Mobile applications are used by almost anybody in this day and age, and as a developer, you need to make sure your product is always up to standard in order to provide the best services to its consumers. In app development, what is essential is making sure your product is working correctly at all times. The same effort should be put into testing and quality control for an app as you put into the concept and growing your business. The way to do this is through professional testing, which helps in the identification of issues as quickly as possible, in order to prevent customers from experiencing any inconveniences.

Why is testing important?

Professionally testing your app is useful for a variety of reasons. Any flaw in your product could be a detriment to the app’s success, so it is important to identify them and work on them. First of all, apps tend to be in constant change, and every change in a piece of code can bring other changes in the user interface or the functionality or graphics of the app. Because of that, your app should be tested after every change, no matter how minor, in the source code. Manual testing may not be the most efficient way to do this, so in this case, using automated testing would be the way to go.

Second of all, proper functioning and usability of an app helps increasing customer loyalty and allows you to reach a greater audience and make a good reputation for yourself and your app in the industry.

Thirdly, testing your app does require initial investments, but it helps avoiding some more costly investments in the long run. Not only that, but it also ensures a smooth and early launch in the market, which is essential in order to guarantee a higher revenue. Moreover, there are several types of testing an app requires, which include functional testing, security, compatibility, usability and performance testing. There are many different things to keep in mind, and it is essential to do so in order to ensure the proper functioning of your app.

How to minimize the cost of your app testing

Start testing as early as possible

Whenever you start developing a new app, it is essential to start testing for any errors from the early stages of development. By doing this, you ensure that there is a lower chance of missing an error during production, and that no errors will be found at a later point, when the application is almost ready to release on the market. The cost for fixing such an error in the early stages will always be cheaper than doing so in the later stages. Edith Masters, tech blogger at Writinity and Researchpapersuk states that “on average, the cost of bug-fixing can go up by 30 times if you do it in the late stages, as opposed to early stages”.

Be wise about automatic testing

Many development teams prefer to start with manual testing, due to smaller upfront investment. However, this can become difficult to maintain, as the project gets bigger and the risk of error will inevitably increase. Because of that, it is essential to always look for what can be automated, for example well-covered functionality and UI areas that can be dealt with by automated regression. More than that, you can automate some basic routine operations that take a lot of time otherwise. Arthur Wheat, business writer at Draft Beyond and Last Minute Writing says that “automatic testing will help gradually decrease time and cost involved in test runs, allowing manual testers to deal with other issues such as exploratory testing”.

Choose quality over quantity

When choosing your QA team, it can be difficult to asses the number of tasks that will require attention, the number of people needed to perform these tasks, and what their qualifications should be. You shouldn’t pay a lot for a large team of experienced QA people, as they usually ask for higher pay but might get tired of working for a basic testing project and therefore underperform, but you should also not go straight to a QA team composed of a lot of inexperienced juniors. It is important to assess the minimum required people for your task in order to minimize costs for the QA team.

Minimize the number of UI tests

UI tests tend to be rather costly, and that can be because UI testing can end up covering both functional and non-functional issues. UI tests also tend to break whenever a minor change is introduced in the UI, which happens all the time during the development process. Because of that, performing thousands of hand-coded UI tests is neither time nor cost efficient. That is why it is important to reduce the number of UI tests to a bare minimum, by ignoring all but core on-page elements.

App testing is incredibly important for any developer, in order to ensure higher app quality and maintain popularity among consumers. Although it is an investment, it will prove beneficial in the long run if you maintain the costs of app testing to a minimum.

Michele J. Copley is an e-learning consultant at Luckyassignments.com and Gumessays.com, and she has a Bachelor’s degree in Education, currently working towards becoming a CTDP (Certified Training and Development Professional). She has experience with developing learning objectives and creating engaging training.