Importance of QA in App Development

Be it for enterprise or consumer use, mobile application development is escalating at a radical rate. This exponential growth in app market generates the need for stringent QA (Quality Assurance).

Role of a QA in Mobile Techs

QA has an indispensable power to find the pros and cons of an application that leads to improvements resulting in a great app for users across the globe. 

Things are streamlined  for making a product route with success for making a product route with success and maturity in today’s world, where comparison with competition exists.

Market Analysis & Customer views 

A Quality Analyst determined the market demand along with Business Analyser, Developers as well as Test managers to make a full-proof plan for the project execution. It is worth noting that the analysis is done based on the customers needs and concerns.

Technology vs Business

Mobile apps need to be tested in such conditions, that it is compatible to different environments along with UI’s and different devices with varying operating systems. While technology is way ahead of Business, still it is important to work along with it to show the perfect matching technology in day-to-day business life.

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance (QA) is a systematic process aimed at ensuring that the final product meets specified requirements and is free of defects. 

In the context of app development, QA involves various testing methods and practices designed to identify and fix bugs, ensure optimal performance, and enhance the overall user experience.

Why is QA Important in App Development?

7 Reasons Why QA is Important

  • Ensures Functionality and Performance

The primary goal of QA is to ensure that the app functions as intended. By conducting thorough testing, QA teams can identify and resolve functionality issues, ensuring that all features work correctly. 

Additionally, performance testing helps ascertain that the app runs smoothly under different conditions, such as varying user loads and network environments.

  • Enhances User Experience

A seamless and enjoyable user experience is critical for the success of any app. QA helps identify usability issues, ensuring that the app is intuitive and user-friendly. 

By addressing these issues before the app’s release, developers can enhance user satisfaction and increase the likelihood of positive reviews and high user retention rates.

  • Identifies and Fixes Bugs Early

Bugs are an inevitable part of software development. However, finding and fixing them early in the development process can save time and resources. 

QA involves continuous testing throughout the development lifecycle, allowing teams to detect and address bugs promptly. This proactive approach minimizes the risk of major issues arising during the app’s launch.

  • Improves Security

With the increasing number of cyber threats, ensuring the security of your app is more important than ever. QA includes security testing to identify vulnerabilities and ensure that sensitive user data is protected. 

By implementing robust security measures and conducting regular security audits, QA helps safeguard your app against potential breaches and builds user trust.

  • Compliance with Standards and Regulations

Different industries have specific standards and regulations that apps must comply with. 

QA teams ensure that the app adheres to these requirements, preventing legal issues and ensuring that the app can be used across different regions and sectors without any compliance-related hindrances.

  • Cost Efficiency

Investing in QA can lead to significant cost savings in the long run. 

Identifying and fixing issues during the development phase is much cheaper than addressing them after the app has been released. 

Additionally, a high-quality app is less likely to require extensive updates and fixes, reducing maintenance costs.

  • Boosts Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

An app that functions well and provides a great user experience is more likely to satisfy users and encourage loyalty. 

Satisfied users are more likely to recommend the app to others, leading to organic growth and a stronger user base. 

QA ensures that the app meets user expectations, fostering trust and long-term customer relationships.

QA Best Practices in App Development

QA Best Practices in App Development

  • Define Clear Requirements

Clearly defining the requirements and objectives of the app is crucial for effective QA. 

This includes functional specifications, performance benchmarks, security standards, and compliance requirements. 

Clear requirements provide a roadmap for QA teams, ensuring that all aspects of the app are thoroughly tested.

  • Implement Continuous Testing

Continuous testing involves integrating testing activities into every stage of the development process. 

By continuously testing the app, QA teams can identify and address issues as they arise, rather than waiting until the end of the development cycle. 

This approach leads to a more stable and reliable app.

  • Automate Where Possible

Automation can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of QA. 

Automated testing tools can handle repetitive and time-consuming tasks, allowing QA teams to focus on more complex issues. 

Automation also enables consistent and thorough testing, reducing the risk of human error.

  • Perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) involves real users testing the app to ensure it meets their needs and expectations. 

UAT provides valuable insights into how users interact with the app, identifying any usability issues or areas for improvement. 

Incorporating user feedback into the development process can lead to a more user-centric app.

  • Maintain Detailed Documentation

Maintaining detailed documentation of all testing activities, including test cases, results, and any issues identified, is essential for effective QA. 

Documentation provides a record of the app’s quality and helps identify patterns or recurring issues. 

It also facilitates communication and collaboration among development and QA teams.

Product Deliverance 

Quality doesn’t stop only at delivering things, but also post-delivery for making a perfect application in lieu with future aspects.


“Defects are not necessarily bugs and Bugs are not always defects.”

