According to a report from App Annie, by 2022 annual mobile app downloads are projected to reach 258 billion. That’s a 45 percent increase from 178 billion downloads in 2017.
Mobile apps have gone from nice-to-haves to must-haves for both consumers and enterprises. However, with technology evolving at break-neck speed, and ratings and reviews literally determining the success of a mobile app, the testing team needs to adopt an agile testing approach to address quick bug fixes, introduce new features, and ensure sustainability.
We’ll go through the most common challenges in mobile application testing and give you some ideas on how to solve them.
1) Time-Consuming Test Design
Test design is a manual and time-consuming process. Most often, design defects require changes in requirements and result in costly reworks, causing gaps in test coverage and sometimes affecting the bottom-line. In fact. 64% of total defect costs can be traced to poorly defined or incomplete requirements. Today, with faster go-to-market times, QA teams need to test with speed and drive quality to stay competitive. The solution is automation. Using a test design automation tool will not only reduce testing time, but will also provide sufficient coverage area to eliminate defects.
2) User Experience/ Usability Expectations
Good user experience is what separates successful apps from the rest. Customers expect high quality, fast loading time, a delightful experience, and ease of use during app interaction. Balancing each of these is the key to your app’s success. The major challenges are to understand the target audience, market, and competitors to connect the dots and deliver an app that connects users with your brand.
3) Multiple Devices and Platforms
Device fragmentation continues to be a major challenge in 2020. There are over 2.5 billion Android devices and more than 1 billion iOS users, including mobile phones, iPads, tablets, and wearable technology. This diversity is a giant challenge, as QA teams must ensure apps will work equally well on all devices. Though the challenge is less daunting in the case of iOS, it is a major hurdle in the Android ecosystem. Although Project Treble has helped solved the problem of Android fragmentation, it continues to be a major challenge for app testers in 2020.Since it may still take a long time before Android reaches the similar adoption rates of iOS, app testers must use cloud servers to build successful apps.
4) Network Connectivity
To build apps that consistently deliver an exceptional experience, developers must address a key challenge – limited or intermittent connectivity. App testers must develop apps for the current generation of wireless technologies like 2G/ 3G/ 4G as well as 5G that offer higher speed, lower latency, and higher bandwidth. It is predicted that over 1.4 billion devices will be running on the 5G network by 2025. Therefore, mobile app testers must execute performance testing on all types of networks to allow users to move from place to place, ensuring seamless transitions from strong connectivity to patchy networks.
5) Security
The surge in the use of passwords, bank details, and personal information ensures that the need for security has never been more critical. Traditional methods of security testing are not sufficient and call for the use of innovative, high-end AI-driven tools to make applications more secure. Mobile app testers must, therefore, aim to secure the source code, implement strong encryption, and provide transit encryption for data. They must also ensure high-end security of the API and use strong testing software to completely secure mobile apps.
Organizations now realize the need to go agile to speed-up their mobile app delivery. The real value an agile team offers is quick, immediate feedback. At Analytix, our agile team implements a scalable process using cross-functional tools and technologies to ensure that we bring the right approach for your needs.We have worked on multiple testing projects, with clients in various industries, and are confident that we can address all requirements of your software testing process.
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