With the increased level of mobile application usage amongst millennials, there are hardly any business entities that can think of running a business (especially eCommerce) without a mobile application. As per research by eMarketer, any US adult is expected to spend on an average four hours of their time on mobile internet, out of which 88% is with mobile applications. This number is continuously growing year after year.
With the given stats, it’s pretty much clear that mobile applications’ usage is expected to increase in the coming years, which means an added demand for mobile application developers and testing service providers. Mobile test automation is a field of study that can help software testing companies provide quality testing services to their clients.
There are various small- and large-scale businesses that have leveraged mobile application usage to achieve a significant market position. Examples include free messaging apps like WhatsApp, hike, skype, etc., followed by popular gaming and food delivery apps like PokemonGo, PubG, Swiggy, etc. While in their development stages, these mobile applications had to be rigorously tested to ensure quality performance across all android and iOS devices to their customers.
By leveraging mobile test automation services, enterprises can build applications that are scalable and give better performance across multiple platforms. It tests complex applications for their functionality, usability, and consistency. Though both manual and automated testing methods are used, automated testing can help save valuable time and revenue in the long run.
Let’s answer a few most frequently asked questions related to mobile test automation to help you better understand how it can be used as a means to leverage in your businesses.
- What is Mobile Test Automation?
- How to do complete mobile test automation for your business?
- What are the best Enterprise Level Mobile Test Automation Tools?
What is Mobile Test Automation?
Mobile test automation, as the name suggests, refers to automation done on mobile devices. It’s a process in which testers automate testing of an application dedicatedly built for a mobile device, which can be a WAP site or an app. Today, several tools can help mobile application testing service providers ease out with the process, save time, and increase efficiency.
Now let’s have a closer look at how to perform complete mobile test automation for your business.
How to do Complete Mobile Test Automation for your business?
Below mentioned is a step-by-step guide to automate your mobile application testing process effectively.
Step 1: Effective Planning
The target device to test your application should be chosen well in advance. Whether the application developed is for native, hybrid, or mobile web should be established even before the application is tested along with front-end and back-end testing plans. Various types of mobile app testing can be used in this process. Which approach to move forward with must be planned beforehand.
Step 2: Create Test Cases & Test Scripts
Make sure you develop practical test cases for every function of the application in the process of development. Functions like payment gateways, product searches, and queries require efficient testing to ensure safety and performance. Automated test scripts are developed in this process, and reusable automation test scripts can be changed according to the project requirements.
Step 3: Plan for Test Environment Setup
Next, you must download, install and configure the application on the device you wish to test your app and set up your testing environment. Make sure you use the correct application version and the mobile phone’s operating system to ensure the environment is correctly set.
Step 4: Perform the following tests in series
Automated Testing
You can use various automated testing tools and frameworks to check for basic functionality issues. Various tools that can be used to perform this step include Selenium, Appium, Katalon, etc., based on the processor that is being used.
Usability Testing
Next, you should move on to usability testing that can help you concentrate on a complete UX experience. This process allows you to assess the ease-of-use and customer-friendly aspects of your application. If your mobile application is unable to pass on this step, it means it won’t be commercially feasible.
Performance Testing
Next, check for performance testing to determine if the application will withstand high user traffic under peak seasons. Performance testing skilfully analyses several performance factors like transaction errors, network use, response times, etc.
Security Testing
Ensuring that your application is safe from malware and hackers is an essential part of the testing process. Security testing pays attention to data security within the mobile application. The idea is to check for vulnerabilities that might lead to data loss or make your application collapse.
Accessibility Testing
Next, you must conduct accessibility testing for your applications to ensure that the apps you develop are accessible by people with physical disabilities, like hearing, color blindness, old age, and other groups. It also helps you ensure that your business is protected from unnecessary litigations from the WCAG board.
Memory Leakage Testing
Further, you must check for memory leakage test in your mobile applications. It is an important and mostly overlooked mobile app testing variant. This test ensures that the app is taking good advantage of optimized memory concerning various mobile devices. Since the inbuilt memory for a mobile device is much lower than a computer system, numerous OS environments lock the applications that consume extra memory.
Compatibility Testing
At last, you must run your application for compatibility testing. Under this testing type, the performance of a mobile application is assessed over diverse mobile device platforms. This is because you need to judge the functionalities over tablets, smartphones, and other real devices. Moreover, platform checks are also essential for iOS, Androids, and different OS versions.
What are the best Enterprise Level Mobile Test Automation Tools?
Depending on the type of device being used, various tools can be used to help software testing service providers scale up their testing process and increase efficiency. Below is a list of suggested mobile test automation tools that can be used exclusively for android, iOS, and hybrid systems.
1. Appium (iOS/Android Testing Tool)
Appium is open-source and a cross-platform Mobile Testing Tool for the hybrid and native iOS, and it supports Android versions from 2.3 onwards. It supports many programming languages, including Java, Ruby, C#, and others used in the web driver library. It uses the WebDriver interface for running its tests on mobile devices.
Appium uses the UIAutomator library to automate its processes for android. It’s given by google as a part of Android SDK.
If you know Selenium well, then Appium will be a cakewalk for you. It’s technically a Selenium WebDriver designed for mobile application testing. Its core function is to receive test requests in a JSON format and then convert them into commands that the native testing frameworks can accept.
2. Espresso and UI Automator
Espresso is a great test automation framework that’s designed for android. It supports android applications starting with the 2.3 version. This tool has one significant limitation — you are limited to testing it only for your application’s context. You cannot use this tool for features like
- Application push notifications
- Contact synchronization
- Navigating from another app to your application under test
To fill this gap, google keeps another companion that’s UI Automator. This mobile automation tool supports android 4.3+ because it was released much later. UI Automator can check the interactions of the subject application with other apps. Both these testing tools complement each other, which means it’s essential to use them side by side for your testing projects.
3. Kobiton
Kobiton is a mobile automation testing tool that gives users full control of real mobile devices during manual testing. It supports multitouch gestures, camera, speaker control, device connection management, orientation, and GPS simulations. Kobiton can capture all actions performed during testing so that major issues in performance can be recorded and rectified more efficiently using automatically generated activity logs. It’s super cheap, which means any user can buy its prepaid testing minutes for just $10.
4. TestProject
World’s first free cloud-based community-powered test automation platform, TestProject enables users to test Web, Android, and iOS applications on all operating systems, effortlessly. It can help you easily collaborate with your team using Selenium and Appium to ensure quality with speed. You can use advanced built-in recording capabilities, create and use addons, or develop coded tests using TestProject’s powerful SDK, all for free.
How do Software testing companies help create a successful Mobile Application Testing and Automation Strategy?
For all significant businesses, mobile apps continue to be a powerful means of enabling business and getting a hand over others in the market. Currently, there are millions of applications available on both android and iOS operating systems. Users stick to your application only if you deliver quality performance and solve their purpose daily.
For mobile app developing companies to deliver that kind of commitment to their customers, they need to leverage a quality mobile test automation strategy. Companies follow the best mobile test automation practices to ensure they pass on quality value to their customers. It is essential to contact an industry expert to ensure you get that quality value in your projects. Any leading software testing company can deliver fast, secure, and bug-free mobile app testing services to their valuable customers with the best in industry frameworks and test automation tools.
