Mobile App Testing and Web Testing: How do they differ?
If we go back to the 1990s, everything on the internet was about having a competent website and web apps. But the rise in the expansion of mobile technology has added a whole new dimension to the software testing practices. Companies are focusing more on enhancing their position in the mobile tech realm and testing gadgets such as smartphones, tablets, and wearable has gained more momentum in recent years.
Despite sharing some general testing methods, the approach made by the quality analyst in mobile and web app testing is starkly different. When we dive deep into the divergence of both the testing realms, we understand that both web and mobile app testing have distinct requirements and tools.
What is Web Testing?
Web testing is a kind of software testing that focuses solely on web applications. It is the process of checking for potential bugs in the website and helps the developers to eradicate them before the website is made live. Apart from checking for the bugs, through web testing, the functioning of the site, its security, and also the ability to handle website traffic is checked.
What is Mobile App Testing?
Mobile app testing is a process that ensures a certain level of quality in the mobile app before the application is released on the app stores. The development cycle of mobile apps is comparatively bigger, thus they depend heavily on the process of app testing for their success at the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
How different is Mobile App Testing from Website Application Testing?
Aspects of Mobile App Testing
Below are some of the major specifications that hold much importance in mobile app testing and are not that significant in web testing.
Network Testing
As the majority of the mobile apps work on data network, it is imperative to be absolutely sure about the network performance of the mobile app. The mobile apps are tested on various parameters such as Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, and Edge Technology. Mobile app testing checks and applies prevention to all the concerned modules that are in a low network, so as to avoid mishaps in the future.
Memory Space Testing
Memory space testing of the mobile apps is important as the organizations must be aware of the RAM consumption and memory leaks in the application. Also, the organization gets to understand if they need to lower the size of the mobile app so that it doesn’t require much storage space on the end user’s device.
Testing during Installation/Un-Installation
Installation and Un-Installation testing enable the quality analyst to ensure that the mobile application is supportive of installing or uninstalling on all the intended devices and does not have any upfront crashing issues. Smoke testing does not reveal these issues.
Further Read: 7 Don’ts for an efficient Mobile App Testing Methodology
Aspects of Web Testing
Cross Browser Testing: Just like for mobile apps, you need to be sure about the look and feel of Web App on various devices, as the websites and web applications must be constant through all the browsers. The web app must have similar look and feel on combinations of different operating systems. Moreover, the web app must be competent enough to work on all the screen resolutions and show all the features on desktops, mobiles, and tablets.
Testing the Cookies: It is important to test cookies both ways i.e. on and off in the browser settings. Cookies are small storehouses where information is stored in a temporary folder when the user is using the web app.
The Core Usage and Similarities that matters
The most obvious difference between mobile app testing and web testing is that mobile apps are designed to cater to a larger and diverse number of users on varying devices screens as compared to web apps. One can say that the boundary of difference between web and mobile apps is decreasing but mobile apps work on different devices such as tablets, smartphones, etc. Web apps are stationary in nature unlike the dynamic nature of the mobile apps. Websites and web apps are designed to work on fixed operations on a browser which is much less as compared to mobile apps.
Web browsing apps were created as stations while mobile apps, in general, perform functions ‘on-the-go’. Thus while making a transition in the testing process from the web or a mobile app, there is an exponential expansion in the dimensions of testing.
In addition to being different in terms of testing process, there are some similarities in the mobile app and web testing viz.
Functional Testing: Functional testing helps the quality analyst to test the web or mobile app thoroughly and ensure that it behaves properly under certain given circumstances. Functional testing helps you to test all the core functions of a mobile or a web app. The testing process is done on real devices so as to give a real-world experience before releasing the app into the market.
Performance Testing: Performance testing helps you to understand the working of the mobile or the web app under a certain kind of workload. It helps you to understand the threshold of the web and mobile apps and thus improving the performance of the app.
Compatibility Testing: While doing a mobile app and web testing, compatibility testing ensures that the app works perfectly with different operating systems and versions.
Challenges in Testing Process
There could be plenty of challenges and it depends a lot on the type of the app, the type of the users for the app, and the devices used by the users. With such a wide bifurcation of every aspect, it will be difficult to know the exact results. But based on the test cases and strategies carved out by the quality analysts ensure better results. Thus, it can also be said that the success of a website or an app also depends on how intense testing has been carried out keeping he targeted users in mind.
Now let us look at the most intense and common technical challenges in Web and Mobile App Testing.
Varied Interactions for Different Users
The interaction of web apps is synchronized and stabilized in a certain order. They have standard hardware and software devices to work on various applications, from Facebook to web games. Thus, the interaction of web apps is limited.
When it comes to mobile apps, they have a wide range of sensory actions, voice apps, etc. and thus they have to deal with various types of users' requirements and behaviors.
Storage Limitations
Modern web browsers have large storage but when compared to the mobile apps there can be a limitation with respect to space. For some huge website or web apps, there may be some limitations and the same would apply for the mobile apps too as a lot of the smooth processing depends on the device and the advanced setting enabled by the user. So, since usage could vary from user to user it is expected that the test cases are devised keeping in mind that it caters and includes a maximum number of people usage patterns.
The Final Test
Web and Mobile App Testing process are equally important for businesses to have a complete hold on the digital market space in the modern world. Understanding the difference between web and mobile app testing will enable the organization in implementing them to the core and reap rich benefits. Web and mobile app testing. if done in the proper manner, it can prove crucial in enhancing the performance of both the Web and Mobile Apps.