Can you imagine 3.48 million mobile apps all in one place? That is how many of them are collected on Google Play, the largest repository of active software for smartphones and tablets globally. App Store is inferior to GooglePlay only due to significantly stricter acceptance criteria and rules that developers must follow. Here, the user can choose between 2.22 million applications. In total, around the world, during 2020, users downloaded 218 billion applications to various mobile devices.
In light of these numbers, what do you think is the likelihood that a user who encounters errors or inconveniences in using your application will come back to download it again?
It is unlikely that he will put a reminder to himself in the calendar: “In a month, go in and see if the developer has fixed what’s wrong.” It is much more likely that he will find something more suitable for himself in the sea of proposals, replenishing with new “drops” every hour. In the last six months alone, 88,700 apps have been added to these two stores.
Oh yes, so as not to forget! A mobile app that is thrown onto the market without thorough verification by a reputable software testing agency will most likely make you an outsider in this very market with 7.26 billion potential buyers.
“Why do I need an agency? I can do everything myself!”
This phrase is guaranteed to be in the first lines in the top 10 of the last words, proclaimed by the developers of applications that have not taken off. “The last” — because these are words spoken by many app developers before they sink into obscurity. Especially when you consider that these words are unlikely to be heard by anyone if some successful tester wouldn’t bring them to his software testing blog.
- Let’s get serious.
Let’s say you are a solo enthusiast. You, inspired by the examples of Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg, equipped your laboratory in the garage and created an application that should dominate the market. You have read several testing blogs, learned about the various methods of testing mobile applications, and decided that you are quite capable of going through all these stages.
Before you, already standing on the edge, make a dizzying jump into the abyss; let me give you a few numbers.
The user is sure: the developer is always to blame for everything
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated the pace of movement of living creatures into the virtual world. Today, people use mobile apps 30% more than before quarantine. At the same time, 60% of these users don’t care for the real reason for the failures (for example, slow Internet). They are sure: the developer is ALWAYS to blame for the malfunctioning of the mobile application. Unsurprisingly, 92% of users say they, again, ALWAYS expect mobile apps to run smoothly, no matter what the circumstances.
Here are some numbers from a survey of 13,000 mobile app users published on July 20, 2021.
- 61% say that they have become more demanding on the quality of applications and do not intend to put up with any problems, whatever the cause.
- 57% say a company, regardless of brand, has only one chance to convince them of the quality of its app. In case of any failure — performance, unfriendly interface, etc. — they intend to abandon such an application and look for an alternative to it.
- 72% of users say that they are not interested in who exactly is responsible for the poor performance of the application. They are ready to give him one star in the store and write scathing reviews about the developer.
- 68% of users regard the poor performance of the application as disrespect, which the developer has shown towards them.
- 57% of survey participants strongly believe that a developer can avoid most application problems before launching it to market.
“We will solve everything in our circle.”
Welcome to the world of harmful delusions! When we say that the IT world in general and the mobile application market, in particular, have changed dramatically, we mean that the old approaches do not work now.
Today, application testing has become a separate industry with a multi-billion dollar turnover. Check out any quality assurance (QA) blog to better understand why the development industry and software and website testing services can only exist in a parallel way.
Even if you decide to buy the most modern testing tools and put them at the disposal of those who developed your application, you will inevitably make two mistakes at once.
First, you will be making a colossal waste, which will turn out to be utterly unjustified concerning the hypothetical income from your application.
Second, to find potential bugs in your application, you need people who can take a fresh look at it. Besides being paid to find bugs, their vision is not limited to the algorithms that guided the developers. Both of these circumstances are the key to successful testing.
What’s the bottom line?
The need for the most comprehensive testing of any mobile application before it appears on Google Play or the App Store is obvious even to a layperson. Read any of the vast testing blogs to see how many subtle problems testers face.
Therefore, the answer is obvious: you need to find a quality assurance company with a convincing set of successful cases and hire it to test your application.
And while testing is underway, you have time to go to the bank and open an account, where you are going to receive millions from your application, which will undoubtedly explode the market.