The market for mobile apps has become quite competitive. Mobile application testing is a must to ensure functionality, usability, reliability, and performance. Effective mobile app testing allows for early recognition of defects and enhances time to market. 

People spend a large part of their day on mobile apps, making it crucial to develop a great mobile app experience. Before making an application available to the public, it must undergo mobile-friendly testing to make sure it runs properly on iOS and Android.

In this guide, we'll go over the importance of performing mobile-friendly testing as well as how leveraging automated testing for mobile apps is crucial to producing an application that is both responsive and functional.

What is a Mobile Application?

A mobile app is an application software created specifically to run on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. These software units have limited functionality and require mobile speed testing and mobile app usability testing to assess the performance of the application. 

What is Mobile App Automation Testing? 

Mobile automation testing is executed to ensure an application works correctly and as intended. Automated mobile app testing evaluates mobile responsiveness, usability, performance, and tests the system’s response on a variety of devices. Mobile automation testing ensures the following: 

• App Functionality: The testing of the mobile app's functionality makes sure that it meets all of the requirements listed in the design document.
• App Security: As part of the testing process, this guarantees that the application is secure against viruses and hackers. Data security within the mobile application is a focus of security testing.
• App Usability: Testing for mobile app usability evaluates the application's usability and user-friendliness 
• App Performance: The purpose of the mobile app performance test is to establish whether the application can survive heavy user traffic during busy times of the year. Multiple performance aspects, such as transaction failures, network use, response times, etc. are expertly analyzed during performance testing.
• App Accessibility: The testing of mobile app accessibility makes sure that the applications you create are usable and accessible to people with varied abilities.

Automated mobile testing may also be supported by manual testing performed by humans who independently test the apps and look for any problems that a user might run into. 

Automated mobile testing allows for “record and playback” testing, which is a way to create tests without programming knowledge. This is accomplished by utilizing a program that enables you to manually carry out tasks in the browser and store them as a test. 

Regression and browser testing are therefore infinitely faster because you can take this test and run it again with just one click. As a result, manual testers and testers who are still learning automated testing tools may quickly write automated tests.

Automated mobile testing is beneficial for long-term projects, maintenance checks, smoke tests, regression tests, and continuous integration. Additionally, automation tools allow humans to focus on edge cases or exploratory testing.  

Why Perform Automated Mobile App Testing? 

Testing an app keeps it in the game and at a competitive spot, so there is no room for error as the majority of mobile consumers will not overlook any inconveniences. A study from Google discovered that 39% of users abandon apps that exhibit technical problems, and many users will abandon an app entirely if there are slow load times, bugs, or security breaches. 

It is necessary to build a responsive, user-oriented application that is compatible with all devices. Mobile application automation testing streamlines the entire testing process, speeding up the feedback loop and allowing faster application development. 

Here are some of the advantages of mobile app automation testing:

1. Increased Testing Speed and Efficiency 

Thanks to automation, mobile app testers can run more tests in a shorter amount of time. For example, whenever a change is made, test cases may be stored and rerun. Test automation allows app developers to add more features without negatively influencing the duration and expense of app testing. 

2. Reduced Cost of App Development

Automated app testing can lower the project's cost by saving time. The true cost reductions, however, come from extensive testing, which lowers the likelihood of faults being discovered after deployment. Plus, automated testing tools have the ability to schedule tests, meaning test cases can run overnight. 

3. Improved Digital Experience

Mobile app performance testing improves the digital experience for end users. When optimal functioning and usability are guaranteed, users are more likely to be satisfied. Your app will impress users from their first touchpoint. If customers are satisfied, it builds trust and loyalty and allows you to develop a good reputation. 

4. Higher Revenues

Mobile app automation testing decreases the risk of any issues and having to redevelop your app at the final stage. This saves you time and money, bringing in higher revenue in the long run. 

The easiest method to achieve these advantages, like increased productivity and efficiency, and make efficient use of resources and time is to implement test automation for your mobile application development process.

Even if you add one new feature to your application, all features need to be tested to guarantee flawless performance and user experience, which optimizes manual testing efforts for more critical areas. 

Learn more about how Katalon can accelerate the Software Testing Life Cycle with test automation for mobile applications.

Why Choose Automated Testing to Improve Mobile Application Performance 

Let's examine how test automation offers considerable benefits.

 1. Cost and Time-to-Market 

Automated mobile-friendly testing provides a high return on investment (ROI) due to test reusability. Tests can be completed at no additional cost and at a faster rate. 

2. Reliability 

Automated testing will speed up development cycles, prevent tiresome repetition activities, and enhance the quality of your program. You can benefit from automation testing if the test is highly repetitive and takes up a lot of time - such as is the case for regression testing. Manual testing complements automation testing by finding problems from the user's point of view and unanticipated defects from unscripted settings.  

3. Improve Effectiveness 

A professional mobile automated testing tool offers increased test efficiency and effectiveness and produces high-quality, reliable software. Automated testing reduces testing time by weeks or months, increasing your bottom line. 

Best Mobile Automated Testing Tools

Katalon’s automated testing platform is suited for mobile applications and is built for continuous testing for any team, at any level. Katalon ensures your application will function properly throughout its customer experience journey.

The Katalon platform is an end-to-end software quality platform that offers fast test creation, powerful object spying utilities, image-based testing, cross-environment execution on real devices, simulators, or custom cloud-based devices, and so much more!