                                                                                       – Ref. from testfort.com

 

Mobile Quality Assurance

Modern day businesses need mobile technologies to improve efficiency and stay afloat in the market. However, in a fast-changing mobile environment, application testing must be addressed instantly to ensure that your business remains agile; productivity is increased without affecting time with increase in profit margin and customer satisfaction.


The real challenges are in mobile application testing. If, you have some challenges to address, share with us and our QA experts will sort it out for you.

Andolasoft’s QA team extends innovative approach and relaxed way to build an app to give you awesome mobile experience. From E-commerce to native mobile apps, we have done it all.

Andolasoft titled as the best Mobile App Development Company by Mashable.

Talk to us for professional QA or App Development Support or both. We’re here to help you and be your partner in building powerful apps that would take your business a leap higher.

7 Most Useful Mobile Analytics Apps For Businesses

Does my app have an adequate ROI (return on investment) for my overall campaign? Which tactics are reaping the highest returns? If you can’t answer these questions with hard data, then it’s virtually impossible to build a successful marketing campaign. Without in-depth Mobile Analytics it’s difficult to understand, which content and/or functionality customers respond to.

These Analytics Apps are very powerful tools for webmasters that enables to track traffic and visitors.

Analytics will help define a measurable goal, also to analyze and improve the performance of a mobile app that drives valuable conversions.

Today we are going to discuss about some of the best analytical tools for tracking user data in an application;

1. Analytics Pro:

A wonderful Google Analytics app for iPhone. If you run a website and have installed Google Analytics on it, this tool helps you keep track of your stats.

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2. Quicklytics:

A pretty attractive iPhone application for Google Analytics. It displays the most important numbers from your account in an easy-to-follow fashion.

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3. Dashboard for Google Analytics:

The analytics platform, shows your visitors, page views, visits, and conversions. It shows you whether you are on track with your daily efforts. It lets you connect to multiple Google Analytics accounts.

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4. Woopra:

Woopra is an amazing web tracking and analytics application. This app, showcases how people interact with your website at any given moment.

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5. Flurrylitics:

Lets you to access all of your analytics data along with great visualizations – charts, maps, trendlines and more.It supports multiple companies, events and event parameters as well as other metrics.

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6. HootSuite:

HootSuite is very popular app for Twitter or Social Media Analysts. This app helps manage your social media accounts on the go and keep track of how people interact with your links, images or/and tweets.

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7. Roambi – Visualizer:

Free, powerful app for enterprise as well as for small businesses that lets you access your company reports on the go. It works with many data sources such as Excel, Docs, SalesForce.com, and SAP.

Roambi – Visualizer-1Roambi – Visualizer-2Roambi – Visualizer-3

Andolasoft: named best mobile app development company by Mashable.

Analytics can help you realize the entire user experience of your mobile app – from detection to download to engagement.

Andolasoft helps you to create custom made mobile applications, through data-driven decisions at each stage of the customized app life cycle.

You can create an app experience that is more useful and engaging for the users and overall marketing strategy.

Our experts’ @Andolasoft can help you to deliver smart mobile app solutions for your business that standout flawlessly in the market. We’d love to help & work with you. Talk to us.

Top 5 Security Guides for your Rails App

Security has been a major issue for the sensitive information and classified data that are shared over internet with the help of web applications.  Let’s have a quick understanding – what attackers do and how they do it. We’re sure the quickies below will help to make your Rails app more secure and stealthier.

1. Sessions

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In networking “Sessions” indicates the time of browsing a website by a user. Without sessions the user would have no identity, so you/user have to authenticate on every request.

There are several ways in which hackers use sessions to exploit sensitive information, such as Session Hijacking, Replay Attack, Session Fixation and Session Expiry.

Rails create a new/ fake session when a new user accesses the application and loads the existing session if the user has already used the same. Many storage mechanisms are provided in Rails for session hashes, the most important of them is ActionDispacth::Session::Cookie Store. Another way is to set the expiry time-stamp of the cookie with the session id. Here is an example:

class Session <ActiveRecord::Base

defself.sweep (time = 1.hour) iftime.is_a?(String)

time = time.split.inject { |count, unit| count.to_i.send(unit)

end

delete_all “updated_at< ‘#{time.ago.to_s(:db)}'”

end

end

2. Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

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When the user authenticates a malicious code or a link in a page which access a web application, it is Cross-Site Request Forgery known as CSRF. If the session for that application is still active, the application becomes vulnerable, as any attacker may execute unauthorized commands.

