Consumer expectations for high-quality, high-performing business applications have never been higher, but a bad experience can have costly consequences. 100 milliseconds of latency costs Amazon $5.4 billion in lost revenue. Brand reputation and customer relationships are also at stake. But these trends don’t just apply to large global companies like Amazon. With more than seven million apps available on iOS and Android platforms, even small and medium businesses that want to compete to grow their user base and increase revenue must deliver unique, engaging, and easy-to-use mobile applications.
The impact of poor quality of mobile applications on SMEs is felt right to the core. In fact, 96% of global SMBs estimate losses of up to $2.49 million due to poor quality of mobile applications. Users face challenges in device or platform support, lack of native applications, and buggy or slow experiences. These are issues that SMB leaders are aware of, as they recognize the value of a well-designed mobile application for building brand equity, delivering an enhanced user experience, increasing competitiveness, and driving customer retention, acquisition and sale.
That explains why senior IT professionals and application developers at SMBs are increasingly categorizing mobile application quality as critical to their business, and recognizing the importance of testing the quality and success of mobile app development in their organization.
Delivering quality software quickly has become a prerequisite for winning and retaining customers and ultimately achieving digital success. But the surge in demand has also exposed challenges in the mobile application development and testing landscape. This has led to serious decisions among SMEs on how to reduce the impact of poor application quality.
Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Tricentis.
Defining and delivering quality
Ultimately, the customer is central to mobile application development.
Security, high performance, good user experience and accessibility are all highly regarded as key success factors for SMBs. The challenge, however, is that mobile application users don’t differentiate between companies of different sizes (and budgets) when it comes to the user experience. They want an app that is fast and easy to use, regardless of the size and scale of the business. organization behind it. Delivering a high-quality user experience is not just about developing apps that work, but about creating an end-to-end experience that helps users operate mobile applications intuitively.
However, SMEs face a significant lack of resources to effectively support mobile development and testing and ensure this level of quality. We’re hearing from more and more IT leaders at companies of this size who recognize that there is significant room for improvement in their mobile application development and testing strategies, but say they simply cannot keep up with the numbers and quality of staff to find what is needed to achieve better results.
Competing priorities and costs also pose challenges for mobile app development and testing in SMBs, compounding the problems of complexity and lack of resources. And yet many still use manual testing for mobile applications: a slow and laborious process.
Using automation and AI to overcome challenges
Automation, supported by AI and low-code/no-code tools, offers a solution to these challenges. A 2023 YouGov survey – commissioned by The Times and Lloyds Bank – found that 10% of SMEs had already used AI to grow their business by improving processes and systems, while 16% said the introduction of automation their productivity had improved. There is therefore strong evidence that SMEs can achieve significant productivity and efficiency gains by introducing these technologies. Our own research shows that as much as 75 hours per month can be saved.
In addition to productivity, user experience ranks highly as a key use case for the adoption of automation and AI in mobile app development and testing. Automated testing allows teams to more quickly identify opportunities to streamline app delivery while maintaining quality and performance, bringing better apps to market faster. Meanwhile, AI can answer developers’ questions much faster, reducing the amount of tedious work required to manually find information. This allows them to focus on improving the end-user experience and fixing any bugs found during testing.
Despite these expected benefits, the number of people already reaping these benefits remains low. However, with more education on when and how to use them, the best AI tools will play an important role in reducing the financial losses that SMEs suffer due to the poor quality of mobile applications.
Mobile testing intersection
It’s clear that SMBs can’t afford to continue losing money due to poor mobile app performance. Now is the time for long-term strategies and investments in technologies that will positively impact both user experience and revenue opportunities – and also help bridge skills and productivity gaps.
The quality of mobile applications has never been more important, and the mobile app development industry is at a pivotal moment, with AI and automation offering a unique opportunity to those who benefit from it. Our research clearly shows that all stakeholders in SMEs – from top management to the developers themselves – are focused on improving the quality of their mobile applications and testing processes, and that there is much to gain.
We have listed the best mobile app development software.
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