Mobile applications have become an inalienable part of our lives and it is hardly possible to imagine one’s life without the smartphone. Since their appearance they have made major changes in our communication, business, social life and way of living. In this regard, performing mobile testing are becoming more and more significant as well as increasingly necessary. There are different approaches to performance testing using various technologies, but there are only few tools that give right results if used properly with care and attention:
You want to know the best mobile performance testing tools? As a mobile application performance engineer, I got asked these questions many times. So let me share my experience with you.
You have a great app built on your iOS or Android device. However, in order to make sure it is great you will have to go through performance testing. It is necessary to test the app loading time and its overall responsiveness. To do this, you need some tools which should assist you.
What Is a Mobile Application?
By definition, a mobile application is a type of software designed to run on a mobile device – a smartphone or a tablet. They can be web-based or independent. Mobile apps rarely allow multitasking due to limited software capacity, one-screen constraints, and comprehension quality.
While porting a PC app into a mobile-based project can be a way to go, in order to harness the full power of device-specific features, developers tend to build mobile software from the ground up.
What type of performance testing do you need?
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What is Mobile Application Testing?
Mobile app testing is executed in order to assess the performance of the application in a simulated environment (or several) in order to predict a user’s experience after a software’s public release.
For testers, performance assessment normally means running parallel tests of the system response on a range of devices, checking the app’s performance at peak points of traffic loads, and ensuring that it’s stable under poor internet connection and supports device-specific transactions.
The overall process of mobile app testing is divided into the following stages:
- Connectivity-related testing. As most mobile apps require online connectivity, a developer has to ensure the tool is functional in case there isn’t any. This means predicting a scenario for users in the flight mode or offline, test connections with changing bandwidth, and so on.
- Understanding device-specific characteristics. Unlike PCs, the screen dimensions of mobile devices can differ drastically – from 5-inch smartphones to 13-inch tablets. Also, there are other tech specs to keep in mind – camera, GPS, the capability of touchscreen and the range of supported gestures, and so on. A tester needs to have a better understanding of those characteristics as well as the way they impact the experience of using the app.
- Location simulation. For GPS-reliant apps, this step is a must. A tester has to ensure the performance of the product does not change drastically when a user moves to a different location. You can achieve this by using location simulators.
- Fragmentation testing. A development team needs to ensure the app supports different versions of the operating system it has been designed for. Be sure to outline the types of devices you’re looking forward to supporting and running tests specifically on those systems.
- UX testing. Key User Experience requirements include clarity of navigation, the intuitiveness of the interface, the look and feel of the app layout, error messages, and handling. UX testing is essential in order for the app to be accepted by the app store.
- End-to-end integration testing. System integration testing presumes to validate the performance of the solution against the main features of Mobile Device Management (MDM, in short) systems.
- Mobile performance app testing. Performance quality is different across high-end and low-end devices. Apart from ensuring the app performs consistently across devices with a lower capacity, a developer has to ensure the product is capable of handling high server loads as well as being immune to bandwidth and latency changes. This stage also includes load testing – increasing the number of incoming traffic to ensure the stability of the application’s response. As a rule, the approach to such tests is either modular or integrative.
- Security testing. Most mobile apps process the data from the device and store it on servers. In order to ensure a user’s privacy is not jeopardized in case a phone is lost or stolen, testers have to establish a secure authorization system, create a system of recording all the events performed within the app, and secure data confidentiality.
Who Needs to Performance Test Mobile Apps?
When development teams face time constraints, there is a temptation to skip mobile app performance testing. Doing that, however, is a no-go – otherwise, a tester would ignore oblivious bugs and the app would likely not be approved by distributors (Google Play Market for Android and App Store for iOS).
The list of objectives a tester achieves thanks to performance testing is quite extensive. It includes:
- Validate the performance of an application during big workloads. Performance testing allows product owners to measure the performance of the system as the number of concurrent users or actions increases. A tester will know the response time and the amount of system resource consumption at the app’s peak points. This is highly helpful in case your app has traffic spikes (where, during a certain season or period of time, the number of visitors surges and decreases shortly after).
