Up until recently, there was a major lack of information when it came to testing websites on mobile devices. Mobile is not just a small phone any more – there are many types of handheld devices which allow users to view online content in very different ways. Some are browsers, others are not and require a very specific type of website to work well. In the last few years, more and more people are accessing websites from their mobile devices. How does this affect you as a developer? Should you start testing your websites on mobile browsers? Or should you ignore them?
Over 50% of website traffic and more than half of all e-commerce transactions now come from mobile devices, nevertheless testing mobile applications is still an issue. Since the emergence of mobile devices and apps, there has been a shift in how people access websites. You may have seen sites having a different layout or do not exist on a mobile device. Google recommends testing your site for all devices to avoid negative SEO and to improve your content structure. With the growth of smartphones and tablets, it’s important that your websites work effectively on mobile. If your website does not provide a user-friendly experience on the smaller devices, then you are unlikely to convert an adequate amount of users. Mobile devices are generally used as a “point and click” tool by consumers, so accessing your website should be easy to use. Today we are counting down 11 excellent tools for performance testing of your mobile websites.
- LT Browser
LT Browser is a professional desktop based tool for web developers. It loads instantly and enables you to build and test responsive websites on 50+ resolutions with one click. It is an amazing forward-looking browser for developers and marketers that lets you remotely test your website on all popular mobile devices and screen resolutions.
With LT Browser users will be able to perform the below actions with ease:
- Test and debug on 50+ device resolutions or create your own device
- Test on two different devices simultaneously for side by side comparison
- Improve your website performance with help of google light house based reports
- Mark bugs and share them with team via one click bug logging feature
- Test your website performance on different network conditions
- TestComplete
With TestComplete’s UI automation technology, you can now test all the aspects of your app for bugs and issues. It’s possible to test multiple mobile devices like Android or iOS devices, rerun your tests in fast cycles, and use scripts in any popular programming languages. TestComplete, developed by SmartBear Software focuses on cross-platform testing for hybrid and native apps. It automates the testing suite, which is used to verify that a product or service is fit for use. Extremely reliable and compatible with most languages and platforms, TestComplete can be tested on Android and iOS devices. In short, it is a cross-platform automated testing toolkit that provides professional test automation capabilities to reduce time spent on testing by up to 70%. With TestComplete’s powerful features, you can emulate user interaction in your mobile or web applications and perform regression testing faster than you ever thought possible.
- Calabash
Calabash is an open-source test automation framework used to perform automated functional testing for native mobile apps. It comes with two open-source libraries for both Android and iOS devices. It is a tool that can be used to perform automated functional testing for native mobile apps. Calabash delivers accurate real-user performance and an exceptional testing process. It comes with two libraries for Android and iOS, making it easy to run cross-platform tests in your development workflow. It integrates with popular tools like Appium, XCTest, and Google Cloud Test Lab.
- WebLoad
WebLoad is currently available to around 50 virtual devices. It enables you to do a stress test to let you know of the device’s performance. The tool also comes with an application that helps in recording scripts directly from a mobile device. WebLoad is the fastest, cheapest, and most flexible mobile software stress test platform. WebLoad offers universal testing for iOS and Android apps. It is a load testing software to test usability and find issues that arise when performing web-application testing. It provides the ability to quickly record scripts by using an android device. It operates by simulating different kinds of users like bots, browsers, humans etc. WebLoad is the first-of-its-kind load testing platform, offering highly available, low-configuration, and free cloud-based mobile performance testing to help mobile app developers catch performance problems early.
- iOS Driver
The iOS Driver is an authentication tool that’s designed for a specific kind of device. It used to run exclusively on emulators, but new versions run the tool more efficiently on devices as well. But, when you’re trying to authenticate something, the previous versions were at least twice as fast on emulators as they are on devices. It’s a simple but effective tool with which a developer can run a series of tests on his or her application before releasing the final version. The iOS Driver helps you connect your iPhone to the emulator. It is compatible with all the latest versions of Windows as well as Mac operating systems. With iOS Driver, you can practically test the performance of any mobile application on actual mobile devices that are connected to the machine on which the testing is being performed.
