Though various mobile app developers and brands say that app success depends on its lucrative design and breathtaking functionalities, there’s another element on which the app success relieson - Testing.
Mobile app testing ensures that the end users get exactly the same (or better) experience that they expected while going through the app description and installing the app. With proper testing, even the simplest application can achieve great success.
But, how do you perform testing in the right way?
While testing an application, you won’t be able to think of all the possibilitiesofwhen users might find a bug. You will be limited to your environment, understanding, assumptions, and requirements - making it hard to get a clear idea of how will the users respond to the app and how ready is your application for keeping them engaged.
The right solution for this issue is App Analytics. With mobile application analytics, you can find how users interact with your application, which page/functionality they spend more time on. You can get access to information that can help you to revamp your cross-channel marketing strategies, optimize user mobile experience, and improve app user engagement, and retention rate.
It has been predicted that global mobile analytics market will reach $6 billion by 2024. This number again indicatespaying attention to app analytics. Ready to build your awesome mobile app analytic testing strategy for 2018? Here we go:
Consider device and OS fragmentation
There are only two prominent operating systems in the market, namely Android and iOS. However, they have various versions. If you consider the Android user market, people are usingversionsfrom KitKat to Oreo, and on different devices. With every device, the functionalities differ and so, to ensure that your target audience gets the best experience, you need to test your application for the devices/OS they operate on. But, how to find those devices and OS versions? With the information obtained using app analytics tools, you can clearly find which particular device/ OS version they use. And thereafter, test on only those.
In short, use of analytics in app testing can provide you insights about device and OS fragmentation with which you can make your app ready for those particular devices/operating systems.
Regulate app size and interaction level
When talking about attracting users and keeping them engaged, the amount of memory space your app demands and its effect on battery drainage matters, a lot.After all, users do not want an application to consume a bigpartof their phone’s memory or make them rush for charger regularly.
Usually, mobile apps have more than one SDK/ analytics SDK. Usually,the most downloaded apps have three to five SDKs. However, it is often better to keep them at minimal. More the SDKs,more will be code bloating and eventually, lower will be the customer experience. In other words, bigger the app file size, lesser will be the number of app installs and lower will be business profit.With respectto this issue, you can take numerous actions like limiting the resource use from libraries, removing the unwanted codes, reusing the resources, compressing images, etc.
Likewise, examine the network traffic to determine your app’s chatty-ness. How many calls are you sending? How much battery is draining with each call? Will the app users be comfortable with this battery drainage? One effective way to reduce battery consumption is using batch requests. That means, sending requests as a batch instead of individuals. Another way is avoiding data leakage in your app by investing in practices like identifying critical data, encrypting the data, maintaining endpoint security, monitoring access and activity to name a few.
Test regularly
Another mobile app analytics testing strategy for 2018 is testing your app often. It is really beneficial to cut down the number of bugs users find and the number of required app updates. So, test your app at every phase - from prototyping to UX design, development, quality assurance, and launch in the market. Test thoroughly and keep a record of all the feedbacks to optimize your app well and increase chances of app success.
Ensure testing at every phase
Testing your mobile application at every stage will provide you with an opportunity to find bugs and flaws in the app processing, and fix them on the go. This will be profitable since it is troublesome and time-consuming to deal with bugs/errors when the app is ready than while developing one.
Utilize mobile analytics
When you test every development phase, record the analytic data you gain and employ it in the next testing. Mobile analytics will serve you with better opportunities to enhance the usability, reliability,and performance of your mobile application.
Test your analytics implementation
For ensuring better app response, you can use your in-app analytics SDKs, analytics from the stores, in-app analytics while running the app, analytics from third-party sources, operational analytics etc. However, implementing the insights gained from analytics is not enough; you need to ensure if it is bringing a significant yet positive impact on your mobile app. Besides unit testing and alpha testing, you need to invest in beta testing.
With beta testing, you can learn about the user experience, which app feature engaged them as expected and which one failed to do so, etc. You can determine if the analytics implementation has improved the app’s performance or not.
Keep the ultimate goal in mind
When planning a strategy, keep the ultimate goal in your consideration. Remember, how a single flaw in the app can drive you away from your goal, how urgent is it to make an error-proof app. Document your app goal. Make a list of KPIs and metrics that will ensure your app success. Keep monitoring your app, learn new insights and update your document. Make sure everyone involvedin the app development process has access to the document.
Analytics in Mobile app testing is an effective practice to collect detailed real-time information about user experience with the app and make a strategy to enhance the app experience. So, what are you waiting for? Usethe aforementioned seven practices to make the right strategy for your mobile app analytics testing and ensure your app success in 2018.