An Ultimate Guide On Mobile App Performance Testing

From the Personal Branding Blog

Nowadays, mobile applications have become a very essential part of our everyday life. Thus, most enterprises go for app development, and it has become an important feature of doing effective business.

However, for a mobile app to become highly successful, it needs to provide top-level performance to its users.

Usage of Mobile Phones

Mobile phone usage has drastically increased in today’s high-tech world. Mobile applications in today’s digital world are more widely used than desktop applications. Performance testing thus becomes critical.

It is essential because if you make an application live without going for performance testing, the end-users may face performance issues such as slow response, etc. Thus, the users will try finding better-performing applications.

Performance testing is an expensive and time-consuming process. Thus, many clients avoid it, but mobile app performance testing helps the developers a lot. So you must test the mobile application thoroughly before making it available to the end-users.

Mobile Applications

Mobile applications are designed to effectively work on tablets, SmartPhone, and other feature phones. However, if a mobile application doesn’t work appropriately, users tend to uninstall your app, as they find new apps and replace them with the one that performs better.

According to AppsFlyer, if users install two apps, they at least uninstall one of them within 30 days.

Mobile users’ expectations nowadays are very high, particularly when we talk about the user experience. Mobile apps have become quite competitive as a wide range of apps is available for the users in the app store.

The users want the best, and thus you must be the best. You can only earn a reliable place on your user’s mobile phone.

You must ensure your app users get what they want and the best possible user experience by using your mobile application in terms of usability and performance.

Though companies remain careful while developing their mobile application, it is always better to go for a complete mobile app testing process before making it available to your customers.

Performance Testing Approach of Mobile Applications

Performance testing of mobile applications is different from the performance testing of web applications.

The desktops used to examine the web applications suffer less from a poor network like packet loss and latency.

Whereas network conditions in Mobile applications, everything matters, including the type of device you are using, packet loss, latency, etc.

Thus, it would help if you didn’t ignore these essential factors and must consider performance testing for your mobile applications.

Before developing your performance strategy, try to understand the mobile application you plan to run on the mobile device.

Effective Ways to Test Mobile Applications

To test mobile applications, you need to create an environment with real devices and emulators. You need to install Mobile emulators on your desktops that will work just like a mobile application.

Using these emulators can generate and create a remarkable amount of load for your mobile application testing.

Another significant method is by using real devices. In this method, you will physically have the device, and the developer can check the app’s performance on every device.

Thus, real devices are the best to test the application’s behaviour on specific devices. On the other hand, you must use emulators if you want to generate a load.

The next step in mobile application performance testing includes knowing the user’s access location. You must be aware of this factor, but you may get the wrong results if you do not consider this while performing testing.

Performance testing on a mobile application is generally measured by Device Performance, Network Performance, and Server/API Performance.

Therefore, mobile app development company must check the following with each performance:

Device Performance:

• Start time of the application
• Battery Time
• Memory consumption
• Software and Hardware variation
• Working with other Applications
• Applications running in the background

Server/API Performance:

• Data received from the server.
• API calls generated
• Server downtime

Network Performance:

• Packet Loss
• Network Speed

Therefore, while you make your strategies and approaches for mobile app performance testing, consider the points mentioned above, check if it matches your project’s scope and requirements, and make the necessary changes if required.

Performance Strategy for Mobile Application

The cost to develop a mobile app is something you need to afford for a successful app launch. The approach for performance tests varies for different types of mobile applications.

It is because each application gets developed using different components. Moreover, the processing mechanism is also different for each mobile application.

There are 3 main types of mobile applications:

• Native mobile applications
• Web-based mobile applications
• Hybrid applications

Mobile applications that are browser-based work differently than web browser applications. It depends on the mobile device’s configuration.

Therefore, for performance testing of browser-based mobile applications, you must replicate the browser’s user load.

You need to do this with the help of emulators, or you can also use other components. Besides that, you also must test the web page on the devices.

The development charge is more for Native mobile applications. These applications are installed on the device directly. Thus, it makes the experience better for the users. However, these types of applications are platform-dependent.

Hybrid mobile applications represent the unique combination of Browser-based and Native mobile applications.

Therefore, to test these mobile applications, you will have to test the server’s user load and do a mobile application performance testing on all devices and platforms.

Challenges related to Performance Testing of Mobile Application 

Understanding your mobile application is essential for effective testing. Challenges in testing may include different mobile device sizes, budgets, availability of resources, etc. You may face certain challenges while you test your mobile applications. These include:

• When you test the performance of your mobile application on various mobile devices, you will have to organize all your devices, such as Android, Windows, IOS, etc.
• Another major challenge is network simulation that you may face. You will have to simulate 2G, 3G, 4G, and even Wi-Fi networks.
• It would help if you had sufficient memory available on your mobile devices for effectively handling the test runs.
• The mobile device’s battery life.

The ideal way to Set Up a Performance Test Environment for your Mobile App

1. Thoroughly understand the essential features of the mobile app that you need to test.

2. Determine the OS as you will run your mobile app on that

3. Create the test setup for your mobile application

4. Choose appropriate tools for your mobile application performance testing

Performance Testing Checklist for Mobile Applications

You must always prepare a checklist while testing the performance of your mobile app. Here we are providing you with a sample checklist as it will assist you in getting started.

Don’t worry if you have no idea how to make a checklist for your mobile application performance test, and look at this sample checklist for guidance.

• Check the RAM you will need for the application testing
• See the application’s response time and its speed under different networks and circumstances.
• User experience must be realistic under different network conditions.
• Ensure that you achieve essential results in situations of multiple connectivities.
• Ensure that your application will not crash.
• Check the app performs well with both Wi-Fi and data.

Conclusion

You know how essential performance testing is for your mobile applications to be successful. Thus, plan for your mobile application’s load testing in an ideal way.

It will help you avoid any potential issues and inconveniences your users may face later. You must follow all these points for successful mobile app performance testing.

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