- Validate the use of hardware. Through performance testing, product owners will ensure that low CPU usage or little server storage will not prevent the app from functioning according to the requirements.
- Determine the capacity of the application. You’ll be able to determine if the current software is capable of matching the set of metrics designed beforehand (peak traffic load, server response time, and so on).
- Measure and assess the performance of the app on the protocol level. A tester will be able to get a realistic simulation of real traffic, create a load profile, and measure the response time.
- Check the app’s performance under critical conditions. Thanks to performance testing, a developer will be able to establish the limits of the app’s performance. This way, you’ll be able to predict and prevent system crashes.
Strategy for Performance Testing Mobile Apps
Building a strategy from scratch can be challenging for newly funded startups. The good news is the app performance test approach is similar for apps in all industries and any scale.
In order to successfully execute performance testing, a project manager has to come up with a strategy. Normally, a step-by-step performance testing plan consists of the following steps.
Step 1. Align test objectives and business requirements
Performance testing will only be as good as its goals. When setting objectives for each case, make sure they correspond to business scopes of building an app. A tester’s top priority would be to assess the functions of the app that are crucial for lead generation – the cart feature for e-commerce stores, the registration and contact form, and so on.
At this stage, the testing team gets to know the architecture of the product to the best extent possible – including its presentation, business, and data levels.
Step 2. Identify test KPIs
By setting benchmarks for testing, you’ll be able to tell if the execution was a success or a failure. For mobile app testing, the following KPIs are worth consideration:
- Error rate;
- Maximum response time;
- Average response time;
- Peak number of requests;
- Average throughput and the peak number of concurrent active users per device and OS.
Step 3. Prioritize scenarios
Testing all the features of the app all at once without prior selection of cases is a common trap for a beginning tester to fall into. Instead, it’s better to outline multiple packet scenarios that are crucial for the app’s reliable performance.
After you have assured crucial features work properly, feel free to move in deeper and test less significant scenarios.
Step 4. Simulate a real-life testing environment
The testing environment is crucial in order to understand the user experience of the app the way people will after it’s live. In order to speed up the testing process, QA specialists mostly use system emulators.
Such tools do a good job of emulating the basic parameters of an operating system and allow testers to get a sense of the look and feel of the interface. However, to assess the performance of features that require camera permission, GPS, and other device-specific functions, it’s better to use real hardware.
Step 5. Align the testing approach with the overall development methodology
Testing should fit into a company’s general development framework. For Agile, the tester should be ready to implement the principles of continuous integration. If a company is using Waterfall, a tester should align their workflow accordingly – this means embracing regular bug reports and regression tests.
Adopting the same methodology for testing as for development allows both parties involved to be on the same page regarding the project, improve communication, and speed up the decision-making process.
Step 6. Keep the latency and the bandwidth of a carrier network in mind while testing
Due to the fact that mobile devices are connected to the internet through third-party carriers, the latency and bandwidth of the networks can vary. Keeping the carrier network differences in mind allows a QA specialist to optimize the app’s performance and improve user experience.
Examples of App Performance Tests
Mobile app performance testing is quite complex. There are dozens of activities a QA specialist needs to perform in order to ensure the product works as required.
The most common examples of performance testing are the following:
- Load testing. A tester increases the number of users and concurrent transactions to define the app’s load threshold. Load testing is normally performed in order to measure the performance speed and response time during a heavy traffic load. It is also known as ‘Volume testing’ or ‘Endurance testing’.
- Stress testing. Aimed at assessing the performance of an app in case the CPU usage, system memory, or other hardware specs are reaching their limits. The goal of such tests is to validate the app’s behavior at its peak condition.
- Capacity testing. This test helps developers find out what number of users and features the app is capable of maintaining. After conducting a series of capacity tests, developers can get better workflow visibility as well as an understanding of application limits.
- Spike testing. This test is carried out when the traffic load in the app surges for a short period of time. A QA specialist will be able to validate the performance characteristics of the app when it’s subjected to conditions exceeding its capacity.
