Why App Testing and Quality Assurance in App Development?
As mobile applications become increasingly essential to our daily lives, ensuring the quality and functionality of these apps is more critical than ever. In fact, a poorly designed or malfunctioning app can result in user frustration, negative reviews, and ultimately, loss of revenue. To avoid such scenarios, app testing and quality assurance (QA) are crucial steps in the app development process.
In this blog, we’ll delve into the reasons why app testing and QA are critical to the success of any app, and we’ll provide some practical tips for incorporating these practices into your app development workflow.
App Testing and Quality Assurance
The purpose of application testing is to evaluate and validate the functional features of the application being developed as part of the Software Application Development process. Functional specs are part of the client’s need to maintain the quality of the software, avoid wasting time on mistakes made during development, keep track of not exceeding the planned effort and time, and keep the project team informed about the progress being made.
Whereas quality assurance (QA) refers to the process of assuring product quality. Some people make the mistake of reducing quality assurance to just testing, but there is much more to it. Within the quality assurance discipline, the testing step is a drop in the ocean. Testing is not quality assurance – a QA specialist is more than that.
The Importance of App Testing in app development
A company that isn’t serious about quality is unlikely to prosper, wasting all of your hard work. Poor ratings on the App Store or Google Play mostly cause complaints about crashes, poor performance, or battery drain, all of which could have been avoided if the app had been fully tested. Here are a few of the advantages of mobile app testing.
Better UI/UX
Testing helps QA engineers to put themselves in the shoes of users and analyze the overall app experience. They investigate the logic behind the application and ensure that it is simple and easy to use. If you want to get good results, you must do UI and UX testing throughout the whole development life cycle.
Proper Functioning
The goal of QAs is to ensure that an app functions smoothly. They test if an application performs well under specific performance constraints, such as changing networks or changing load conditions. Every QA team decides whether to test on real devices or on emulators. When weighing these two possibilities, we recommend putting all your eggs in one basket. Simulators are useful in the early phases of app development, but to ensure that your app runs well, consider real devices before launching. Our experience tells us that combining the two ways and complementing them with a device cloud would be the best solution.
Loyal Users
It all boils down to the user in the end. People who enjoy an app will continue to use it and may even promote it to others. This will help your business to develop a strong industry reputation in the industry and reach a wider audience. However, if the application continues to annoy users, you will never achieve a high level of loyalty. So, test frequently and widely.
The importance of QA in app development
We have compiled a list of the significance of quality assurance in application development.
Reducing the cost of app development
Quality assurance (QA), especially when applied early in development, can help keep development costs under control. When QA specialists detect and address bugs and other issues early in the development process, the issues are very easy to fix without using a lot of money.
Bugs found in the later stages of app development or post-release, on the other hand, are harder to address and can be more time-consuming and costly to fix.
According to research, the average cost of defect removal rises exponentially as the software development life cycle (SDLC).
Maintaining the quality of the app
As one of the benefits of QA, it ensures that your product is stable, user-friendly, and has as few bugs as possible, all of which are indicators of high-quality products. Various types of testing are used throughout the QA process to ensure that the application meets certain requirements and quality standards, allowing it to function as it should with minimal issues.
There are two categories of these tests: functional and non-functional.
A functional test confirms that a mobile application is functioning as expected and that its features meet predetermined requirements. Non-functional testing, on the other hand, is a type of testing that assesses whether an app’s non-functional requirements are met.
These app requirements cover a wide range of features of your app, from performance and security to user-friendliness and behavior under high load.
Many defects and bugs can be detected during these testing procedures. This demands good bug-reporting practices within the context of a good bug management system.
Making sure the app is secure
App security is a top priority for any app development firm.
You should always protect your company’s data as well as your users’ personal information against malicious persons and cyberattacks.
QA plays a vital role in app development because a single security breach can damage both the company’s finances and reputation. Security testing is performed to find errors in the application that hackers may potentially exploit and use for harmful purposes. Companies may considerably minimize the risk of a security breach by rapidly detecting and resolving vulnerabilities.
As a result, early testing processes can have an even higher impact, providing benefits such as:
- Streamlining fixes
- Building Developers’ Responsibilities
- Developer Education
- Saving time
- Avoiding releases with vulnerabilities in security
Improving customer satisfaction
The previous sections of this article showed that quality assurance includes a wide range of methods and testing procedures aimed at improving an app’s quality in key areas.
In other words, including QA in the development process can help create a product that is functional, secure, and free of bugs—an app that rarely fails and has few other issues. QA benefits also improve user experience (UX) and customer satisfaction, since customers have a more enjoyable experience. QA specialists also perform usability testing- a procedure in which end users interact with and review your app.
Developers then analyze the collected user feedback and ideas to determine what end-users want from the app and implement these changes where possible.
Keeping the Company’s Good Reputation
You may have noticed that the examples we discussed in this article emphasize the negative impact of poor app quality on a company’s reputation.
This should come as no surprise—any bugs, data breaches, or annoying flaws in the app will reflect poorly on the firm that created it. Users dislike using apps that work badly so much that bad experiences often lead to them leaving a negative review, which could deter other potential users from buying from you.
As you can see, app bugs that cause end-users to have terrible experiences can set off a chain reaction in which their negative reviews start affecting your company’s reputation while deterring new users from trying out your app in the first place.
Poorly made apps that did not go through proper QA testing will not only upset users, but may also ruin your company’s brand and cost you a lot of money. Therefore, QA should not be ignored since it is crucial to providing users with a smooth and enjoyable experience that will reflect well on your brand.
Top 5 best practices for app testing and quality assurance
We’ve put together a collection of top-notch app testing and quality assurance tips to ensure the highest quality product.
1. Invest in a Secure Testing Environment
While the cloud is fantastic for team collaboration and communication, it is not perfect for software development and testing. Developers require a safe local testing lab to conduct their tests, much like medical scientists do. This means that the lab needs to be somewhere away from the internet, which has a never-ending list of vulnerabilities.
2. Test Throughout the Life Cycle
Testing throughout the software development life cycle, or SDLC, reduces the strain during QA. Some feel that is the only time to test, but when you test early and often, you can find and fix errors as you go. Leaving everything until QA puts a huge strain on your workforce, and you have less chance of getting high-quality software than if your team tested at every stage.
3. Conduct Smaller Tests
Smaller tests are a useful way to add testing at each step. Deconstructing prevents budget and resource overloads, which are common threats.
4. Embrace Negative Testing
Positive testing ensures that the application performs as expected. While it is hard to create test cases for everything, you will have a better chance of maximizing coverage if you test for negative or unexpected scenarios as well. Negative testing results in a more robust application with fewer flaws rather than ensuring that everything works under normal conditions.
5. Do Regression Testing
Constantly altering code to fix one issue can often lead to another. Reusable regression tests are an excellent technique to adopt, particularly when it comes to Agile development. This ensures that the code you added to fix one problem does not cause another. It’s also a good idea to effectively divide test cases and graph the bugs to make it easier to identify trouble spots.
In conclusion, QA plays a crucial role in ensuring that the developed app meets the required standards and specifications. It involves testing and evaluating the app at all stages of development, from planning to deployment. By following QA best practices and using appropriate testing tools, developers can create high-quality apps that deliver exceptional user experiences. If you’re looking to hire the best app developers for your projects and learn more about QA and app development, get in touch with Synergent today. Our team of experts is well-versed in the latest industry trends and can help you bring your ideas to life.
