Folding the pages of some recent headlines throws an interesting pattern. Netflix is fiddling with mobile-only plans for countries like India and leaning heavily towards local content, while, Amazon is testing video ads for expanding product reach and mobile search on the Apple iOS version of its shopping app (with the possibility of getting into Google’s Android mobile operating system space soon.
Need of Digital Testing
This is not a recent move. Even when it reaped a considerable chunk of brands shifting to Amazon for search budgets and for advertising-on-the-site, Amazon embraced a change that was risky but worth betting upon.
This ‘mobility’ move is not just a random wave with these iconic brands. Many platforms and technology giants are experimenting with the surge of possibilities and devices that are giving marketers both opportunities and challenges that are unprecedented. Because there is more to come.
Cisco has predicted that there would be as many as 30 billion connected devices by 2020 (both consumer and industrial IoT devices). Brands would definitely want to leverage this slated 500 zettabytes per year in data that IoT would be generating by the end of 2019. Imagine the sheer level of complexity and growth that we could be heading into when we think of 5G, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality mixing in with this buffet of devices.
Translating all this growth into market strongholds would mean an extra burden on the testing side of new services and offerings that marketers bring forth in this new era. But apart from the volume of testing, this new scenario of s would also mean a new paradigm of testing in terms of what it tests, how much, how soon, where and why. That, in other words, suggests the rise of digital testing.
Switching to Digital
As testing becomes more challenging and replete with diverse-goals in the face of the huge tide of new data and devices, there would be new parameters that will get underlined. It would not be enough to test an app or product just for functionality. It would need to have relentless customer empathy. There would be a big thrust now on making sure that whatever is being tested is not intrusive but at the same time is something that amplifies the experience and plays well on context.
Digital testing would arm testers and businesses in this redefined landscape of experience testing since it would be able to crack the tough job of testing evolution and experience. Agility, real-time element, iterative testing, and adaptive testing will empower digital testers with all the strengths that were missing in shift-right testing environments so far.
Think and Test – Like a Customer
In the next milieu of online and anytime commerce and omnichannel marketing, customer experience would become the ultimate test for any brand and brand-offering. This is why digital testing will become more relevant and fortifying for a brand where testing the features and independent performance of one application will not cut the mark anymore. Also, testing only at the fag end of coding just won’t suffice. It is a world where testers have to test an application throughout development and in context to other devices and environments that a user would be in.
The metrics of usability, experiential testing, design optimization and remote testing would become more significant than ever. These are primarily the levers that digital tests allow. The tools, frameworks, and components entailed in digital testing also make room for testing automation, mobile performance testing and testing with an agile methodology underlying these capabilities.
Conclusion
The idea is to weed out issues that will hamper the speed, performance, scalability, and experience of any app or service. That cannot be done with yesteryear testing. It has to be done in a language that works today. Embrace the power of digital testing and give a new fluidity, user experience assurance and compatibility confidence to the apps you bring out for enhancing your brand and business. Digital testing service is more than testing and more than DevOps. It is testing with a new mindset.
