Need for Mobile App Quality Assurance: Strategies & Practices

 First impressions might not be the last ones always. But a first bad impression can discourage you for a long time or even forever.

This is especially true for mobile apps. If your mobile app makes a first bad impression on a user, the user will most probably uninstall the app and might never want to use it again ever.

The prevalence of mobile app uninstalls indicates that users don’t think twice before uninstalling an app and moving on to the next one on the list. This is true for apps across all verticals.

But why do users uninstall apps?

They do so when they are dissatisfied. This could be for lots of reasons, such as:

• A poor user experience or ambiguous user interface
• Too many overwhelming features
• The lack of value or an unclear value
• The app asked for too many permissions
• The app consumed too much memory
• Poor user engagement

So, what do you do about the uninstalls? Is there a way you can prevent them?

Indeed, there is! This is where quality assurance methods come into the picture.

Mobile app quality assurance allows you to identify issues and problem areas in your app, thereby helping you to prevent app uninstalls.

The mobile apps market is highly dense. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that there’s a mobile app for every single need today. Yet the irony is that there’s room for more. Launching a mobile app and expecting it to be a hit in such a dense market is not easy.

For your app to be successful in such a saturated market, it is important to ensure its quality and reliability. Quality assurance methods can help you deliver bug-free mobile apps that perform seamlessly across different devices and platforms.

Here’s how:

1. By improving the app’s functionality

Quality assurance is the major difference between an app with an easy user interface and an app with a confusing one. If your mobile app is not easy or intuitive to operate, it runs the risk of being uninstalled. To avoid this, it is recommended to use simple layouts. Advanced methods of quality assurance can ensure a functional user interface by identifying issues around the functionality of a mobile app.

Key areas that it tests:

• The logical flow of the content used in the app
• The installation, sign-up, and login process
• The app upgrade process
• Whether there is more touch space compared to keyboard space
• Presence of a feedback option
• Error message generation
• Presence of a search feature
• Presence of shareable options
• Response time
• Device-specific functions

2. By promoting the software and hardware compatibility of your app

According to a very recent report published by Statista, the smartphone market in the United States is one of the world’s largest, with more than 260 million smartphone users. In line with the overall growth of the smartphone market worldwide, the smartphone penetration rate in the United States has continuously risen over the past ten to fifteen years to more than 80 percent today.

With such a dense smartphone market, it is not rare to see a myriad of models and devices. With such an overwhelming variety of devices and newer model versions, it is not easy to ensure that all users can access your app across multiple devices and platforms. However, ignoring this aspect runs the risk of losing a potential audience.

Quality assurance services can help enhance the software and hardware compatibility of your mobile app.

Key areas that it tests:

• The performance of your app across different operating systems such as Android, Apple iOS, Windows, and Blackberry, among others.
• The performance of your app across different devices, especially the new smartphone versions.

3. By improving UI/UX usability

The ease with which users can navigate and use your app is one of the most important factors responsible for the success of an app.

By identifying the UI and UX issues in your mobile app, quality assurance can enhance the user experience that it delivers.

Key areas that it tests:

• The app’s logic and architecture
• The user onboarding that the app offers
• Missing CTAs or the placement of CTAs
• The navigation
• Error prevention and error handling
• Accessibility against the use of colors and gradients
• Icons and buttons
• Font issues
• User consistency standards
• User control and freedom

6 best practices of mobile app quality assurance

1. Use multiple testing approaches in your quality assurance methods, such as Cross-Platform Testing, Functional Testing, User Interface Testing, Accessibility Testing, Performance Testing, and Security Testing.
2. Test on multiple devices- While it’s important to find screen-specific issues, it is also critical to find device-specific issues, which is why it’s important to test on multiple devices. The best way to do this is by testing the app on the top 4 or 5 mobile phones used by your target audience. This way, you will ensure that the app performs consistently across all devices.
3. Keep an eye on resource usage (RAM and battery) of the app before you launch it. An app that consumes too much RAM or battery will be instantly deleted by the users. To check for the average battery consumption per hour, try running the app with the device at 100% battery and then use it for 3–4 hours at a stretch. Also, keep the app running in the background and then compare the performance of other apps on the device.
4. Test under various stress levels to see how your app behaves under different circumstances like extremely high data, memory utilization, CPU usage, battery and signal strength, among others. You might also want to keep a check on the background process.
5. Use automated test mechanisms to consistently track new bugs in newly developed features. This is especially important for projects developed under Agile methodology since automated test mechanisms can provide continuous feedback for each deployment without interfering with the development process. Selenium is a recommended quality assurance tool to use for this.
6. Document each test case consistently by listing all the phases of development and bugs discovered or fixed during each development phase. There you go- you have your project lifecycle guide ready!

Importance of mobile app quality assurance: In a nutshell

By now, you must have a clear idea about the role of quality assurance services in developing a bug-free mobile app that functions seamlessly across multiple devices and platforms. QA is how you can put yourself in the shoes of end-users and evaluate how the app looks and feels to them.

Jellyfish Technologies is one of the leading quality assurance services based out of Salt Lake City that follows the latest practices and methodologies in mobile app quality assurance.