3 Tips to Enhance Your User Acceptance Testing Campaigns for Web and Mobile Applications

Although testing occurs throughout the development lifecycle, it is still important to perform a final User Acceptance Testing (UAT) or end-user test campaign before the redesigned application is launched.

Viewing a final round of end-user or acceptance testing as a redundant process would be a critical mistake. What makes the process worthwhile is its ability to provide a final assessment needed to launch any application with confidence.

With UAT, it is crucial to focus on end-to-end feature validation, as this is one of the rare moments when every aspect of the application has been delivered, integrated, and operationalized. Testing the responsiveness of the application across different configurations and devices is another crucial step to take.

User Acceptance Testing Best Practices

To best execute UAT campaigns, it is important to choose the right test methodology as well as the testing configurations. Choosing the right approach and configurations can go a long way to improving the effectiveness of the test and expanding test coverage. Below are three best practices for streamlining and enhancing your UAT campaigns:

1. Choose the right Testing Methodology

Scenario Testing: Under this method, written test cases serve as a step-by-step guide on how to execute the test. Scenario testing is well suited for evaluating a feature and all its functionalities in a predetermined manner. This enables testers to find bugs impacting key functionalities or along major pathways, such as the checkout process on an e-commerce app or user registration process.

Exploratory Testing: Unlike a scenario methodology, exploratory testing does not rely on written test cases. Instead, testers explore the site in an impromptu manner to replicate how many customers navigate a website. Exploratory testing makes it possible for testers to document many bugs or anomalies that are harder to find using test cases. Exploratory testing also generates valuable feedback on the overall navigation of the web application as well as its design.

While these methodologies completely differ from each other, scenario and exploratory testing are both valuable assessments of a newly redesigned site and play an important part in improving the quality of the digital product.

2. Maximize your Testing Coverage

Maximizing test coverage can be viewed from two perspectives: testing every requirement and executing tests over multiple configurations (devices, browsers, screen resolution, and operating systems).

While testing every functionality or requirement is standard practice, testing them across a variety of configurations is a real challenge for many organizations.

First, manually repeating the same tests over and over again is a time-consuming process. Second, testing across multiple configurations is nearly impossible without having access to a wide selection of smartphones, tablets, and computers. While some teams may try to make up for a lack of real testing devices by using emulators or simulators, these tools are not perfectly suited for every test case.

Nonetheless, having a large test coverage is the best way to guarantee that your web or mobile application functions as intended for every user.

3. Determine the Best Testing Configurations

To start, examine your application’s analytics to reveal which configurations are most commonly used to access your application. It is important to note that using this information will only reveal configurations that your application already supports. There could be a chance that certain configurations are poorly supported by the application, and as a result, creates a sort of blind spot.

Traffic data from target markets is another great resource that can be used to determine which configurations your application needs to support. Testing across these configurations can provide a more comprehensive assessment and improve your ability to serve a maximum number of users.

Configuration Considerations

Operating System

All mobile applications will need to contend with different operating systems along with the various versions of each operating system. As a result, testing across different mobile operating systems remains important.

Mobile OS Distribution in North America - April 2021:

• Android - 45%
• iOS – 54.6%
• Other - < 1%

Mobile Android OS Market Share North America - April 2021:

• 11.0: 25.5%
• 10.0: 35.7%
• 9.0 Pie: 18.4%
• 8.0 Oreo: 5%
• 8.1 Oreo: 4.7%
• 7.0 Nougat: 4.1%
• 6.0 Marshmallow: 2.6%
• 7.1 Nougat: 1.6%
• 5.1 Lollipop: 0.9%
• Other: 1.1%

Mobile iOS Market Share North America - April 2021:

• iOS 14.5: 1.1%
• iOS 14.4: 81.7%
• iOS 14.3: 2.7%
• iOS 14.2: 3.3%
• iOS 12.5: 1.5%
• iOS 13.6: 1.2%
• iOS 13.7: 1.1%
• Other: 7%

Browser Compatibility

The market is filled with numerous web browsers, and not all of them use the same rendering engines. As a consequence, testing web applications across each relevant browser is a good idea. Also consider the fact that for each browser on the market, there are multiple versions of each browser that are used by large segments of users. However, concentrating on the most popular browser versions is suitable to achieve the proper test coverage.

Screen Resolution

Each year, more devices are introduced to the market, shifting the market share of the most popular or used screen resolutions. This will only continue to grow with the impending arrival of bendable screens.

Overall, to achieve maximum test coverage, consider the following general recommendations:

• 3 different device types: Mobile, desktop, and tablet
  • At least 9 mobile devices
• 2 OS versions: Windows and Mac OS
• 2 iOS versions (latest versions)
• Various Android smartphone brands: Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc.
• 4-5 Android OS versions (latest versions)
• 2-3 desktop browsers
• 10 various screen resolutions
  • At least 4 iOS devices
  • At least 6 Android OS devices

To learn more about how to successfully redesign web and mobile applications, check out our latest piece from the CTG Thought Leadership team, 7 Best Practices to Successfully Redesign and Optimize Web and Mobile Applications. For more information on how CTG can help businesses overcome the challenges of building, redesigning, and testing web or mobile applications, check out our Testing Solutions, or contact the CTG team directly.

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