Performance Test of mobile app services at Performance Lab
Mobile performance testing is efficient if handled by a team of certified professionals. At Performance Lab, we offer QA resources for mobile applications in finance, retail, insurance, hospitality, and other industries.
Our team makes a point to reduce testing cost as well as shorten the amount of time needed to deliver an app to market. We’ll assign a dedicated project manager to a team of testers working on your app, and you’ll be able to contact an account manager in order to get reports and status updates.
The team of testers at Performance Lab is also fully integrated with software engineers and DevOps working on your project. We adapt to our client project management methodology as well to ensure the workflow will be as smooth as possible.
Take a look at our services to know more about Performance Lab. If you’d like to have us on board for your next project, contact our team – we’ll reach out in no time!
list of the top performance testing tools for mobile apps.
Top load testing tools for mobile applications
WebLOAD
WebLOAD is one of the top tools to help you handle performance testing your systems. While normally for web platforms, WebLOAD integrates with Perfecto Mobile and lets you run realistic mobile performance testing to accurately evaluate the mobile user experience while the system is presented with load conditions. You can measure the response time and availability of key transactions inside a mobile application under simulated real-world conditions including backend server load, network conditions and specific mobile device.
Pricing: Pricing is undisclosed but there is a free trial available to test out the product.
LoadUI Pro
LoadUI Pro lets you conduct rapid and comprehensive performance testing for SOAP and REST APIs. Altering test speed and scalability of new changes to APIs can be done in minutes, as well as preview API performance behaviors before releasing to production environments.
Pricing: Pricing starts at €5,327/year and includes a free trial.
Apica LoadTest
Apica LoadTest is designed to help enterprises ensure the scalability of websites, apps, APIs and IoT. By load testing application performance your team can find performance bottlenecks before they become huge issues during traffic spikes.
Pricing: There is no information on the price but you can schedule a demo with the team.
CloudTest
CloudTest lets you stress test your app’s environment to ensure that you’re ready for any sudden spikes in traffic. Their team of engineers can help you design your test at any scale or stage of production and interpret the results. You’ll see what the performance problems are and where they originate, so you can fix them before they affect customers.
Pricing: There is no information on the price but you can schedule a demo with the team.
LoadRunner
LoadRunner supports a wide range of apps. It helps you drastically reduce the amount of time and skill required to simulate user transactions in load testing software. And with integrations with a lot of different IDEs and support for testing scripts it allows for continuous testing. LoadRunner also helps you identify performance bottlenecks by using seamless integrated real-time performance monitors.
Pricing: Pricing is dependent on virtual users. With a free version for up to 50 virtual users and there is an option of $1.40 per virtual user day.
WAPT
WAPT doesn’t need a whole lot of QA experience and wide technical background to start running test loading scripts. At the same time, it provides the functionality sufficient to test mobile applications and any server component accessible over HTTP. There is also the option of WAPT Pro that offers a higher scale and more integrations and features.
Pricing: Starts at $700 for WAPT and $1200 for WAPT Pro.
NeoLoad
NeoLoad is a great straight out of the box option for mobile load testing and even for IoT use cases. You can quickly and efficiently create tests that accurately represent your real users regarding network conditions, specific devices, and geographic locations. You will be able to record any native or otherwise mobile app direct recording from any device or emulator.
Pricing: Starts at a free version and there are three more paid packages depending on the number of virtual users.
CONCLUSION
Performance testing is an essential part of application development. Performance testing is a process, that involves the identification of performance requirements, designing test cases and automating them using manual and/or automated tools, executing the tests against a performance testing tool or using actual devices or a combination of both, reporting on test results with necessary level of details to effectively analyze the findings, determining root-cause (if any) of the problems found during performance tests and generating requirement specifications for fixing these issues.
Mobile applications—apps for short—have radically changed the way software is developed and used. Perhaps no one company has had a greater impact on this than Apple, whose App Store has enabled hundreds of thousands of mobile applications to be created for users of the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. Interestingly, mobile application development is not just about creating applications for Apple iOS devices. It’s also about creating apps that can easily be ported (or converted) to Android and a variety of other mobile platforms.