Automated Mobile Testing - How Does It Work?

By Dan Martin

Posted on August 30, 2022

Automated mobile testing ensures your apps work as they should without any performance, security, or other bug issues. Mobile business applications must maintain exceptional functionality, security, and stability.

If your mobile applications have performance and security issues and you let customers use them like that, they’ll choose your rivals over you. A quarter of apps downloaded in 2019 by users were only accessed once before ditching them.

Mobile business apps help firms automate and streamline processes. So, to maintain the best quality standards, your apps should undergo continuous automated mobile testing, especially for repetitive tasks. It will help solve bugs and performance issues before they reach customers or derail your operations.

What Is Automated Mobile Testing?

Automated mobile testing refers to automating the testing process of mobile applications. The goals of running mobile tests can vary from performance to data leak checks. As such, it is designed to ensure flawless execution and delivery of mobile applications.

So, how does automated mobile testing work?

How Automated Mobile Testing Works

Automated testing involves scripts (written code) that evaluate a feature or aspect of an application working as it should. So, whether technical or design, every part of the mobile app should work per the set standards and meet your business requirements.

The scripts help check for errors and issues in each unit and the dependencies across the whole system. They are fast, so evaluating a vast and complex system takes less time, allowing you to present an error-free system to clients.

The speed and quality of your testing depend on the relevant test automation framework and automated mobile testing tool you choose. For fintech and insurance tech firms that run on the Guidewire Cloud platform, you’ll need professional Guidewire testing to ensure continuous app development and integration is flawless and standard.

The process also uses virtual devices that mimic several real mobile devices in the market. Using the latest real Android or Apple device will also help reduce the accuracy margin.

When running automated mobile testing, you will have more than positive or negative results. A positive will show that the test subject is functioning as required and meets all quality assurance (QA) standards.

A negative one will indicate that the app’s functionality and performance do not meet QA criteria. Besides, it will show detailed insights, including data tables, memory content, and other internal program states. That will show developers where the problem is for faster rectification.

Automated mobile testing follows four steps – planning, testing framework selection, choosing an automation tool, and running tests on virtual and real devices.

Planning

The stage captures your business goals, whether quality or performance enhancement. However, not all test cases are candidates for automated mobile testing. Three test cases that are suitable for automated testing:

Integration testing: It ensures functionality between various units or aspects of your mobile application. Running integration tests ensures that no new features or bugs undermine your application’s performance.

So any changes or extra features with dependencies like connecting to databases must work flawlessly with other units.

Unit testing: This tests the performance and quality of a unit, specific feature created by the developer. You conduct unit testing before running an integration test. It will help find issues early and fix them before the unit(s) are plugged into the rest of the system.

Finding bugs in an integrated system is tedious, time-consuming, and may cost more than at the unit level. Unit tests are conducted on each mobile OS and evaluated for any dependencies.

For example, for a user log-in authentication, the unit test can evaluate if it works as per

standards. Some things to check include error messages, character

minimums, field length, or if the login button only works if the fields are filled.

Unit tests are applicable across several mobile frameworks allowing your QA to validate

behavior based on any changes to your app feature.

Functional testing: It ensures that the mobile app meets all the functional requirements. It evaluates several components, including user interface (UI), database, client/server communication, API calls, and other functional elements.

A functional test focuses on the desired outcome. For example, for a log-in process,

every scenario is tested – from a welcome message if you input the correct password or an option for recovery for a lost password.

So, a functional test will evaluate performance against a known required input allowing you to automate the process as the app evolve.

Choose A Test Automation Framework

A test automation framework is an integrated system that helps you create and evaluate your tests. They are like collective guiding principles for better tests. After knowing the tests to undertake, next is picking a suitable test automation framework:

Linear framework: It is incremental and lean – perfect for unit tests and simple mobile applications
Modular framework: It runs tests based on scenarios. You can combine the modules to run more extensive test scenarios for a complex app.
Library architecture framework: It is similar to the modular framework, but it has the same tasks as a function, and the function is stored in a library. The library makes it easy to make new tests, especially reusable ones, without starting from scratch.
Data-driven framework: It runs tests that evaluate scenarios where the data differ if the test remains the same. It will get external data and test it against a functionality. For example, you can fetch external data and test it against a log-in functionality.
Hybrid framework: It uses two or more frameworks to create a more practical test environment.

Choose the Right Mobile Automation Testing Tool

The right tool helps you create the proper scripts to get the job done. As mentioned earlier, insurance tech firms must develop and test scripts using the Guidewire Testing Framework. Most firms run the insurance tech suite using the Guidewire cloud, making it the best framework to get the job done.

Some top mobile automation testing tools include Selenium, Appium, Google Expresso, and Robotium.

Finally, run the created test scripts against virtual and real devices and evaluate the results. Use the results to pivot and tweak your mobile app appropriately to get the desired performance, quality and functionality.

Automated mobile testing ensures your clients and customers don’t end up with a system full of glitches and an awful user interface experience. You can catch all the issues before they reach the end user.

Also, automated mobile testing will help you improve data security, streamline your process and reduce operations costs. But, not many know how they work. They involve scripts that run against features of the applications to ensure they operate as they should and meet business needs.

However, each application has a specific framework that ensures you get quality tests faster, so choose your mobile automation testing framework carefully.

Article contributed by Daniel Martin.
About the author: In 2007, Dan began his hands-on journey into digital marketing. Besides building teams and coaching others, he also solves real-time problems. Traveling and playing Table Tennis are among his favorite pastimes.