Every business needs a lifeline to stand firm among other strong competitors and one of the ways is by keeping up to trends through social media channels. For such reasons and several others, social media has evolved to become one of the top or most sorted lifelines for businesses.
With the use of social media, people and businesses can do and achieve a lot, including scaling of communication, offering customer care services, connecting with people and just having fun.
These are of course, good reasons why social media applications must be built to offer the best for its users hence the need to test social media applications at an early stage before the launch to users. But wait, there is one more very important reason for social media app testing; security risks.
As social media users onboard on the app, they engage in serious and casual interactions with businesses and people from different geographic locations, backgrounds and timezones. In the course of doing all of these, sensitive data are exchanged and stored. This raises concern for security risks and it is only by ensuring that you properly test your social media application that you may efficiently deal with such risks.
We have taken our time to put this blog together in order to help you understand what social media testing entails, get the real reasons to perform social media app testing, how to test your social media application and other important aspects to know.
So let us dive right into the topic, shall we?
What is Social Media App Testing?
Social media applications are software applications that are created to connect people and businesses together. With the app, users can easily sign up or log in to connect with friends and family, as well as government agencies, companies and corporations. Social media app allow people to easily meet new people online, including celebrities who also make use of the platform.
Social media apps are built for different purposes and usually very mobile friendly. But some of them can also work on laptops and desktop computers.
Experts who test social media applications follow testing processes to check for quality, functionalities, compatibility issues and performance on the target app. Performing social media app testing allows testers and the development team to identify and fix the issues found, thereby, allowing the social media app to offer seamless experience to users when finally launched and over time.
Why is it Important to Test Social Media Application?
The world is moving too fast, especially with the way technology and its implementation in businesses, and people’s lives is also quickly expanding. Business environments are no longer very traditional as they used to be because there are many technological tools out there for automating and augmenting different processes of operations. Social media is one of those important tools.
Social media helps businesses to easily reach their target audience because most mobile users are also social media users. You need to regularly perform social media app testing to ensure that your app’s content, features and functionalities are reaching the right people and serving them as they ought to at the right time.
There are many important reasons and benefits you stand to gain when you test your social media application. Let us look at them in this section.
Test Social Media Application to Measure Effectiveness
One of the benefits of testing social networking apps is that it allows you to properly measure how effective social media campaigns are. By these words, we mean social media app testing allows you to measure the impact of lead creation, network expansion, social media relevance, how much traffic you can drive to your business or personal website from the social network and the numbers of followers who have subscribed to your business.
Test Social Media Application to Identify Issues At an Early Stage
Another benefit of social media app testing is how you can use the process to identify vulnerabilities, weaknesses, errors and bugs on the app as well as fixing those issues at the right time before they cost you too much in the later stage of the business. If you perform the act of testing social networking apps at an early stage of the development life cycle, you will be lucky enough to prevent a lot of future troubles with the app’s function.
Test Social Media App to Fix Security Issues
It is very unwise and too dangerous to just build a social media app and put it out in the market without doing any social media application quality assurance test. Privacy and security are very important in today’s world, especially when it comes to your users/customers, so, you need to ensure you perform the required social media app testing for security checks and fixing to ensure the cybersecurity of your users and other sensitive data that should never fall into the wrong hands.
Test Social Media Application to Identify and Fix Web Design Issues
The benefits of social media quality assurance testing extends to offering developers a more effective way to identify and fix web design related issues on the app. During social media app testing, the testers may identify some errors or design flaws which will affect the aesthetic value of your social media design and user experience if not quickly fixed.
Having identified such a design flaw, they will write a comprehensive report on the issues and pass the report down to the right teams for fixing. Doing this will ensure your users enjoy a flawless app and also have enhanced experience using your social media application for businesses and other engagements.
Test Social Media Application to Fix Branding Related Issues
The last benefit on our radar on the need to test your social media application is how it will help you to easily fix any issues that may have negative effects on your branding. Branding is very important in every business because it accounts for the trustworthiness of the business.
When you invest in testing social media apps against any branding related issue, it will help you to keep your app design in tandem with your original design and overall marketing strategies.
What Are Ways to Test Social Media Applications?
There are several ways to test social media applications but whichever method of testing you settle on using depends on your testing goals and the purpose of the social media app. Remember that, generally, social media apps have numerous features and functionalities and following the right processes for testing social networking apps will require expert inputs. In other words, it will be best to employ social media app testers with good experience, and testing skill sets that conform to best practices to test your app.
Expert social media app testers will help you to follow the right testing steps/processes. With that said, here are the ways to test social media applications.
Perform Social Media App Testing With Enterprise Software Testing:
Since the world is connected by the internet and social media networks systems stand in as the lifelines, you can only be right to say that social media users are very large and it will require very good testing efforts to properly test the apps. A good suggestion is that you should employ social media application quality assurance experts who are familiar with using high-end enterprise tools for the job.
