Mobile Monitoring Strategies

The mobile environment does not consist of a single delivery system to a standardized device interface. Therefore, different strategies need to be deployed to monitor different types of content. Both emulated devices and real devices are employed for mobile monitoring, and a review of both content delivery and monitoring objectives will help determine when each should be used.

Real device monitoring is the only choice. For example, the growing popularity of smartphones has led to a growing market for native applications residing on a device.

However, many classes of applications and services that can be monitored using device emulation.Emulated device monitoring is well suited for websites and services that are accessible by a broad range of mobile devices. These devices range from simple-feature phones to sophisticated smartphones. Many Websites and services require only a browser to render the page and do not depend on the operating system of the device (for example,SMS)

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Mobile Testing Challenges

More than finding errors, the ideal goal of testing should be to understand the quality of offering. Its working, Does it function as planned? Will it meet the customers needs?, etc.

There are unique challenges when it comes to mobile application testing. The challenges of mobile testing will present you with tradeoffs that you will need to consider and choices that you need to make about the mix of different techniques and methods that you will use in testing. Each testing option you consider will have pros and cons associated with it, and you will probably find that no one testing option  will be completely satisfying. Rather, you will need to consider a testing strategy that combines different testing options that together provide you with the best overall testing result that balances the tradeoff between cost, quality, and time to market.

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Mobile Content — A Monitoring Challenge.

One of the most important differences between mobile and desktop-based Web content is the need for mobile content to be tailored for the various characteristics and capabilities of a particular device. This added level of complexity affects development of monitoring strategies, and it must be taken seriously in order to truly understand how the full spectrum of end users accessing mobile content will experience it.

Clearly this expansion of the scope of content monitoring is one of the major differentiators from a  desktop-based Web monitoring strategy. With literally hundreds of device types in circulation and more coming on the market each day, attempting to understand the end-user experience by manually testing content on each device is cost—and time—prohibitive; automated monitoring strategies are required.

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Managing the mobile end-user experience with mobile monitoring

Measuring performance is not a new concept to mobile either. However, until recently performance in mobile has been synonymous with voice quality. When network coverage and dropped calls were the only metrics that mattered, it wasn’t surprising that mobile performance monitoring was mostly a concern for the mobile network operators. Data performance was less of a concern when mobile content, applications, and services took a backseat to voice. However, with the mass consumer popularity of advanced smartphones and SMS, the accurate delivery of content, applications, and service over mobile data networks has become increasingly important to content owners.

Companies with a more mature Web presence are now embracing mobile channels and making them a key part of their growth strategy. However, for companies making the move from Web to mobile it is important to understand that performance-monitoring solutions that worked on the Web cannot be simply applied to mobile. Managing the mobile end-user experience requires an understanding of how it’s different from the Web end-user experience

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User Expectations and Mobile Performance

Performance is critical for this mobile portal. Explained a company executive, “End users are accustomed to high speed downloads when they access our Web site from their personal computers. However, mobile
connections have long offered slower response times. While newer 3G networks offer larger pipelines
that enable quicker response times, many end users still use older devices and are unable to download
mobile sites quickly. This can leave them frustrated with our service— and can ultimately harm our brand.”

Because of the disconnect between user expectations and mobile performance, it is critical for the company to monitor the performance of its mobile site and fix problems quickly to ensure that it offers the best performance
possible.

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Improve Performance Of Third-Party Components

A slick-looking Web site is ultimately of limited effectiveness if all of the its bells and whistles are an impediment to system performance. Hence, the monitoring of system performance at the end-user/UI level is extremely important to ensuring a consistently excellent user experience. By using the proper website performance tools in a targeted manner, both business managers and developers can effectively monitor the impact of third-party performance both on the individual component level and in the aggregate.

The more complex your Web site is, the more likely it is that its performance – and possibly your profit margin - is in the hands of third parties and their components running on your site. Ideally, we want to improve the performance of these third-party components (aka “widgets”), so that a page loads just as fast with these widgets as without them.

If you are the owner of the Web site, there are at least two ways to improve overall site performance. One is to optimize the Web site itself for each widget so that those widgets running on the page will be more efficient, a method that is not cost-efficient. The other, more cost-effective option is to use continuous and focused website performance monitoring. Breaking down performance by time and by component category allows you to pinpoint the components that adversely impact Web site performance. 

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Evaluation of Web Site User Experience

User attitude is continually shaped throughout their interaction with a Web site. You want to collect as much attitude data as you can for various reasons, including: providing interpretation of ambiguous behavior, such as long dwell time that can indicate interest or confusion; monitoring general attitude trends over time that result from marketing efforts and repeated exposure to the site; gathering user feedback and suggestions that can trigger direct action or further research.

The process of capturing such data might interrupt the user experience and alter the user’s attitude, which could corrupt the data and reduce its value. So, the method used to collect attitude data must be non-invasive and be incorporated into the user’s experience at the site.

Automating user experience testing of any Web site is a difficult challenge at best, especially in light of the need to balance data quality and quantity: gathering rich data is essential to deriving meaning and understanding, and a sufficient quantity of data is essential to making findings valid and statistically significant.

  

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