Welcome to the era of demanding users. With toddlers’ attention spans and endless choices, delivering a seamless app experience is crucial. Only 9% of users stick around if an app doesn’t meet their needs quickly. Moreover, 90% of users have abandoned apps due to poor performance.
To prevent this, rigorous app testing is a must. Bugs and glitches? Not on our watch. That’s where a comprehensive mobile app testing checklist comes in handy. This guide ensures no detail is overlooked, helping detect errors early and polish the app to perfection.
In this blog post, we will explore the essentials of mobile app testing to vouch for the success of every app launch. Let’s get started!
Table of ContentsHey, millennial founders, do you remember Pokémon GO? By prioritizing extensive testing, they managed massive user inflow without crashing. Conversely, in 2018 Snapchat faced its first user backlash when a poorly tested update caused widespread crashes and led to a loss of $443 million.
Mobile app testing is the soil for a successful launch and endurance. It ensures your app’s functionality, usability, and performance are top-notch.
Poorly tested apps lead to crashes, slow load times, and broken features. As a result, you are stuck with the dreaded one-star reviews on the App Store or Google Play. You might also lose your reputation, visibility to potential clients, money, and even your app idea.
To attract better ratings, more downloads, and persuade users to stay, you need to launch an app that is thoroughly tested. Depending on the type of your app, you can do this manually or automatically. The bottom line is, just test it.
The mobile app testing process shares some similarities with the stages of website testing. However, they vary in terms of their architecture, delivery mechanism, Internet connection, compatibility, and user interaction.
Let us walk you through our mobile app testing checklist:
Why keep written records of your testing process? So you can analyze specific requirements and test documents for completeness, ambiguity, and inconsistency.
The following are some of the common artifacts reviewed at this stage:
Give your mobile app a thorough check-up. Functional testing vouches that every feature works just as it should. For example, if your app has a login feature, it ensures that entering the correct username and password logs the user in while entering the wrong ones shows an error message. It also checks that clicking the “Forgot Password” link takes users to the password reset page.
Don’t frustrate your users, and for functional testing, check:
Usability is a metric that measures the ease of user interaction. When users see the design for the first time, they should be able to accomplish basic tasks easily. How can we ensure ease of user interaction?
As part of our usability testing services, we check that the application’s design matches its functionality, verify the usability of application functions, ensure proper navigation, display text content correctly, and design fonts.
To achieve the expected value, clear content, and efficient interactions, start with these checkpoints.
Usability issue in Rivengard for iOS: The “Continue” button on the “Victory” screen is non-functional.
Just like people, apps can experience performance anxiety. Performance testing checks how well your mobile app handles stress, load, and responsiveness under different conditions. We dare you to crashproof your app. Simulate weak network signals to observe app behavior, invite 10,000 concurrent users, and render 3D elements. Overall, test under normal and peak conditions, and assess other key metrics.
Check out this crush-not-crash list of performance checkpoints:
Every year, cyber-attacks result in billions of dollars in losses. Ransomware is expected to cause $265 billion in losses globally by 2031. Other surveys speculate that more and more apps fail miserably in security checks. Security testing is critical to ensure that a mobile application is safe from threats and vulnerabilities that could compromise user data or the integrity of the application itself.
Here is what we recommend to steer clear of security issues:
Authentication issue in HiBot for iOS: The user sees a success message when recovering their password with an unregistered email.
Apps and zodiac signs have major things in common. They all want to be compatible. Your Android application may run fine on Tiramisu (Android 13), but the same might not be true with Vanilla Ice Cream (Android 15). This is where cross-platform testing comes into the picture.
Prior to launch, make sure your app works well on various devices, from the latest iPhone to older Android models, and across different operating systems. However, it’s not possible to test the app on all types of devices as there are hundreds of them. The number and choice of devices depend on the target audience and the most popular devices among them.
But here is the checklist that we follow to dodge it:
Network issue in Wealthbase: Stock Market Game: : No error message appears after the user saves profile changes without the Internet.
Integration testing is about making sure all the parts of your mobile app work well together. It checks how different components of the app interact with each other and with external systems. This phase supplies the intended functionality and a great user experience.
Here is a checklist of things to consider during the stage of integration testing.
