In today’s mobile and web application industry, delivering high-quality application-based solutions is critical to maintain a competitive edge. However, developing top-notch products can be a daunting task. So, how can businesses ensure they are delivering the best possible products to their customers?
The answer lies in prioritizing automation testing in all quality assurance activities. An automation-first approach is no longer an option but a necessity. The testing landscape has significantly evolved in recent years, with the emergence of new IT trends that have transformed the way testing is conducted.
Innovative technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), robotic process automation (RPA), and natural language processing (NLP) are driving the future of testing. Many organizations have revamped their approach to test automation processes to keep up with the latest trends and technologies.
Mobile test automation offers a range of benefits, including improved accuracy, faster testing cycles, and reduced costs. With the help of automation, organizations can focus on delivering quality products and services, rather than spending time on manual testing. By embracing mobile test automation, businesses can establish a stable presence in the industry and deliver exceptional user experiences to their customers.
What Is Mobile Test Automation?
Mobile test automation is a process that uses tools and frameworks to automate testing of mobile applications across multiple platforms and devices. It involves creating test scripts that simulate user interactions and perform automated tests on the mobile app. The primary goal of mobile test automation is to improve testing efficiency and accuracy while reducing the time and cost associated with manual testing. Mobile test automation can help test various aspects of a mobile app, such as its functionality, performance, and usability, among others. Some popular mobile test automation tools are Appium, Espresso, and Calabash.
Why Should Businesses Invest in Mobile Automation Testing?
Businesses must invest in mobile automation testing to provide high-quality, bug-free applications to their customers. Mobile app bugs can significantly impact the performance of a product or service, raising concerns about the company’s competence and the quality of its other applications. A non-functional app can harm a company’s reputation, resulting in reduced returns on investment. According to a study conducted three years ago, more than 88% of consumers abandoned an app due to bugs or glitches, underscoring the importance of providing bug-free applications. A high-quality app also ensures that users leave positive reviews, which are critical in today’s mobile app market, where millions of options are available. While mobile testing in all its forms is essential, this article focuses on how mobile automation testing can benefit your business.
Benefits of Mobile Test Automation
- Great Quality and Test Coverage
Setting up thousands of devices for comprehensive test coverage can be challenging and time-consuming. However, cloud-based automation testing platforms provide access to thousands of real test devices instantly, allowing testing on a wide range of required devices. These tools also allow testing around the clock, in parallel, and from any location, extending test coverage and resulting in a high-quality product.
- Enhanced Efficiency
Automated testing is a process that requires no human intervention, allowing tests to be executed overnight and results to be collected the next morning. Since automated testing can be repeated on its own, app developers and QA teams can dedicate less time to testing and focus more on other crucial tasks, boosting employees’ productivity.
- More Precise Tests
Automated testing is considered more dependable than manual testing because it eliminates human errors and is more precise. The test cases generated by automated systems are more reliable, reducing the probability of bugs and increasing the likelihood of launching your app without errors.
- Scale-Up and Down as Required
Consider the challenge of setting up an on-premise test lab with 100 Android devices for testing activities. Now, imagine that the product needs to be test on iOS devices as well. This would require the procurement of physical iOS devices from the market, manual setup of necessary applications and software, and manual handling of device charging.
Does this seem like a lot of work? Yes, it does. Assuming the IT staff successfully complete the assignment and the iOS devices are now prepare for testing, what if the iOS mobile app underperformed and led to a significant decline in market share? As a result, the company decided to preserve only the Android version of the app and discontinue the iOS service.
What would happen to the recently purchased iOS devices? This method wasted a significant amount of time, money, and effort. However, by using cloud-based mobile testing solutions that offer the flexibility to scale up or down as per your requirements, this entire series of events could have been avoided.
- Reusability of Test Scripts
One of the greatest benefits of automated testing is the ability to reuse test scripts. Developing the testing process is time-consuming, and testers must possess the required skills to create effective test cases. The process becomes even more challenging when testers need to repeatedly rewrite test scripts.
However, automation solves this issue by allowing testers to create reusable test scripts. The same scripts use to test a previous mobile application can be use to test the one currently under development. It’s essential to categorize the test scripts into iOS and Android versions to ensure the use of operating system-specific testing scripts.
- High Speed of Execution to Fix a Bug
The primary objective of mobile test automation is to reduce the development life cycle. Whether your company is launching a new app or performing regular updates, the goal is to deploy it quickly and ensure it functions smoothly, with minimal downtime. When combined with an Agile development process, automated testing helps to deliver rapid app development that leads to exceptional outcomes and a high return on investment.
- Automation Testing Overcomes Manual Testing
Even with the most competent application and QA departments, running a controlled mobile application can be challenging. Automated testing enables simulating the interactions of numerous virtual users, ranging from tens to thousands, with a network, mobile app, and web applications. This eliminates the need for repetitive testing for different application versions, ensuring quality while saving time and effort.
Mobile Test Automation should be performed frequently throughout development cycles to ensure quality, and each app release should be tested on all supported operating systems and hardware configurations. However, manual testing is expensive and time-consuming, highlighting the need for mobile automation testing.
Once created, automated tests can be run repeatedly at no extra cost, and they are much quicker than manual tests. Using automated mobile app testing reduces the time it takes to perform repetitive tests from days to hours, resulting in significant cost savings. Therefore, it is crucial to implement mobile automation testing immediately to achieve better efficiency and accuracy in mobile app testing.
Conclusion
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, staying competitive and preparing for future growth is crucial. Therefore, the adoption of cloud-based test automation is becoming increasingly important for businesses of all sizes. With a wide range of cloud-based automation tools available, it is essential to identify your testing needs and select a tool that can meet them effectively. While cloud-based tools offer numerous benefits over traditional automation testing, selecting the right tool is crucial to ensuring a successful product release. By implementing the right cloud-based test automation tool, companies can save time, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and deliver high-quality products that meet or exceed customer expectations.