To prevent CSRF attacks, you should use GET and POST method appropriately. Rails use a hidden _method to handle additional HTTP verbs such as PUT, PATCH and DELETE. A required security token has introduced to protect against all other forged requests.

            protect_from_forgery with: :exception

This includes a security token in all forms and Ajax requests generated by Rails automatically. An exception will be thrown if the security token doesn’t match.

3. Redirection and Files

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This process involves redirection of user to a fake web application which looks and feels exactly like the original application. Then the attackers can get the information about the user or can originate a self-contained attack. This can be prevented using a legacy action:

def legacy

redirect_to(params.update(action:’main’))

end

When uploading a file, make sure not to overwrite important files and process the media file asynchronously. The file should be saved and processing request in the database should be scheduled. Users should be restricted not to download arbitrary files. File name like “../../../etc/passwd” can download server’s login information. Rails make it possible to check that the requested file is in the expected directory.

basename = File.expand_path(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), ‘../../files’))

filename = File.expand_path(File.join(basename, @file.public_filename))

raise if basename !=

File.expand_path(File.join(File.dirname(filename), ‘../../../’))

send_file filename, disposition: ‘inline’

4. Injection

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Injection is a class of attacks that uses injection of data in to a web application in order to facilitate the execution of harmful data in an unexpected manner. This includes Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL injection, CSS Injection, Command Line injection, Header injection.

Rails provide some helper methods to prevent SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting. There is a method called sanitize() as a model for whitelist CSS filter, this can be used as a countermeasure of CSS injection. You should update the Rails version to 2.1.2 to prevent header injection.

5. Denial of Service: DOS

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DOS, and DDOS attacks are not going to steal your data or spread malware. They just want to shut you down. DDOS is crude but effective. To mount a distributed denial of service attack, just call up 500 of your closest friends, have them appraise to amnesty international’s website and keep pressing refresh for an hour. Bots can be substituted for friends.

This blog explains five important vulnerabilities and how to protect against them. However, there are lots of other things you need to know when developing Rails app that are not covered here, so make sure you get the escapes and proofing’s from @Andolasoft. We use Ruby on Rails as a core technology for delivering high quality secured web apps. We develop and maintain code base, use many technologies to protect you from hackers.

Do you have something to add up? Please drop in your comments below or talk to us.

Mobile Apps Usage Statistics and Amazing Trends

As of 2015, more than 100 billion mobile apps have been downloaded from the Apple App Store. Mobile experts believe that there will be a 30% – 40% increase in this number by the end of 2016.

Explore the dynamics of mobile media consumption, audiences, and user habits to understand what’s behind this surge in mobile activity, and how mobile app developer, publishers and advertisers can take advantage.

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It’s now a question of using the statistics to understand how consumers behave when using different types of mobile applications and devices with their preferences, as shown in the figure below.

(Courtesy: ComScore)

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Let’s take a look at the graph below to understand the rise in consumer and company acceptance of mobile apps. The exploding 332% increase in growth of personalized app downloading (in 2015) makes it clear that app structuring and engagement in 2016 is going take giant and phenomenal figure.

(Courtesy: Statista)

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User Trends ’2016

  1. 1.91 billion users have smartphones out of the billions of global mobile users.
  2. Number will reach 2 billion by next year and that by 2018 – almost 50% of the world’s mobile users will have a smartphone. (Courtesy: Emarketer)
  3. In fact, there are nearly as many active mobile social accounts in the world — 1.68 billion — as many number of smartphones (Courtesy: We Are Social)
  4. Mobile users worldwide are also watching mobile video at a greater clip than ever. In fact, mobile video accounted for 55% of mobile data usage by the end of 2014 (Courtesy: Cisco ‘15 Mobile Forecast).
  5. Due to the fact that 65% of the world’s population are visual learners, video — especially mobile video — is more critical than ever to capture customers’ attention.
  6. As old-fashioned as search might seem to some, 80% of Internet users use smartphones to search the Web.
  7. Mobile users find your business online have nearly three times more conversion ratio.
  8. Even more astonishing is the fact that 52% of Americans user their devices while browsing in-store in order to research the product online.
  9. 40% of shoppers consult 3 or more channels (often while shopping) before making a purchase.
  10. 4 out of 5 consumers use smartphones to shop. Smart retailers are recognizing this trend and incentivizing the usage of mobile phones.

Last, but not least, there is still advertising to be done on mobile devices — and lots of it. In fact, according to eMarketer, mobile ad spend will touch $100 billion worldwide by 2016.

Andolasoft is an invaluable partner for us a startup. The team is great to work with and the projects are delivered in a timely fashion. I know that I can rely on Andolasoft for future projects because of the depth of resources/skills that they offer.

Adler Camacho

USA

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Our experts’ @Andolasoft can help you to deliver smart solutions for your business that standout in the market.