Beta testing is a vital phase in the mobile app development process. Real users test the application in their natural habitat prior to the final release. This stage helps identify real-world issues that might not have been caught during earlier testing phases. Your beta testing elves will help you settle performance and speed, technical stability, check real-world adaptability, uncover hidden bugs, and address localization nuances.
So, what should you do?
If you believe there will be no repercussions for avoiding app testing, take a look at some jaw-dropping stats given below:
We’re thrilled to have played a part in the success stories of Unfold and BeFamily, turning cool concepts into five-star apps.
We hit it off with Unfold when their Android app was just a beta. Intrigued by their concept, we dove in and found bugs, highlighting them in our weekly “Bug Crawl” section. Our QA engineers stepped into the users’ shoes to enhance the experience, suggesting tweaks like clearer error messages and easier custom font downloads.
Unfold later reached out for help to boost app performance after user feedback. We did a deep dive, testing on the latest Android and iOS versions, and nailed down the crash issues.
In fact, check out sneaky bugs we have found.
❌ Actual result: The black spinner is always displayed in the ‘For you’ and ‘Effects’ tabs after switching to different tabs on the home screen.
✅ Expected result: The spinner isn’t displayed.
✅ Expected result: The sticker modal shouldn’t be cropped.
✅ Expected result: No crashes occur while using the October Dump or any other template.
What started as curiosity evolved into a solid partnership. Unfold transformed from a simple story-making app to a top-tier content creation platform loved by big names like Prada, L’Oreal, and Warner Brothers. Now rocking over a billion monthly users and part of Squarespace, we keep testing their beta versions, squashing bugs, and keeping the app smooth.
The BeFamily app actively manages family calendars, coordinates schedules, and suggests activities and gifts. It saves families from unwanted arguments while planning events through real-time collaboration.
Our QA team, experts in testing iOS and Android apps, partnered with BeFamily to refine their app before its official launch, ensuring a smooth experience for both iOS and Android users. We conducted comprehensive manual testing, including exploratory, functional, smoke, regression, and GUI testing, to meet all end-user requirements.
Initial challenges included bugs related to UI, calendar integration, event creation, data validation, and push notifications. By providing visual guides and collaborating closely with BeFamily’s developers, we resolved these issues promptly.
✅ Expected result: The “Enable push notifications” toggle should disappear from the page; all existing notifications should be switched on.
❌ Actual result: After steps 2 and 5, the user sees outdated data (or a screen with no new comments/ or old comments); then the screen is refreshed, and the data becomes up-to-date.
✅ Expected result: Correct information about comments should be displayed immediately after navigating to the “Activity” page.
With rigorous testing and continuous updates, BeFamily transformed into a mature, stable app that allows families to stay organized effortlessly. Since its launch, BeFamily has tripled its active users in a week and experienced zero crashes or major issues in production.
Our ultimate goal is to build a bug-conscious community. So, besides helping our clients in bug hunting, we test 2 random apps every week that were submitted to us via our Bug Crawl initiative. The findings are then shared with the world, aiming to help other companies create user-friendly products.
We took Floor: NFTs simplified for a spin – a powerful app that supercharges your NFT journey and has over 100k downloads in Play Market. This app lets users track their NFT portfolios in one spot and integrates effortlessly with multiple wallets like Metamask and ENS. It keeps users in the loop with live and historical activity for collections and delivers the latest marketplace news and updates on collection holders through its “Discover” section. Plus, you can explore trending collections and build lists of watched collections.
As NFT aficionados and a mobile testing company, we dove into Floor: NFTs simplified to hunt for bugs. Here’s what we found: endless loading on the “Portfolio” tab, failure to connect Rainbow wallet, persistent read messages, and the app freezing when an invalid long email address is entered. Addressing these bugs polished the app’s performance and created a smooth and enjoyable NFT experience for users.
In a world brimming with mobile apps, your goal is to build a user-friendly, scalable, five-star-rated application. So treat mobile testing as your golden ticket. You can stamp it by following our 8-step plan.
Document the process, check login features, tune in user experience, and crash test your product with an unstable network connection. No need to memorize the whole checklist, it will always be here. Just like QAwerk will always be there for you if you’re searching for a trusted app testing partner.
