Mobile App Performance Testing: A Detailed Guide

If you are a Quality Analyst (QA), you want to know how the App works before it goes live in the market. Hence, you may be worried that the App will not handle the vast number of users, cope with large volumes of data, or it will perform well under some critical conditions.

However, the user wants to avoid the poor usability of mobile app development. Users are also not ready to compromise the performance of mobile apps. This article will discuss the strategy for testing the app development process.

Global Consumer Spends on Mobile Apps

In the recent quarter, the total value of the global consumer spending on mobile applications is expected to be 68.7 billion U.S. dollars, a decrease of 2% compared to the previous quarter, 2021. However, between 2019 and 2021, the user’s time spent on mobile apps has experienced a constant increase, rising to 170 billion U.S. dollars during 2021. Hence, in 20222, customer spending on mobile apps was approximately 167 billion U.S. dollars.

What is Mobile App Performance Testing?

Mobile app testing is executed in the simulated environment to predict the user’s experience after deploying the application. It will aid you in ensuring that your App will generally perform between a range of devices, even if there are peak traffic loads and poor internet connectivity. However, mobile app performance is usually measured in three distinct categories.

Pillars of Mobile App Performance

The mobile app performance has three pillars for testing the App.

1. Device Performance

In this, you will check whether the App is slow or not is done to perform the device test. In the device performance testing, you have to check some elements like App startup time, Battery time while utilizing the App, Memory consumption, variation in hardware or software, and its usage with other apps.

2. Server or API Performance

It will check whether response time increases or decreases when the App interacts with an API server. In this, the server performance will review the data to and from the server, API calls generated from the App, and server downtime.

3. Network Performance

Carry out the test on the various networks to find the network performance of the mobile App.

For the network performance, check Jitters, Network speed, and Packet loss in the development.

What are the advantages of Mobile App Testing?

1. Ensure the Proper functioning of the App

The primary target of the QA procedure is to make sure that the solution is performing seamlessly. However, the QA engineers will test whether the users can successfully download the program to many gadgets. It uses real devices to test an app that comes up with a correct functioning product or service.

2. Predicts User’s Experience

Here, the experts will put themselves in the place of end users and identify the application’s look and feel. They utilize an app to examine whether its navigation is in-built and logical. In addition, it will check whether the usage of apps is convenient for the app users in varied situations. In this manner, it predicts whether a consumer will prefer using that App or will uninstall it from the mobile.

3. Increase Customer Loyalty

Customer satisfaction will rise if you ensure an application’s easy usability and accurate functioning. In this manner, the analytics will help you reach a broader audience and have a good reputation for the industry.

4. Promises Higher Revenue

The testing procedure demands an initial investment, but it helps you ignore the fixed issues and will rebuild the product at the last stage. It will save time, reduce the total cost, and permit rapid time-to-market. In this way, it cooperates with the testing expertise, and you might get high reviews in the future.

5. Reduce Testing Time in the Development Phase

Manual tests demand much time and effort. The QA becomes capable of running multiple tests in a short period. The significant advantage of automation testing is that it improvise testing speed and efficiency.

6. Cost-effective app development

Automated app testing is used efficiently, lowering your project’s cost. However, thorough testing is the primary reason behind cost savings, which reduces the emergence of bugs found after deployment. 

Therefore, launching the App n the market has defective functionalities that might lead to negative user reviews and a wrong impression of your brand. So, you must remember to test your App thoroughly from the initial stages of app development.

How Many Types of Mobile Apps Are Required to Test?

1. Native Apps

These apps are specially created for the mobile platform, iOS or Android, and are usually downloaded and installed through the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. It has native apps which the Objectiove-C/Swift builds for iOS or Java/Kotluin for Android. It also has cross-platform native apps created with frameworks like Flutter, NativeScript, and React Native.

2. Hybrid Apps

When we install these apps on our devices, like native apps, it is the web app written with web technologies. It runs inside the native container and will utilize the device’s browser engine to deliver the HTML and procedure with JS locally.

3. Responsive Web Apps

These apps are being built to access the mobile browser. Web apps can be progressive or responsive site versions with mobile-friendly functionalities and features.

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Types of Mobile App Testing

Testing your custom mobile app development by the distinct types of testing will aid you in delivering the best quality solutions by testing an app from a single line of code.

You must test your App for its expected functionality, consistency, usability, and performance before launching it in the market. Let’s see the below types of testing: 

1. Manual Testing 

Testing the software manually without using automation tools is called manual testing. The principal target is identifying bugs or defects and making the app error-free.

