What’s the most important factor in making sure your mobile app, website or desktop software is profitable?
Most people associate the word “profitable” with tasks like marketing and promotion, and rightly so. Without a clear marketing plan, it’s unlikely that your app will ever make progress and find its target audience of users.
But there’s much more to profitability than just marketing. One of the most important factors for ensuring your app, website or software is profitable is quality.
Without a high quality experience, few people will spend much time using your app. They might download it and try it once, but few, if any, will return to an app that’s low quality. Even fewer will convert from free users to paying customers.
If your goal is to launch a profitable, successful app, your first priority shouldn’t be marketing — it should be quality assurance.
It’s easy to view QA as a cost, rather than as an investment. However, since finding and fixing bugs in your app has such a huge positive impact on retention, quality assurance testing might be the most important investment you can make in your application.
There are several different types of QA testing, all of which are important for ensuring your app is bug free. Below, we’ve listed the most important QA testing methodologies to give you a wide understanding of the testing process and how it helps to improve your app, website or software.
Non-functional Testing
QA testing can be divided into two parts: functional and nonfunctional testing. Before we look at functional testing, let’s look at the four stages of nonfunctional testing: vulnerability, compatibility, usability and performance.
Vulnerability/Security Testing
Security testing involves testing an application or website to discover vulnerabilities and security holes that could be exploited by hackers. The goal of this stage of testing is to ensure that there are no security risks that could compromise users’ data or other sensitive information.
Compatibility Testing
Compatibility testing involves verifying that an application is fully compatible with the hardware and software it will run on. Several factors are tested during this phase, from hardware to web browsers, operating systems, complementary plugins and more.
Usability Testing
Usability testing involves testing that the application is easy to use and intuitive. The goal of this stage of the testing process is to make sure that the end user can use the app without confusion or frustration due to its user interface and design.
Performance Testing
Performance testing involves verifying that the application performs well in a variety of situations that could affect users, from heavy load to limited battery power. The goal of a performance test is to ensure the app works as it should, as well as to discover its limits using load testing.
Functional Testing
Functional testing involves testing an app to ensure it operates properly. The goal of this type of QA testing is to verify that the app works as it should, without any non-functional or problematic aspects that prevent the app from working properly.
Unit Testing
Unit testing involves breaking an application down into units — small pieces of source code that can be tested individually. The goal of this stage of testing is to test each unit in isolation without looking at its role within the application as a whole.
Since unit testing focuses on small, individual units of an application, it can be a time consuming process.
Integration Testing
Integration testing involves testing multiple units together to see how they perform functions as a whole. Unlike unit testing, which focuses on one unit in isolation, integration testing is all about seeing how units work together to complete functions.
Like unit testing, integration can be a slow, repetitive process. QA teams often automate parts of the integration testing process to save time and improve efficiency.
System Testing
System testing increases the scale of integration testing to test the entire system as a whole. A typical system test involves running the entire system in order to discover previously unnoticed bugs, stability issues and major problems.
As you can see, the first three phases of functional testing involve a gradual increase in scope, from a single unit to several integrated units to a complete system.
Acceptance Testing
Acceptance testing involves testing the application against its specifications. This stage of QA testing typically involves the use of end user testers, who check that the application works as it should and delivers the expected results during regular use.
Thoroughly QA test your app with MyCrowd QA
Crowdtesting lets you tap into the crowd to automate, simplify and crowdsource your QA testing process. You get a flawless, thoroughly tested application without the typical expense, work and frustration of a traditional quality assurance testing process.
Our powerful crowdtesting platform is designed to help you complete all steps of the QA testing process, from compatibility testing to acceptance testing. Learn more about how MyCrowd QA works and start your first crowdtesting project today.
MyCrowd QA is a self-service QA testing platform for companies to test their mobile apps and software. Utilizing a pay-per-bug model, customers only pay for the bugs our testers find.
