Over the past few years, the utilization of mobile devices for internet access has surged significantly, with smartphones now dominating the market share over desktop computers in terms of internet usage, as highlighted by a report from Statista indicating that 50.4% of global online traffic originates from mobile internet usage. This trend is poised to continue its upward trajectory in the foreseeable future, as is evident from the escalating mobile data traffic.
Achieving this necessitates thorough mobile website testing to ensure responsiveness across a spectrum of smartphones and tablets, which poses challenges for developers, given the diverse array of devices available in the market.
Today, we will explore the most effective methods for online responsive tests across mobile devices and discuss best practices to test sites on mobile.
Why Perform Mobile Website Testing?
Test mobile websites to ensure that they are responsive on different smartphones.
Enhanced Accessibility: A mobile-friendly site ensures that any mobile browser can access it, including those on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. Google also prioritizes mobile-friendly sites in its ranking algorithm, which boosts visibility on search engines, attracts more visitors, and fosters business growth.
Device Compatibility: Testing mobile websites ensures compatibility with major mobile devices and optimal performance on targeted platforms. It is important to test functionality on different devices to provide a seamless experience for users.
Improved Discoverability: Google prefers mobile websites. A mobile-friendly website will increase its discoverability in search engines. The widespread availability of mobile phones makes browsing the internet easier, increasing the chances of users finding your website easily.
Speed and precision: Mobile devices’ convenience and speed make them the preferred choice for online activities. To meet users’ demand for instant access, mobile websites, and responsive tests are necessary to ensure fast and accurate performance.
Enhance User Experience: Mobile-friendly sites offer an improved user experience than desktop websites by optimally presenting content on small devices. This attracts not only more users but also builds trust and loyalty.
Aesthetic Appeal: Testing responsiveness on mobile devices ensures your website looks great and encourages repeat visits to access valuable information or services.
How To Perform Mobile Web Testing?
Checking a website’s mobile view is straightforward, thanks to the array of developers’ tools available for this purpose. For instance, Google provides several tools tailored for assessing the mobile view of a website. These tools facilitate mobile website testing and provide valuable insights into necessary improvements and implementation strategies.
Given the vast array of mobile phones available, conducting manual testing on each device is impractical. Moreover, smartphones exhibit diverse characteristics such as screen sizes, viewports, pixel densities, and network speeds. Thus, comprehensive testing must address these disparities and achieve the desired outcomes. How can you optimize your mobile website testing to yield maximum results?
Here are some ways to test site on mobile:
1) LT Browser for Responsive Testing
If you’re seeking a platform to test a web app across various mobile devices, LT Browser emerges as an outstanding mobile-friendly checker. Tailored for developers, it’s a desktop browser offering responsive testing across over 300 device resolutions. Its primary aim is to enable developers to assess a website’s mobile view, ensuring responsiveness across diverse mobile screen sizes.
LT Browser is a next-generation browser that empowers developers to construct, test, and debug contemporary websites and web apps. Its diverse range of features positions it as one of the premier tools for mobile website testing. The LT browser facilitates live interactive testing of web apps, allowing users to simultaneously assess responsiveness across different smartphones in a side-by-side view.
How Helpful Is LT Browser In Mobile Website Testing?
LT Browser provides a competitive advantage through its array of state-of-the-art features. It offers multiple avenues to enhance the overall mobile view of the website, making it more attractive and accessible, such as:
- To ensure complete responsiveness, enable side-by-side comparison of website mobile views across various mobiles and tablets.
- Provides mirrored interaction functionality for quick comparison of mobile website views.
- Facilitates adding custom devices to suit specific requirements if the desired device is not listed.
- Includes built-in developer tools to streamline the debugging process for swift issue resolution.
- Ideal for responsive testing of locally hosted websites using just the localhost URL.
- It comes with an integrated image editor for highlighting bugs using customizable markers.
- Simplifies report and bug-sharing process with colleagues through single-click sharing.
- Records the entire test session into a single video for easy team access.