However, developers usually choose this type of testing approach to test particular features initially in the application development process.

Types of Manual Testing

1. White Box Testing

The developers do this testing to check each line of code before it goes to the QA team. As developers view the code during the testing phase, and that’s why it is called white box testing.

2. Black Box Testing

The QA will check in this testing that an app or software performs as per the customer’s needs. As this code is not visible while conducting the testing and due to this, it is referred to as black box testing.

3. Gray Box Testing

A combination of white and Black box testing is known as Gray testing. This testing is done by a person who knows coding and testing. Hence, there is an opportunity that gives the product high-quality features.

2. Automated Testing

After the development of application completion, the testers automate a test scenario by considering an end user’s perspective to test an app’s functionality, performance, and usability.

A software testing technique will help execute the test case suite to identify a defect in the system that utilizes automated testing tools.

3. Performance Testing

The non-functional app testing technique will test the response time, reliability, speed, accuracy, resource usage, and scalability of your enterprise mobile application development. This type of testing is used to identify and remove the performance hurdles in your software app.

It verifies the response time to various types of requests, working caliber at increased loads, the behavior of an app when multiple users perform the task simultaneously, and long-time operability under the average load.

Types of Performace Testing

1. Stress Testing

Engages the testing of an application under massive workloads to check how it handles the enormous traffic and data processing. The aim is to point out an app’s breaking point.

2. Spike Testing

It will test a software reaction to an unexpected traffic load.

3. Scalability Testing

It will determine an app’s effectiveness that scales to handle increasing user load.

4. Endurance Testing

Ensures that an application will handle unexpected traffic over a long period.

5. Volume Testing

Monitor an app’s behavior when big data is inserted into the database.

6. Load Testing

Check the App’s caliber to perform under the expected user loads. The Target is to catch up on performance blockage before an application goes live.

4. Functional Testing

It tests the complete functionality of the application, mainly updates, installation, sign-up, error messages, etc.

Functional testing ensures the reducing risks or errors, meeting particular expectations, quality, and consumer satisfaction. It verifies Business functionality, the impact of interruptions on the App, device resources, installation and running, and influences of updates on the App.

Types of Functional Testing

1. Unit Testing

Expertise who write the scripts will do this kind of testing to test if units or the individual components of the application meet the requirements. Its test cases consider method coverage, line coverage, and path of the code.

2. Smoke Testing

Ensures software application stability which is internally error-free. After creating an app release, QAs perform the smoke testing.

3. Regression Testing

It ensures that an existing function will remain unaffected rather than the codebase changes and does not trigger any instability. It re-runs the test successfully in the App’s older version. It will guarantee that the new code has not recreated the old errors. As regression testing is conducted repeatedly, they are perfect for automation.

4. Sanity testing

It is typically performed after smoke testing, and this testing verifies all chief App’s functionalities that are working correctly, individually and with other elements.

5. Beta Testing

In the production environment, consumers will test the product in this phase. It will verify that how is the user interface and will assist you in further code improvements. It also identifies response speed, working in multi-tasking mode, Logic, layout, text clarity, ad size, and the look of buttons and icons.

6. Integration testing

Ensures individual models perform as expected when running in the combination.

5. Security testing

Testing unveils the application’s threats, vulnerabilities, and risks and will prevent the intruder’s malicious attacks.

The objective is to point out a software system’s possible weaknesses and loopholes that might lead to revenue loss, data, etc. Security testing identifies cookies, protection against attacks, file caching, login, and password encryption systems.

Types of Security Testing

1. Risk Assessment

This testing includes a security risk analysis that the organization observes. It is classified as high, low, and medium.

2. Ethical Hacking

Its target is to reveal a system’s security flaws.

3. Penetration Testing

It will simulate malicious hacker attacks and analyze a particular system to identify potential vulnerabilities to a hacking attempt.

4. Security Scanning

Includes pointing out the system and network defects and providing solutions to eliminate the risks.

5. Vulnerability Scanning

The automated tool scans the system against specific vulnerability signatures.

6. Security Auditing

involves the internal inspection of the OS and apps for security flaws. The sequential review of code performs it.

7. Posture Assessment

It merges ethical hacking, security scanning, and risk assessments to exhibit the organization’s security posture.

6. Outdated OS Testing

App users do not have to update the operating system frequently on their smartphones. The common thing is that when the update exceeds more than 100MB.

