The world today is experiencing a rapid increase in the usage of smartphones leading to the establishment of a firm smartphone ecosystem that has promoted the growth of various innovations including websites and other mobile applications.
According to a study done by Statista, the usage of mobile phones has grown globally with approximately 7.1 billion users, and is expected to reach 7.49 billion by 2025.
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Source: Statista
So, keeping your website mobile-friendly has become even more important than earlier.
In this mobile digital world, programmers and developers also need to test websites on different mobile devices and resolutions and this can be done easily with the help of mobile web testing tools.
Let’s check them out in detail.
Source: SmartBear
Mobile web testing is an approach engaged by website developers to ensure that the design of a particular website meets the uniformity of all existing designs of various smartphones.
Further, the testing approach can also be named responsive website testing since it comprises analyzing whether the websites are responsive in different screen resolutions.
There are various benefits of conducting mobile web testing including browser compatibility, OS compatibility, user-friendly design, SEO advantage, and enhanced visibility.
Moreover, browser compatibility is a major benefit of conducting web testing since it ensures that a website works seamlessly in existing mobile web browsers such as Safari, Brave, and Google Chrome.
Creating a user-friendly design is one of the benefits of conducting mobile web testing since it enhances optimization for websites to ensure that they are user-friendly and can offer driving conversations between users.
However, mobile web testing leads to enhanced visibility that entices users to enjoy browsing through content shared on a particular website.
Mobile web testing is needed today to ensure that users consuming content using their smartphones enjoy the responsive aspect of a website.
Therefore, the convenience of using mobile phones for browsing and content interaction purposes has been influenced by the crafting of mobile-friendly user experiences.
Therefore, developers need to consider creating responsive website designs due to the increasing number of smartphone users since in the future there will be more users who will be accessing various website services and products via mobile.
There are several reasons why focusing on mobile usability testing is essential when developing a web product:
Source: Stock Image
Mobile-first indexing is amongst the major reasons why mobile web testing is essential since it describes why search engines provide preferences for websites that are responsive to diverse resolutions of different mobile types.
For instance, if a website does not have a mobile responsive feature, it has minimal chances of appearing in the first few pages of a search engine like Google.
Most of the users have turned to using mobile phones rather than using laptops since smartphones are more personal and convenient to use.
So, developers should engage in testing the responsiveness of a website to suit the resolution of the existing mobile devices since it will satisfy an intended audience.
Automated tests can be done at scale on real devices that you neither own nor manage to evaluate the functionality and performance of your website. Testing on many browsers, platforms, and actual mobile devices in tandem can speed up the testing process for mobile websites.
Designing a website is essential since it plays a significant role in maintaining consumer loyalty that leads to referrals which enables the entity offering the website service to acquire more users.
Besides, a good user experience can be determined by the feedback a website gets from its users regarding the efficiency of services and products offered on its website.
Conducting web testing does not necessarily mean testing the functionality of a website on all the mobile phones existing in the market, but it means accessing data based on the various mobile devices used by many people.
After determining the most used devices, the next step that developers should engage in is to test the performance and user experience on the selected devices to identify and fix any existing issues that might make a website not responsive.
By following these steps, the developers of websites deliver exceptional user experience on different mobile devices that leave the users fully satisfied by interacting with an interactive website design.
Firstly, you can’t test your website by using real mobile devices as there are mobile devices with different resolutions and it would be very time-consuming to check metrics this way.
So, for the execution of an appropriate mobile web testing strategy, you need to perform various steps to improve the efficiency of the process.
Before starting the process, you should first consider the product features and mobile devices since it is a priority to understand how the website works on different mobile devices. Below are some of the recommended approaches that can be used to test website on mobile devices:
One of the most powerful tools used in mobile web testing is W3C mobileOK Checker which is an automated method that is preferred for use by most developers since it does not involve manual testing procedures used to validate HTML and CSS code.
Therefore, W3C mobileOK Checker is an open-source medium that enhances the removal of errors present in HTML and CSS code to ensure that the website meets all the requirements of creating a responsive website.
Source: W3C mobileOK Checker
Since this is one of the most recommended tools when testing for the responsiveness of a website on a mobile device, the tools enhance testing procedures by providing a well-explained report covering failures detected on a website.
The other validation tool is Chrome Dev Tools since it enhances the checking and fixing of issues detected when testing the HTML and CSS code used to develop a particular website.
Source: Chrome DevTools
Besides, its other advantage is letting the website owners know about core web vitals and also helping testers test for the responsiveness of a website on mobile devices when there is a network issue that might arise due to increased usage of the network by users of mobile devices.