Enterprise software testing is a procedure that is perfect for testing the social media app’s functionality, integration testing, compatibility testing, exploratory testing, and regression testing. Enterprise Software testing services may also involve security testing, performance and usability testing.
You may need to also make sure they have the following testing deliverables for you before you hire them.
- Defect tracking log in a defect tracking system (you may recommend your preferred system)
- Regular test cases execution reports
- They can come up with a comprehensive testing report
- They have a rich test suite (a rich test suite comprises of usability, functional, regression, integration and compatibility testing)
- Develop realistic and useful KPIs that are very related to your social media app testing needs and goals
If you want the greatest social networking application, you should employ an enterprise software testing company/tester to handle your social media app testing.
Web 2.0 testing:
Web 2.0 testing is another way to test social media applications because it deals with online applications including social media apps.
Web 2.0 testing is excellent for testing the dynamics and usability of social media apps. Using this social media app testing technique, you can easily identify and fix compatibility issues and ensure they conform with the best practices and standards. Web 2.0 testing also ensures that your social media app works seamlessly on different operating systems and major mobile devices; Android and Apple.
Web 2.0 can pass for one of the methods of your social media application quality assurance tests to help you have deeper knowledge on how your app works and the areas you need to work on. Web 2.0 testing play very crucial role in testing social networking apps on different devices just to ascertain that they are compatible.
SaaS Testing:
You can test social media applications using the SaaS testing methods. SaaS stands for software as a service. Many social media network services conform to the SaaS paradigm and would be best if they adopt the SaaS testing model.
In your social media app testing toolkits, ensure you include the SaaS technique and here is why; it costs relatively low to perform and it offers you a different type of users which you can use to improve your app performance.
With SaaS testing, you can test to see if you may use your social media app to properly monitor campaigns and use the data to make the best modifications or changes.
Web Analytics Testing:
You already know that a large population of the world are on social media. This already means social media is a place where large exchange of data takes place so it is best to make use of data analytics to collect your app data, analyse and put together a comprehensive report that will be useful to your user engagement goals.
Web analytics is used for online activities like if you want to know where most of your users are logging on from. Your social media app has the most popular pages as well as the best contents.
User Acceptance Testing
User Acceptance testing is deployed in social media app testing to determine how much your app design attracts users. It also has a way of testing the functionality of your social media app.
When you engage in performing a test on your social media application, you will need to employ a small group of testers by signing up and assigning them a testing role on your site.
That way you have the opportunity to monitor their testing progress, challenges and ways forward
Content Management testing:
Have you heard about the content management testing technique? It is actually meant to keep acceptance of the app in tact. It does this by ensuring that the social media app will promote certain content because it is designed and built for those content.
While doing content management testing, ensure you draft out what you need and have them in place.Test different sites and posts using the best testing environment. You must also choose the frequency of your mobile app testing and the amount of data you intend using Next is to apply the testing on the app
SEO testing:
Social media app testing deals with SEO techniques as well so you need to test social media apps for SEO practices. Doing SEO testing is meant to make sure your social media app is performing as they should and where you find any fault, you can fix them as quickly as you can.
Application testing for online advertisements.
Nowadays, social media programs support businesses through online advertising. It is critical to validate the appropriate operation of web ads. You can test social media applications to see if it will be good for marketing and advertising purposes. For example, if you offer an app that helps individuals adopt a healthier lifestyle, you might want to experiment with Instagram advertisements.
The importance of maintaining social media application test documentation
Now that we have gone through different ways to test social media applications, let us look at the documentation area.
It is very important that you maintain your social media testing document so that you can easily record and keep track of your progress and know areas of improvement.
The documentation of your social media application quality assurance testing should include all the steps, objectives, findings and recommendations of the test.
everything from the objectives of the test to the results of the test.
The life cycle of a social media application test
There are five stages in the life cycle of a social media application test, and they are as
follows:
Planning/Organising
You must decide what you need to test and what you’re aiming to accomplish with the test during the planning step. Understanding your target market, your objectives, and your goals is part of this.
Creating the test and its design
You will create the test environment and the tests that will be used during the design and building stage. Additionally, you’ll write the test scripts and user profiles.
Performing the tests
This is yet another stage to test social media application . In the running stage, you will run the tests and analyse the outcomes. You can use this to improve the design and construct the test’s subsequent stage.
Improving the exams
Based on the findings of the running stage, you will modify the design and the tests during the refining step. You’ll be able to accomplish your goals thanks to this.
5. Finalising the tests
In the final stage, you’ll make the changes required to the tests and the environment so that you can release the tests to the public.
Conclusion
You may start the social media testing for your messaging and creative concepts to discover which ones connect with your audience once you have a solid understanding of your target market. Once you have a strong basis, you may test your campaigns’ aesthetic appearance and online presence.
Lastly, you can evaluate the success of your social media app testing initiatives. Your social media efforts will be on track and produce the outcomes you want if you follow a thorough social media application testing life cycle. We sincerely hope you found this page to be helpful. If you have any comments or questions, kindly let us know.
We appreciate you for taking your precious time to read.
