Testing Mobile App Performance: Everything You Need To Know

Have you found that many people who download your software quickly uninstall it or that it frequently crashes? One likely cause is how well your program runs across networks and when subjected to diverse traffic. You can confirm this through mobile app performance testing.

Testing mobile apps can be much more complex and time-consuming than testing a PC program. Multiple devices, users’ increasing mobility, and the need to make use of device-specific functionality can make things complicated. Consider what performance testing involves and what you can do to perfect it for your requirements.

Create A Strategy For Testing Mobile Apps’ Performance

Your application’s unique circumstances call for special checks, and a well-thought-out performance testing plan can help you decide what to include. The following are the typical steps included in a performance testing plan.

Testing Goals Should Match Company Requirements

Ensure that your testing goals align with critical business processes. E-commerce businesses whose primary focus is on lead generation, for instance, will need to give special attention to testing their shopping cart, user registration, and inquiry forms.

Determine Your Key Performance Indicators

Establishing test criteria can let you evaluate the success or failure of the actual implementation. It would help if you considered the following key performance indicators while testing mobile apps: Peak request rate, Max response time, Error rate, Average response time, most users online at once across all devices and operating systems, and average throughput.

Arrange Use Cases In Order Of Importance

Refrain from overwhelming yourself by testing everything at once. Instead, list the use cases crucial to your app’s robustness. Depending on your business’s needs, the list could include logging in/out, adding products to a shopping cart, and completing a purchase. After you’ve handled the most critical cases, you may go on to test the less important ones.

Simulate A Real-Life Testing Environment

To get accurate results from your emulator testing, replicate the production environment as closely as possible. It is worth noting that even the most advanced emulators are not a replacement for the real thing; for testing the efficacy of an app’s camera, GPS, or other hardware-specific capabilities, the real thing is always preferable.

Coordinate Your Testing Strategy With Your Overall Approach To Development.

Integrating testing within a company’s larger development structure is essential. Agile, one of the most well-known methodologies, is iterative and collaborative, whereas Waterfall, another favorite, is linear and sequential. Stick to the one that you have already established in your firm, as doing so will help everyone on the development team have the same understanding of the project and make decisions more quickly.

Tests Should Take Into Account The Latency And Throughput Of A Carrier Network.

The bandwidth and latency of mobile networks might vary because of the reliance on third-party carriers to connect mobile devices to the internet. Determine whether network conditions or server issues are causing the delay; the solutions to these two problems are diametric.

Getting Ready To Perform Performance Testing On A Mobile Application

Because the success of your tests depends on the reproducibility of the environment in which you run them, it is essential to design the testing environment to simulate real-world conditions carefully. The following are some things to keep in mind when preparing a setting for testing mobile apps:

Isolate The Environment

It is crucial to know how many users are testing at once and what actions they are taking. When another group conducts parallel experiments in the same environment, it might delay the procedure and compromise the reliability of the results. By isolating the environment, you can ensure the test’s correctness and the experiment’s precision.

Test Data Generators

Keep in mind that operations such as deletion, data writing, and reading might grind the app’s performance to a halt. Without duplicating sensitive data, data-generating technologies like Datprof and EMS Data Generator may imitate actual world data.

Network Isolation

In most cases, running many instances of a program simultaneously without negatively impacting their performance is impossible. Consequently, this procedure is optional, although we do suggest it.

Removing Proxy Servers

A web server and client proxy can slow down the app’s speed. You can resolve such problems by performing tests in a completely isolated setting.

Select Appropriate Mobile Performance Testing Software

Testers can evaluate the effectiveness of mobile apps in two ways. First, they must verify that the product functions properly on the back end. The team can test the server’s functionality and ensure the app is ready for release. The second is to evaluate the app’s functionality on a specific device. In this method, a tester can experience the product as if they were the intended end user.

Sauce Labs, Appium Studio, and HeadSpin are just a few examples of mobile test automation tools, and JMeter, Gatling, and Boomq.io are popular options for server-side testing.

However, you will be the only one to make the final decision; different mobile test automation tools have different functionality, so if you need to test the Touch ID in your app, your options will be limited to only those tools that support Touch ID. Consider the tool’s capacity to conduct your pre-existing tests in addition to the protocols, operating systems, and web browsers it supports before making a decision.

Types Of Performance Tests

Performance testing can be challenging because you may need to perform dozens of tasks to guarantee the product meets all specifications.

Load Testing

It helps determine the app’s maximum load. Load testing helps evaluate a website’s speed and responsiveness under heavy usage.

Stress Tests

Its purpose is to evaluate an app’s responsiveness while its hardware resources (CPU, RAM, and more.) are at their absolute maximum.

Capacity Tests

By running this test, engineers can learn the maximum load their app can handle regarding users and functionality.

Spike Testing

To verify the app’s performance characteristics when it exceeds capacity, we can simulate a burst of traffic to the service by running this test.

Conclusion

Mobile app performance testing ensures that users downloading your app do not uninstall it after minimal usage. An effective performance testing strategy will include ensuring your tests match company requirements, using the right KPIs, using real devices, considering the latency and throughput, and performing your tests.

This basic approach can ensure that your app’s performance is top-notch and that it provides a comprehensive user experience.

Kenneth

Kenneth is a proud native of sydney, born and raised there. However, he pursued his education abroad and studied in Australia. Kenneth has worked as a journalist for almost a decade, making valuable contributions to prominent publications such as Yahoo News and The Verge. Currently, he serves as a journalist for The Hear Up, where he focuses on covering climate and science news. You can reach Kenneth at [email protected].