When testing for mobile friendliness, CrossBrowserTesting is the best tool for use since it comprises more than 2050 mobile browsers that can be used to test for the responsiveness of a website.
Through using CrossBrowserTesting, one can easily determine whether a website is hosted locally or publicly to support various browsers by ensuring the website meets the required specifications of different browsers.
Therefore, CrossBrowserTesting is a one-stop tool that can be used to conduct automated testing to remove bug issues detected in a code to ensure that a website fits the required specifications of existing web browsers.
Source: BrowserStack
Several features of CrossBrowserTesting that enhance automated testing include the Selenium-based automated and live website responsive testing. The other feature is Uncompromised security with pristine browsers and devices available on demand.
All the features mentioned above describe how a website is displayed to enhance responsiveness since developers are required to use responsive design tools to create a website that offers high performance on multiple devices without lag.
Numerous device types and browser versions exist on the internet, which are highly fragmented.
Therefore, as of 2021 and forward, every firm must have a responsive website. Because of this, having an adaptable website design is essential to a QA Outsourcing Company's ability to expand online.
It is free for individuals and groups to use BrowserStack's Responsive Checker to test how their website looks on a variety of devices, including well-known ones like the iPad Pro, iPhone X, and Galaxy Note 10.
This makes it easier to spot any rendering issues or inconsistent viewing across devices.
It is really easy to utilize this tool.
Firstly, you need to fill your website in and next, you must click the Check button after entering the target website's URL. After that, the webpage loads on many devices with distinct resolutions.
Source: BrowserStack
Further, you can also use mobile emulators and perform cloud storage mobile testing on real devices.
To ensure your website delivers a consistent user experience across various geographical regions, it's crucial to test it from different locations.
By using residential proxies, you can simulate browsing from specific countries or regions, allowing you to identify any localization issues, content restrictions, or performance variations.
Residential proxies offer IP addresses from actual devices, making your testing more authentic and reliable. This approach helps in understanding how your website behaves in diverse markets and ensures it meets the needs of your global audience effectively.
You can go a step further and use mobile proxies to not only geo-hop but also access mobile-only content. Mobile proxies use IPs issued by mobile carriers which makes them appear as real mobile users.
As we now know about how to do mobile web testing and its benefits, it also comes with some disadvantages.
However, web developers can surpass these limitations by taking more care and also using real devices in some instances and keeping most of the mobile testing through mobile web testing tools.
A limited environment is one of the most commonly experienced limitations when conducting mobile web testing because of the variations existing within different Operating System versions and network conditions that might cause inconvenience during the testing procedure.
The performance of different smartphones might cause differences in user experience leading to a lack of accuracy for the emulator trying to execute the mobile web testing procedure.
Real-time interactions and dynamic content might not be handled by emulators with the same accuracy as by real devices. A consumer would typically become disinterested in returning to a website or web app if the page loads slowly.
Accurately simulating real-world network variability in testing settings is difficult, as slow or unreliable connections can result in varying results regarding the testing procedure engaged by developers.
Here are some of the tools that can be used to conduct mobile web testing efficiently: Katalon, BrowserStack Platform, Cypress, and Selenium.
Katalon Platform is essential for executing web testing because it allows one to handle the following tasks on a single Katalon workspace, which serves as a comprehensive testing platform.
The main advantage of performing mobile web testing is that it’s 100% time and cost-efficient.
The top challenges you may experience are that mobile web testing will require a learning curve and also need investment if your web project is bigger. Also, along with new lines of code, you need to simultaneously check for bugs and errors.
For an effective mobile web testing strategy, you need to execute tests at several phases of development, such as penetration testing to mimic assaults from outside threats, dynamic application security testing (DAST) to find vulnerabilities at the source code level, and static code analysis to find vulnerabilities at the source code level.
Testing mobile websites has become an integral aspect of designing, developing, and testing websites. We thoroughly examined a few of the top tools for cross-browser testing, responsive web testing, and other tasks in this post.
While using mobile testing tools for efficiency, utilizing the potential provided by mobile emulators and actual mobile devices is crucial when it comes to testing your website for mobile users. Selecting the "best" strategy to conduct testing at scale is a crucial step after processing the testing blueprint and priorities.
Let me know in the comments section, which tool are you going to use for mobile testing?
Jatin Bansal is a blog artist and founder at Discoverthetech where he writes about Blogging, Digital marketing, SEO, Affiliate marketing, and Social marketing hence directing people to earn money online.
He is a young digital entrepreneur helping people and small businesses build their online presence and get brand authority online.