In 2023, 61% of all shoppers' online purchases were made on a smartphone, and this year, 85% of Gen Z mobile users planned to holiday shop via their mobile device. With more and more consumers turning to mobile devices as a primary method of online purchasing, retailers must deliver high-quality, secure, and frictionless user experiences.
To fortify mobile offerings and meet consumer demand, retailers should turn to their software development teams. Able to create and maintain robust, user-friendly mobile platforms, software development teams directly impact a retailer's success during the holiday season. Further, these teams can coordinate and perform a holistic mobile testing process — a surefire way to provide delightful consumer experiences before the shopping picks up.
In short, retailers and software development teams would be wise to invest in and utilize a solid mobile testing strategy.
3 ways to enhance mobile testing
Mobile testing plays a critical role in developing and operating a solid app. Fortunately, there are three key ways that mobile development teams can enhance their testing to ensure a seamless mobile user experience this holiday season:
Implement low-code and no-code test authoring
Utilizing low-code and no-code test authoring allows for faster test creation, high reusability, and lower test maintenance. Low-code and no-code solutions are ideal for the retail industry as they enable teams to quickly develop new capabilities — which allow retailers to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, customer preferences, and emerging trends.
Further, low-code and no-code test automation solutions also empower teams, regardless of their skill set, to build and run tests across a variety of mobile apps — from web, native, or hybrid. Anyone can easily modify or update apps without extensive coding knowledge.
This approach accelerates delivery times and enables individuals with varying skill sets to share the testing workload.
Test on a wide range of devices
With an estimated 6.8 billion global smartphone users today, it's critical for retailers to consider how their mobile applications will work on different devices, operating systems, and browsers. In order to ensure that a change is seamlessly integrated across all systems, software development teams must be able to test on real and virtual devices.
For example, a real device farm is ideal for running final builds of an application against prior to submitting to an app store. The real device testing ensures higher quality and superior user experiences, particularly for more mature applications that require test interactions with real systems, memory, data, and more.
On the other hand, virtual testing simulators are ideal for applications in the early stages as they enable continuous testing, provide greater coverage across more device configurations, identify bugs earlier in the development process, and can improve quality long before the app is released to the public.
Consistency between different devices, browsers, and operating systems is critical for retailers to ensure a seamless user experience for all of their customers this holiday season. To ensure the absolute best customer experience though, use the same testing tool across web and mobile sites and applications.
Tap into AI
Lastly, in order to create a stable testing environment, retailers should consider tapping into rising technology tools — like AI and automation. Utilizing AI and automation can help software development teams find bugs and performance issues quickly, accelerate releases across CI/CD pipelines, and achieve faster time-to-market. Rapid deployment, in particular, is valuable in the fast-paced retail industry, where staying ahead of competitors and meeting changing customer demands is crucial.
AI and automation make it easier to detect critical mobile failures and fully optimize customer experiences. Further, these tools can be fully integrated into your delivery pipeline for new builds and keep track of key performance indicators and data. These key pieces of information provide teams with the necessary information to resolve problems and create apps that are tailored to customer desires and experiences.
Better testing, better shopping
All the data is clear — mobile shopping is becoming increasingly prevalent. To meet these evolving consumer needs, retailers must ensure there is a strong focus on mobile testing across the app development process.
Through the use of low-code and no-code test authoring, comprehensive testing on a variety of devices, and the power of AI and automation, software development teams can innovate high-quality mobile apps faster, increase customer usage & satisfaction, generate more revenue and deliver seamless digital experiences.
A well-executed mobile testing strategy can be the key to success in the ever-expanding world of mobile shopping and can provide an exceptional shopping experience.