5 Great Services To Optimize Your Mobile Apps

There’s now likely an app for everything you need, don’t need, or could imagine. But how many mobile applications really satisfy our needs and give a good experience? A great number of apps fail this mission. There are Apps that have awful design that makes users’ actions difficult to accomplish. There are apps that crash when a user takes certain actions, or are not intuitive and hard to use. I hope you’ll agree when I say that a mediocre mobile app should be an urgent problem to solve. If you are looking for tools that can help you optimize your mobile apps, you will be happy to know that the choice is large and broad. In today’s post, I’ll introduce 5 great services and tools that if used in combination, can maximize your results.

1. Applause

The Applause community consists of more than 250,000 experienced QA testers who offer testing solutions including:

• Functional Testing
• Test Automation
• Usability Testing
• Accessibility Testing
• Localization Testing
• Security Testing Load Testing
• Crowdtesting

Applause performs tests in real-world environments, on all devices and wherever the audience you want to reach lives, with every configuration/combination possible, for iOS and Android. You can manage the tests to suit your schedule, such as the frequency (daily, weekly or random) and the time they start. The first results should start coming in within hours or in real time in certain cases. You’ll be able to make a list of the most urgent problems, prioritize the bugs, and boost your productivity.

The most interesting feature the Applause platform offers is the possibility to launch a beta version of the mobile application through its Mobile Beta Management.

Thanks to this feature, it’s easier to analyze how users interact with your app. This service includes the creation of targeted surveys available for qualified participants and continuous help from a team of experts aimed at providing valuable feedback on how to boost/improve the development process and the app’s usability.

TestFairy

TestFairy is a free testing tool for native and non-native Android and iOS apps. You upload an app to the platform and invite beta testers using email addresses or use a web-based test app. These testers receive a link to download your app in one click can start using it. Then you can watch results as users perform them and get a first taste of the features you need to improve to meet expectations.

With TestFairy’s in-app bug reporting module, your testers can share their feelings and impressions by filling in a form. The feedback submitted is pushed directly to the bug tracking system you are using, together with a report of all the crashes, logs and internal metrics (CPU usage and memory included) collected from the device. Every TestFairy app can have a public beta landing page that you can publish online to recruit testers to the application you want to test. The most useful feature this service offers is a video recording that shows how the test takes place. You have the chance to see what potential users are doing, how they act when using a mobile application, and learn from their behaviour.

If you want to see how the tool works, you can take a look at a demo here. The basic package is free, but if you are looking for company plans and want to know more about TestFairy’ startup and enterprise packages for bigger teams, get in touch with their experts.

Azetone Mobile AB Testing/Personalization

Azetone offers a wide range of testing and personalization solutions aimed at satisfying customers’ needs. Its split testing platform helps you create and evaluate as many versions of your app as you need. You can perform tests simultaneously on different devices and gain unparalleled insights about how users engage and interact with your app.

Experience insights and Mobile UX analytics are the best part of this service. Azetone provides its customers with detailed documents that show how users act and what decisions they make when using the app. The reports provided are comprehensive, covering the gestures performed (on which page, for how long, degree of success/satisfaction etc) and you can filter them by device type or period of time.

Once the analysis has finished and all the results are available, you can examine a complete picture of the improvements you need to implement.

If this is wets your appetite and you want to take your app to the next level, I suggest taking a look at A/B tests for Mobile devices. It will be much easier to understand how elements such as font styles, color schemes, text sizes or buttons’ position affect your users’ experience and change them accordingly.

You can try Azetone for free (it lasts 30 days) or schedule a demo with their team of experts.

Appsee Mobile Analytics

Appsee is a mobile analytics SDK for iOS and Android that can help you examine the performance of your app and how users interact with it. With personal access to user recordings, you can spot the features of your app that need improvement and pinpoint which areas of the interface get the most attention.

Appsee integrates in its platform some of the services you’ve seen so far. It offers, as well as Azetone, Touch Heatmaps that aggregate all users’ gestures (taps, swipes, pinches) performed in each screen, helping you select those that don’t trigger a response in the application. Like TestFairy, it gives you the chance to see how people behave using your mobile app by watching video recordings of real users sessions. It’s easier to find out which kind of issues they have, if these problems cause users frustration and push them to quit the app, and what you can do to avoid it. Finally, it provides crash records, so you won’t ever be worried about trying to figure-out what happened. You can contact the team to request a demo or start a 14-day free trial (all features included) by filling in this form.

Testdroid

The last service I want to introduce you is Testdroid.. It’s an online service for testing Android and iOS applications, hosted by Bitbar in their dedicated hosting centers in Europe and the US. It offers:

• Testing in Scale on hundreds of devices simultaneously and with instant feedback.
• Online and API access, that means no need to reserve devices or prepare for the test runs.
• Target Larger Audience With Your Application, which translates into higher quality and greater support.
• Test on New Devices, even on customized device clusters.
• No Programming or Configuration Needed. You upload an APK or IPA and instrumentation test files, that will run automatically on the platform.

If you want to try Testdroid for free, you can create a cloud account and decide later if you need to upgrade to a monthly subscription or schedule an online live demo.

Make Your Apps Better

Whether you are a single developer or part of a team in a big company, take time to organize your testing activities and study the behaviours of your potential users before committing to costly development.

All the tools and platforms introduced in this article can help you to develop a fully functional and usable mobile app. By using one (or more) of these services, it will be easier for you to understand if all the choices you have made work effectively and what you need to improve.

I suggest using them in combination to test the most important features of your product. In this way, you’ll know that you’ve tested and optimized them all at once.

Are there any other tools or platforms that you’d suggest, please let me know below.