5 Top Sins to Avoid in Mobile Testing

Nowadays, the user experience delivered by a mobile app determines its popularity and profitability. While testing a mobile app, the testers need to identify and eliminate all bugs that affect the application’s user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). But testers have to identify and eliminate all defects in a mobile app within a shorter amount of time. That is why; it becomes essential for QA professionals to avoid a number of common but critical mobile app testing mistakes.

5 Mobile App Testing Mistakes Each Tester Must Avoid

1) Not Focusing on Mobile Experience

Many reports have highlighted that most users download mobile apps based on their looks rather than functionality. So the testers must focus on testing the app’s user interface (UI) thoroughly and repeatedly. It is also important for testers to allocate more testing time to UI than other functionality. They must evaluate the UI thoroughly to ensure that the mobile app looks plain and simple, while allowing users to find information or perform an action in a quicker and more convenient way. They can even check if the UI design can save users’ time by providing special features like one-click facility, automatic spelling checks, and infinite scrolling.

2) Ignoring Factors Affecting Cross Browser Compatibility

Each mobile app must deliver quality experience across many devices and browsers to keep the users engaged. But testers often fail to identify the factors that affect the cross browser compatibility of the application. While testing a mobile website, the professionals must try to find out the reason behind such UX bugs. Often the cross browser compatibility of a mobile app is affected due to use of specific scripting language, or add-ons or plug-ins. Likewise, the document object model (DOM) of the application may prevent it from performing seamlessly across many browsers. The testers can always use specialized tool to assess the app’s cross-browser compatibility more efficiently. 

3) Not Assessing Quality of Links

The quality of links will have a huge impact on the user experience of mobile web apps. But testers often forget to assess the quality of links while testing a mobile website. They must remember that there are a number of factors that can make a hyperlink outdated or broken. For instance, changes made to the website’s structure or external resources, any document or old web pages removed from the site, or any changes made to a URL can cause broken links. So the testers must identify the broken or outdated links, and report them along with the root cause. They can even consider using a variety of tools to identify the broken or outdated links more efficiently.

4) Inadequate Usability Testing

Nowadays, each app must deliver richer user experience to become profitable in the longer run. But often testers fail to perform adequate usability testing due to constraints related to time and resources. The inadequate usability testing can have a huge impact on the application’s user experience, hence its popularity and profitability. That is why; the mobile app testing strategy must focus extensively on usability testing. The testers can further use a variety of tools to identify and eliminate the bugs affecting the application’s user experience. Likewise, they must help developers to fix the UX bugs effectively by providing detailed and specific information about the defects.

5) Not Mixing Real Devices and Emulators Properly

The emulators make it easier for testers to assess the mobile app’s functionality and performance across a variety of devices without investing in many real devices. But the emulators cannot provide adequate information about how the app performs on a specific device or a particular carrier network. So the testers still need real devices to gather more relevant information about the application’s quality, performance and user experience. However, it is always important for the testers to maintain a proper balance between real devices and emulators in the testing environment. They can always consider combining the emulators with a load testing tool to assess how the application performs under various loads.

The testers must remember that various mobile apps cannot be tested by implementing a single testing strategy. It is always important for them to make and implement custom test plans according to the type, usage and functionality of the mobile app. The custom mobile app testing strategy will help them to avoid a number of fatal mistakes.