After weeks of perfecting your newest app, it's time to deploy. But a buggy app can be costly. Be sure to test these 11 things BEFORE you deploy your app!

What do you need to test before launching an app?

This is a guest post submitted by Ross Brown.

We think you'll agree that once an app is finished, it's really tempting to just launch it, hand it off to marketing and let the fruits of your labor grow and prosper.

However, testing your app is equally, if not more, important than the actual creating. Although this might seem obvious to most, poor testing—or a lack of it—is common. Deploying an enterprise-level app can be disastrous for your brand and adoption rates if there are bugs causing poor user experience.

Research shows that 47% of mobile apps suffer from negative feedback or comments purely because the developers didn’t allocate enough time for effective QA testing before launching the app either internally or to the Android/iOS app stores.

According to apps-builder.com, the 3 major things you ned to test for are design, usability and security.

Although it’s difficult, if not impossible, to deploy an application with no minor bugs, it still should be of paramount importance that the core functionality of the app is a positive user experience.

In this article we’ve broken down the testing process and suggested 11 things you should test on your mobile app BEFORE publishing.

Of course, depending on circumstances you might have further tests to carry out (which isn’t a bad thing!) but this is a handy deployment checklist to go through.

Scroll down to read more or use the jump links to skip around!

11 things to test before deploying your mobile app

1. Links (in-app, web)

Check each link you have within the app to ensure it takes you to the correct screen. Also, ensure that any links taking the user to the web, or from the web to the app, are also set up appropriately. Be sure to thoroughly check for any deep links that can get buried in your iOS and Android apps. Deep links may link to sensitive information and sooner or later your users will find them.

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2. Images & Videos

Browse through your app to check whether the images, graphs, or other media items are all working. Broken images look bad, and can disrupt the general design and flow of the user journey. Apps in particular are reliant on visual features and graphics, so get multiple users to check that they all function as required.

The same goes for videos; check that they not only load, but that the user can play/pause and adjust volume (if applicable). Also, auto-play features should work as expected, for example, if they’re turned on, the video should only play when the user scrolls to that point in the screen.

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3. Online/Offline content

Offline app content should be tested to ensure it does in fact display when the user has no connectivity. Offline content is typically important information for users to always have access to. Even if the content isn't super important, it still creates a poor UX when it doesn't work. Make sure testing for offline content issues is part of your testing strategy.

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4. User authentication (with multiple emails/combinations)

Entering login information and the app not working is not only frustrating, it can raise valid privacy concerns and completely ruin the trust users have in your brand. Check the process for registering and logging in to your app, including user authentication, to see if it works as it should. Test with a variety of emails and combinations e.g. can a user submit an invalid email address?

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5. Updates

When you want—and need—to update your app in the future (and you will need to) the last thing you want is to encounter bugs and errors when you’ve made some changes to the app. Run a test update to your app before you publish it to ensure the updating process runs smoothly.

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6. Screen formatting

You don't want any screen formatting issues on your app. A simple usability test ensures that the actual screen layout makes the designs.

Navigate through the app like you would expect a user to do (and like you wouldn’t expect them to!) This ensures that the correct screens appear when a user moves from screen to screen.

Make sure there aren’t any blank screens that could be caused by a design or coding issue. Regardless, testing the app thoroughly will prevent embarrassing screen issues.

NOTE: test on different devices (both phone and tablet) - your screens might act differently on different devices.

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7. No filler text

Whilst creating your app you might have implemented some filler text i.e. "lorem ipsum," to fill a few gaps where you planned to put actual text in the future. Check that all of this has been replaced as required or you'll really confuse your users.

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8. Push notifications

We all know push notifications can be useful, but you can just as easily irritate users if they are delivered too often or are poorly formatted. Test your app's push notifications to check the frequency, timing, content, and link to the app all work as expected.

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9. Sensitive content

This might be a test for your marketing director or editor to carry out, but it’s worthwhile to ensure your content is checked for legality or sensitivity. This is particularly true if you are intending to hold what could be considered sensitive data e.g. contact details or names of employees.

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10. Security checks

Ideally, your app's security checks should be tested alongside the other tests listed. The complexity of these tests will differ depending on the sensitivity and nature of the app in question (much like the content sensitivity tests.) You should consider where the app data is stored, how the app prevents the possibility of data leakage, and if the authentication measures effective.

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11. Device testing

Testing on multiple devices (preferably real devices if you have them or a mobile testing solution that mimics real devices), across all the available operating systems and platform is vital. Your app will act slightly different on iOS as it does on Android - then the same again on Windows 10! It can be daunting, but it is of paramount importance that you carry out tests across a range of devices.

Here are the top 5 devices and operating systems:

iOS 8.0 - 10.3

Android 4.4 - 7.0

Windows 10

Phone

Tablets

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Be realistic with your testing

Unfortunately, you’re never going to have a totally bug free app. Even Apple and Microsoft continuously find bugs. So be realistic and release when you are confident that 95% of your users will have a smooth user experience.

We have found that around 5% of devices will have issues - this is due to the vast range of mobile devices available today.

“Don’t let perfection get in the way of ‘good enough’” - Harry Atkinson, Customer Success Manager at Fliplet.

Effective testing means h-app-y users

Ensuring that you release a fully functional mobile app to users will not only meet their expectations, but it will make it more likely that they use the app in the future. The first experience a user has with an app can determine whether they keep the app on their device or not.

It’s suggested that 80% of apps are deleted after just one use - which is an ample excuse to ensure that you maximize the probability that users enjoy their first touch point with your application.