- Robotium
Robotium is a test automation framework for Android applications. It tests applications on native and hybrid technology stacks. It supports all versions of Android. Robotium can also be used to write functions, test scenarios, and systems.Robotium is a test automation framework for native and hybrid Android applications written in Java. It allows you to write test cases with functions, then records and plays them back on devices or emulators. Robotium is designed to take over the drudgery of repetitive tasks in android testing. It’s perfect for creating, modifying, and running your test cases on both native and hybrid applications.
- Silk Mobile
Silk Mobile is an automated functional testing tool from Borland that provides comprehensive support for mobile applications across a wide spectrum of operating systems, including Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and HTML 5. Deployed in both production and non-production environments, Silk Mobile is the perfect way to test your mobile applications. It covers all major operating systems and provides you with the best optimized testing experience. Silk Mobile allows you to test your mobile applications and provides mobile app testing solutions. It offers remote and on premise solutions so that you can choose the solution that is best suited for your development environment. Silk Mobile abstracts both hardware, like multiple screen sizes and network speeds across mobile platforms, and configuration details to provide you with a platform to build and test your applications. It’s easy to set up, compatible with most popular development tools, and ensures that apps run well on the many different mobile devices in use today.
- Monkey Runner
Monkey Runner enables developers to execute test cases on real devices connected to a PC or emulators. The tool has an API, which allows controlling a smartphone, a tablet or an emulator from outside of Android code. It is an Android testing tool that allows comprehensive testing of apps on real devices or emulators. It’s the best way to ensure your app works the same way for all users and gives you total control of your devices, so you can quickly find bugs. There are more than 2 billion Android-based phones in the world, and it’s only growing. The power of this market is astounding, but so is the fragmentation of the ecosystem. If you want a clean, modern user experience, fitting all the device variants out there, you need to QA it on real devices. MonkeyRunner allows you to do just that from the comfort of your PC.
- Automator (Mac)
The Automator is a software application developed by Apple. It is used to execute workflows for automating repetitive tasks involving files, applications, and folders without any human intervention. Automator can create workflows for automating repetitive tasks into batches in Apple OS X. These automate file operations to enable easier repetitive alteration of files. Automator is designed to streamline repetitive tasks and processes and create powerful workflows with just a few clicks or drags. Save time, reduce errors, and accelerate productivity with this performance testing tool. Automator speeds up repetitive tasks and lets you focus on the work that needs your attention.
- Responsinator
The Responsinator is a web testing tool that records videos of your website to analyze its responsiveness. It detects if it has the right scrollbars, icons and other features needed for various devices and screen resolutions. Its interface is extremely simple, as it allows you to interact with your page just by clicking on links or inputs. Responsinator is a lightweight and robust frontend tool to detect and debug responsive design issues. Test your website, monitor changes in real time, and fix faulty gutters instantly. Responsinator is a tool for testing your responsive websites, and how well they resize and adapt to different devices. It allows you to easily view your website using Responsinator’s pre-defined device sets (iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, etc), or simply test responsive web pages in various screen sizes.
- Chrome DevTools Device Mode
The DevTools Device Mode is a tool for the Chrome browser that allows you to see your site like a user does. It enables you to view how a website looks on multiple devices, including Retina displays. Besides, the tool offers various functionalities that allow simulating device inputs within the emulator. The tool also provides emulation for some device inputs, such as taps and gestures. Besides, the tool offers various functionalities that allow simulating device inputs within the emulator. The tool also provides emulation for some device inputs, such as taps and gestures. You can emulate device inputs like touch and location, switch between portrait and landscape orientation, view your site in a desktop browser window or on a mobile device in full screen mode, and even examine your page’s use of device pixels with the Page Inspector. With DevTools’ Device Mode, you can debug how your site, app or other web content looks and performs across desktop browsers and mobile devices.