The Flutter app developers will make a solution that may perform flawlessly on the earlier version of the OS. This type of testing involves testing an application with the previous version. It ensures an application user can use the given application even if they still need to update their OS.

7. Installation Testing

It is also known as implementation testing, and this type of testing is conducted to check whether the software is installed and uninstalled properly and correctly or not. Hence, this testing ensures that updates are error-free and uninterrupted.

8. Compatibility Testing

It is a type of non-functional testing, and compatibility testing ensures that your App performs on many gadgets, OS, apps, and network environments and with specific internal hardware specifications. 

Types of Compatibility Testing

1. Forward

Tets the Mobile App’s behavior with new software versions.

2. Backward

Test the behavior of a mobile app development with an older software version.

9. Localization Testing

Type of mobile app testing ensures your solution adapts to the potential user cultures and languages. The App must hold the caliber of modifying per region or area. Every business should reach a billion customers worldwide. You should include the native speakers o verify if the translation and the other cultural details are correct.

10. Operational Testing

This type of non-functional testing will check an AUT’s behavior during the events, such as removing or inserting data cable, power on or off, WiFi on or off, and switching on airplane mode.

11. Acceptance Testing

This type of mobile app testing checks that an app gives the best usability, functionality, and performance to fulfil a user’s needs and will deliver the user experience across multiple platforms.

Beta testing is an integral part of acceptance testing on real-time devices, which will have the end user’s performance,

The Apple developers program provides the free TestFlight tool for beta testing. It currently supports 10,000 external testers and 25 internal testers invited via email to participate in beta testing.

In the same way, Google Play Store comes with a developer console for beta testing.

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How to Conduct Mobile App Performance Testing?

It is a step-by-step testing strategy designed for startup business mobile apps and helps them execute performance testing successfully.

Step 1: Set your objective for each case to align with your business needs. In this stage, you will get an idea of the mobile application architecture of the project, which includes the mobile app architecture of the project, which has functionalities, UI/UX, and data.

Step 2: In this phase, set the priorities for each scenario and test each feature individually.

Step 3: You must set key performance testing metrics and mobile KPIs to check whether an execution is successful. The KPIs considered are error rate, maximum response time, average response time, app crashes, device performance, and peak number of requests.

Step 4: Check the interface’s look and feel and understand the App’s user experience that simulates the real-life testing environment.

Step 5: It depends on your app development methodology; align the testing approach to embrace regular bug reports and regression tests. It will also improve communication and the speed of the testing process.

Step 6: While testing an application, you must focus on the latency and bandwidth of the carrier network to optimize the application and improve the overall user experience.

Step 7: At the end of the testing process, focus on resolving the issues and retesting the application to ensure the App is bug-free.

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Mobile App Performance Testing Checklist

Testing the mobile application against its performance has always been essential to a mobile application development process. Hence, here is a quick checklist for you t test the performance of mobile applications.

• Check the requirement of RAM usage for the application

• Validate an app’s speed and response time under various circumstances and network conditions.

• Check the user experience of an application.

• Ensure that you will deliver the expected results with multiple connectivities.

• Check that the application has no bugs or defects and is not getting crashed.

• Ensure that the application is performing seamlessly while using data or other connectivity.

• Monitor uptime and challenges associated with mobile API usage.

• It is capable of handling and monitoring the traffic load.

Conclusion

In this blog, you learn about the basics of mobile application performance testing, benefits, which types of apps need testing, types of mobile testing, and steps for testing the mobile App. Nobile app performance testing will maintain the consistency of user experience and will satisfy work performance across mobile devices and network and operating systems. Hence, the ever-rising demand for mobile apps, and due to this, it is necessary to test a mobile app for a long-lasting business.

If you have any queries or doubts and know how long it will take to do the performance testing, connect with a mobile app development company like Flutter Agency, which will help you test the business apps and provide error-free apps. Hence, your testing expert team will aid you at all stages of app testing.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Why is mobile testing needed?

Perfect mobile app testing ensures an easy application launching on the production server without any flaws. Functional testing provides that an app location functions per the requirements and specifications.

2. What is mobile testing in QA?

Mobile testing is the process by which the apps for modern mobile devices are tested for functionality, performance, scalability, and so on. It can test native, responsive web, or hybrid apps.

3. How will mobile app testing work?

MobileApp Testing has to analyze the mobile apps for functionality, usability, visually appealing, and consistency across multiple mobile devices. It helps to ensure the optimal user experience, irrespective of the device used to access an application.

Consult our QA Experts