets the client’s expectations. It is important to remember that there is a high chance users will stumble across a bug if it was overlooked by developers and that the end-user and customer satisfaction are a top priority when completing quality assurance testing.
There are different types of testing that can be done to resolve lagging and glitches in the software. This includes real-world testing which involves creating test cases and retrieving feedback from actual users, getting a wide range of results from different consumers. There is also performance testing in which engineers test the app under heavy usage and identify and investigate the parts that need fixing. And finally, mobility testing enables QA engineers to do functional tests and compare the app to others on the market, focusing the testing on specific mobile devices to ensure the app works across multiple platforms.
The Long-Term Benefits of Quality Assurance Testing
Quality assurance testing is certainly something that should not be overlooked as it is a process ensuring the delivery of a smooth and enjoyable app experience for users. This procedure is to see whether the features and functionalities will be understood by future potential users and to ensure that the app is user-friendly and intuitive. QA testing is essential to point out the possible areas in an app that require improvements to provide customers with the most optimal product.
Paying attention to the minute details in an app and identifying elements like spelling mistakes, audio and graphical glitches, localization issues and bumpy functionalities can help to resolve these crashes and bugs with precision. It is important to fix issues and defects like these before officially launching the app to users as it will increase the confidence customers have in your product, which then leads to having a positive brand image and reputation as well as favourable reviews in app stores.
Prioritizing the need to have someone in charge of QA testing to report and give feedback on the usability is key to preventing malfunctioning code and delivering a great app. Going through this process of security testing and defect management is economical in the long-run. With quality assurance being integrated into all aspects and stages of the app development process, it will ultimately result in lower maintenance and correction costs throughout the product’s life as well as avoid the risk that the product will fail in the future.
Testing early and often helps to catch issues and bugs immediately as they arise, which in the end leads to less rework and a lower chance of costly failures arising in later stages of development. Failing to double check the app software with quality control could end up in the loss of business and bad app reviews and ratings.
In fact, software projects spend roughly 40-50 % of their effort on rework that can easily be avoided with QA testing. Detecting defects in the earlier processes of app development means the app won’t malfunction during maintenance later-on and the issues won’t be discovered by users after the app is launched to the public.
Ultimately, the importance is making sure QA engineers find functionalities that are at risk of malfunctioning and ensure the app is simple, intuitive and efficiently organized. It is the quality assurance testers’ job to look at the app through the customer’s’ eyes, watching out for issues to guarantee an optimal app performance for increased long-term user engagement.
Special Considerations When QA Testing Mobile Apps
It is clear that quality assurance testing will be beneficial for the successful long-term life of a mobile app. There are a few special considerations like usability, performance, operating systems, screen sizes, battery and security which need to be taken into account during the app testing process.
Usability and performance: It is important for QA testers to not only make sure the usability and user experience are identical across all devices and platforms but to also ensure users are able to accurately interact with the app. Quality assurance is there to guarantee the app is easy to use and that the features aren’t confusing for users, with the more obvious and important functions being the most accessible to them.
To ensure this pleasant user experience, testers watch out for the size and dimensions of interactive elements, the legibility of text and graphical components, internet data usage, offline data usage, memory leakage and they take into account how the app would work under different network bandwidths and limited or poor internet connectivity. Users are impatient with a slow app performance if they can’t get their tasks done quickly, 25% of app users abandon a mobile app if they experience a delay of more than three seconds.
Operating systems and screen sizes: With there existing multiple operating systems with different interface guidelines like iOS and Android, QA engineers must make sure the app works across all devices and platforms. And, with the constant release of newer versions of smartphones, each is built with a different screen size. Therefore, apps must be adapted to these mobile designs making sure the pixel density on the interface matches the screen size.
Battery life: Battery testing is an important part of the quality assurance process. It is here that QA testers verify how much battery is drained from using the app and they watch out for power consumption, especially when completing high-demanding tasks in the app.
Security: Privacy violations are a big concern for app users. Testing the security of the app involves taking the proper precautions to secure app user information with the proper encryption methods. This is to make sure user data is safe and that it won’t be used without permission.
As you can see, quality assurance testing is an essential stage in the app development process and should not be overlooked as an unnecessary step. In the long-run, it is worth it to take the extra time to have the app software double checked by quality assurance engineers, especially if it guarantees the success of your app in the future!