With LT Browser for mobile website testing, comprehensive testing needs are met without requiring additional methods. However, LambdaTest provides a cloud-based platform for testing across over 3000 browsers and operating systems for diverse testing requirements, such as cross-browser testing for web apps.
2) iOS and Android Emulator
Software emulators remain one of the easiest methods for testing a website’s mobile view. They enable the same software and applications as the original device without modifications while highlighting differences between duplicate systems.
While iOS and Android emulators mac are primarily intended for testing native apps, they can also serve to test the mobile version of your website in default browsers. This offers a useful approximation of how your website appears across built-in browsers, aiding in identifying compatibility or cross-browser issues. The iOS simulator is available as an in-built utility within Xcode, downloadable from the Mac App Store. To access the simulator, follow the steps outlined below:
- To begin, acquire Xcode from the Mac App Store. Then, within the Xcode menu, navigate to Xcode, select “Open Developer Tool,” and proceed to choose iOS Simulator. It’s important to note that Xcode is exclusive to Mac operating systems, limiting web app testing to iOS devices. For testing Windows apps, utilize the Windows Phone Emulator, offering a comprehensive SDK, diverse screen resolutions, and screenshot tools.
- For Android device testing, consider downloading the Android Studio emulator. This tool allows for the creation of virtual mobile devices to test Android applications and mobile websites. Integrated within the Android SDK package, the Android Studio emulator seamlessly functions across Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. Additionally, explore online APK emulators for further website testing on Android devices.
3) Test on Real Devices
The most effective method for mobile website testing involves testing it on real devices, as emulators or developer tools may not cover all scenarios. Factors such as pixel densities, diverse network conditions, actual page loading speed, and other elements contribute to the user experience and can be accurately assessed only on real devices.
Certainly, manually testing a web app across every device is challenging and requires a significant investment of resources and time. Alternatively, consider utilizing a mobile device test suite comprising popular mobile web browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Mozilla, among others. This approach enables testing under real-world conditions and yields the accurate results desired.
If a mobile device test suite doesn’t suit your preferences, you can choose an automated mobile testing tool. These tools are tailored to efficiently test web apps across various smartphones and browsers.
4) Validate HTML and CSS Code
For a comprehensive analysis of a web app’s functionality across all platforms, it’s advisable to validate the HTML and CSS code of your website. Utilizing open-source tools like the W3C MobileOK Checker facilitates the validation process, offering a web-based automated tool to assess your site’s compatibility across mobile devices. With numerous test scenarios, it evaluates the user-friendliness of your website.
Another option is the Google Chrome Developer Tool, which provides assistance in addressing minor HTML and CSS issues. This tool enables quick testing of your website’s behavior across different screen sizes, load times, and network conditions.
Best Practices For Mobile Website Testing
Now that you know how to test your mobile website across different phones, let’s talk about making the process more efficient. Before diving in, consider these practices to ensure successful mobile website testing:
1. Set clear business requirements and stakeholder expectations to maximize results.
2. Define which devices and mobile browsers you’ll test for website responsiveness.
3. Prioritize browsers based on user patterns, traffic, and availability.
4. Include less commonly used browsers in your testing.
5. Develop a testing strategy to maintain quality and consistency.
6. Consider the time needed to test all application modules on various devices.
7. Thoroughly validate each screen size and navigation flow.
8. Customize breakpoints based on content and design.
9. Anticipate changes during sprints and update test cases accordingly.
10. Test website performance across different network speeds to gauge scalability and adaptiveness.
By following these practices, you can conduct successful mobile testing for your website. To streamline the process, test your mobile websites and apps on online mobile emulators for browsers.
End Note
We can’t ignore the reality that mobile phones are now users’ primary means of internet access, chosen for their accessibility and convenience. Therefore, businesses need to ensure their web apps are mobile-friendly. This involves conducting mobile website testing across different smartphones and tablets to guarantee desired results. We trust this blog has outlined effective methods for testing web apps across mobile devices. It’s time to put them into practice!