Mobile Testing

What Is Mobile Testing?

Mobile testing can sometimes refer to testing an app‰s software. However, in mobile marketing, the term refers to the process of experimenting with different versions of the same mobile product to the same audience of users. These tests come in the form of A/B testing and/or multivariate testing.

How Does Mobile Testing Work?

Mobile A/B testing is the most common form of mobile testing. It‰s very reliable for testing a large number of variables, particularly when data sets are too small for multivariate testing. Marketers will decide upon two variants of a particular variable (hence A/B) and present both versions of this content to their users. These variables encompass many different app features, including:

• In-app UI: buttons, text, images, hidden elements, and app logic
• Messaging: audience segments, timing, messaging channels, onboarding tutorials, deep links, and permissions requests
• Channels: push notifications, in-app messages, app inbox, email, and programmatic delivery

A change to one of the variables, such as adjusting the wording on a button, is added as ‰a variant alongside a control group. Both the variant and control are shown to a percentage of users for a specified period of time. The test ends once the marketers feel they have enough data to make a conclusion.

Multivariate testing takes this one step further by testing multiple variants against each other. While these tests take longer to complete and require a larger data set, they can still be helpful for testing multiple changes before committing to one.

Mobile testing has four basic steps: firstly, to create a hypothesis, i.e. what you would like to test and what you hope to find. This is followed by audience segmentation. There is no need to test all of your users (though this is possible). For example, you may only want to test users with low onboarding rates. Step three involves setting goals and parameters, while step four is data analysis. This may require more than one test if your results are inconclusive.

What Does Mobile Testing Mean For Marketers?

Once marketers have a clear set of results from their A/B testing, they can adjust campaigns to ensure a better app experience for all users. This may achieve several different goals, for example, if your goal is to find out what is preventing those with low onboarding rates from onboarding, then appealing to those users‰’ particular needs may have a positive effect on onboarding rates.

Mobile testing is imperative because it assures marketers that any changes or updates they may have made to the app do not make it worse. However, one test is not enough. As customer preferences change, it is crucial to carry out regular mobile testing to ensure your app meets the mark, helping you to improve customer engagement, conversions, and lifetime retention.

For more information on testing your app updates, read Leanplum‰’s Mobile A/B Testing guide.