July, 2015

What Goes Wrong When You Forget About Testing? Part 2. Post-release

Published: 30.07.2015 | 3272

So, you have developed a program and decided to launch it as quickly as possible, without bothering about testing. However, something went wrong. Surprise! Or not, because we told that it might happen in a previous article. Now the problems make everybody anxious and get in your way to the devoted fans and excess profit.

Of course, not all the bugs are critical and immediately noticeable to your end users. But the market doesn’t tolerate any “undercooked” software products, and any fail could be the last for the project.

Gorden doesn't approve your undercooked apps and websites!

The Murphy’s Law says, “Anything that can, could have, or will go wrong, is going wrong, all at once”.

And what can bring your product down? Let’s not make wild guesses and consider the most common problems that arise in applications, sites and developers’ mood after the release.

Problem 1. Paralyzed Website

The site may serve you both as a direct and indirect source of earnings. And the more complex structure you build (e.g. forum, online store, social media, travel agency), the more potential problems you have.

What Can Go Wrong?

  • Falling & Failing Website. Oh, it acts like an old novel’s damsel permanently blushing and falling into a swoon. It just doesn’t load, and that means someone forgot about the performance testing. Tut-tut!

If the user is searching for information, he needs it instantly. When you put any word or link in the browser, you naturally expect the instant result, not a time travel to the dial-up era. We bet you remember the rage from this endless loading of your favorite news website or social media!

Infinite loading is a bummer, so test your app or site thoroughtly!

We can be quite forgiving, when our beloved pages crash. However, when it comes to searching for a new service provider or clicking the link of the online store, the user won’t be that kind meeting a mistake message or even a blank space. You’ll just form an opinion in your head about the unprofessional approach to this website and whole business in general. Of course, the client encountered a problematic website, won’t knock in your door to purchase something.

  • Unhappy Users. The number of daily, weekly, monthly page views with statistics on country, gender and other categories fitting your business is available through both internal and external analytic tools.

Say you haven’t checked the functionality and interface of your website. And if the user can’t figure out how to use it, he’ll just get flustered and hardly return. For instance, you’ve got a large online store with loads of cool stuff your user has dreamt about like forever.

However, he can’t purchase any of these goodies: doesn’t understand how to do it, doesn’t see the shopping cart icon (because he can’t recognize the cart in this picture) or for some other reason (it’s an uncountable set of them, trust us). He will write to you via the feedback form/mail or silently leave. It's sad, because he could bring profit to you and get some happiness himself!

  • High Bounce Rate. The more unhappy users you have (see as above), the higher your bounce rate would be and the harder it would be to take the lead in the search results. To understand exactly the causes of these fails, the website should be tested.

Problems may hide everywhere, be aware of that!

The problem may be lurking in everything from the design and site navigation to the tracking code misuse. Bug fixing is a much faster process than the collection or restitution of the dedicated customers’ active base.

Problem 2. Awkward App

Here we are talking about the full-fledged mobile apps testing. You product may seem beautiful, comfortable, understandable to you. Fine. But if your app’s wonders are poorly displayed and it crashes, suffers the infinite loading troubles, can’t get online – no one is interested in how good it all looked on the promo screens!

What Can Go Wrong?

It’s not wise to assume about the UX of the product on your own feelings. As you know where buttons, links and all the navigation elements should be, it’s obvious to your eyes. But the user:

  • Can’t natively use the apps’ interface – all these gestures and swipes are new to him, and you didn’t provide any simple tips to ease up the experience.
  • Doesn’t understand the functionality of the product: it’s either excessive or doesn’t cover the basic user needs.
  • Isn’t able to tap the icon the icon because it’s too small, etc.

Teach your software good manners through testing, or it will scare all your users away!

Simple examples, but such little things are enough to infuriate even the most adequate person. He’ll delete your app and forget it for good. Or...

“Developers, come on! Fix the stupid stuff I paid for! I can’t save my photos, it crashes all the time! Give me my money back!” – You surely won’t enjoy this “warm” feedback and another 25 of his twin brothers in the App Store or Google Play.

We don’t take into account the people who can write something like that just to troll you or due to mood swings. But if you checked your Android or iOS app properly, it won’t be a problem to competently respond even to such reviews.

And if you think it’s easy to override the fair negative words with your beautiful paid lines, think again. At best, you’ll just get a set-down from the store and ruin your mood, and at worst – you’ll get your release account blocked. You understand what that means:

Untested App + Bad Reviews + Fake Reviews = Poor Rating = Less Installs = Low Profit.

3. The Product’s Vulnerability

Other things being equal, one of the biggest danger with the insufficient testing (or its absence) is, in our opinion, the product’s vulnerability. Any project is risky anyway, but it’s not a good idea to jeopardize your users’ data security. Let’s look at the situation from the user’s point of view.

Even a simple theft of data such as login, email, password or phone number on your website is a big deal. And what about the universal apps, where the users often store everything personal from their e-tickets to passport scans and working papers? All this stuff “lives” on your servers, and happy users don’t suspect that for some reason you still haven’t tested the security of your wonderful product.

What Can Go Wrong?

It’s so much easier to prevent any fail than to deal with its consequences. If you are hacked – good-bye reputation, farewell dear users, let’s smile and wave to your profit!

You can only smile and wave if your app's security failed!

Any project can suffer without the security testing. Of course, the worst outcome is waiting the banking service. It is better to disappear from all the radars immediately, as the loss of money won’t be ever forgiven. However, even the game, social media, online store and corporate website altogether have to pass the vulnerability tests.

If you don’t test the resistance to Dos/DDos attacks, the unplanned load and large amounts of data can permanently disable your service. Without the properly distributed access control, the unauthorized users would be able to do restricted things on the site, such as viewing the other users’ personal information. Anarchy, chaos and revolution.

Be sure to test the product’s integration with the third-party services such as payment systems and social networks, as for in case of the malfunctions you either lose profit or reduce your social-driven traffic.

Let's Sum Up

With the quick and professional assistance, any project is revivable with small losses, but we can’t completely remove them from the equation. One way or another, you have to pay for mistakes with money, reputation or both. Therefore, carefully consider how, what and when will you test. And let your project bring you only high profit!