The target audience for the majority of mobile apps are millennials. Millennials are basically adapted to a fast track life and patience is a scarce characteristic. More than 50% will give up on app that does not launch within 3 seconds. You shall assume the extent of their expectations and their unforgiving attitude towards incompetent technology. Therefore, before you put your app on Google Play, Apple store or any other platform, test it thoroughly to guarantee its success. If an app is good, it will receive a handful of positive reviews, whereas if an app is bad, you can expect an endless list of haters coming to get you.

If your app tends to malfunction once in a blue moon, your snafu might be forgettable. On the other hand if the user encounters bugs, errors, freezes or crashes 2-3 times in a row, your app is done with! In this very moment it doesn’t seem like much to admit that no mobile application in existence is utterly unique. There are at least 2 dozen replicas of the same thing in every OS store, with only slight variation in design. Only the few top runners survive because the stakes are high…

Testing in necessary to control the quality of the product you’re creating. To ensure outright quality, the process of software construction has to be monitored from starting point to finish line. Whether you’re developing a Native mobile app, hybrid or web mobile app, there are a list of key features you need to optimize at all costs.

First of all you need to determine your audience. Are you developing a consumer app for general public or an enterprise level one that is restricted to an organization, group of professionals etc.? Undoubtedly, consumer apps have and always will be on the lead, but enterprise level apps are gradually becoming a thing for corporates. Not to mention, you get rid of all the competition in the enterprise category and you know exactly what your audience wants, so really it’s hard to go wrong.

Talking of consumer audience, is your app targeting a specific range of mobile devices? Majority of mobile app developers focus on creating applications that are compatible with iOS and Android OS, more than often totally ignoring the minorities such as Windows and BlackBerry. Although it sounds selfish, the practice saves a lot of extra effort and thrives well with the majority. Then again there are several versions of each OS because upgrades and updates are released almost every couple of months.

You have to decide how many versions of each OS will you cater to. It is vital to keep in mind that not everybody will update their software and comparatively lesser will have the will to shift to a completely new device. Online surveys can be helpful to find out the most popular devices and OS versions that people are using. Nonetheless, it is smarter to include at least 2-3 lesser versions in addition to the latest one.

Then there are high-end, median and low-end phones – will your app embrace them all? High-end phones ($500 and above) are naturally faster because they are fitted with advanced microchips, higher RAM and ROM. Most apps run great on these phones but the performance regresses on Median phones ($200 – $400) and reaches its worst among the lower end sets ($100 and below). Consumer apps meant only for the elite are rare and the bulk of audience usually propagates from the latter divisions.

Different smartphones have different screen resolution and dimensions. Your mobile app should be able to adjust accordingly and not deviate too much in quality by comparison. Another key feature that can make or break your app is its energy consumption. If the mobile app you developed drains the battery too fast, users will think twice before using it again.

The main purpose of mobile phones is communication, so make sure that your app does not in any way interfere with that. Many mobile apps have no offline features and depend entirely on an internet connection. Internet comes in a variety of speeds that varies from device to device or location to location. 2G,3G,4G or WiFi, your app should be able to respond in all situations to facilitate your consumer at all times.

If you want your mobile app to hit the market at an international level, it should be able to translate into multiple languages. Languages contrast with each other, considering the size they will occupy on a screen. A sentence in English when translated to German for instance, may get longer. On the contrary the Chinese interpretation of the same sentence may cover less than half the space. The layout of your app has to be flexible and easy customizable if you want to conquer various lands.

All in all, a perfect mobile app is efficient in response, highly user friendly, fancy looking yet simple to understand, energy savvy, and capable of functioning offline (fully or partially) for users of every kind of device. Getting all boxes ticked might be impossible for some kind of apps, but nothing’s impossible if you’re determined enough.

Testing

Mobile testing can be done automatically and manually; whatsoever implying only one method is impractical and insufficient. Some aspects of mobile app testing are better done automatically while the rest are more suited to manual. Automated testing in usually applicable for repetitive tasks that occur during the process of development. After the app is completed and mobile ready, it is best to test it manually to relate as much to the end-user as possible.

During app development, software engineers normally utilize emulators and simulators for testing functionality. This method is economical compared to testing on a wide range of real devices. Cloud testing is also a viable option, but ultimately real devices provide the most accurate and reliable results with respect to hardware + software specifications.