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Testing with Google Optimizer

Posted by: Livia on: September 11, 2008

Google Optimizer!? Are there any issues present? Google has an Website Optimizer tool for website testing and optimization. This tool allows you to increase the value of the websites and of course the traffic. As it stands, the experiment URL we conduct the experiment on splits traffic between the original page, the a page and the b page. This is great when directing people to the page they want to be in the experiment.
However, if they have a link on a website that points to the URL where the experiment URL is, there is no way for users to go only to the control page. So for example, someone clicks on a link, and sees page B. But what if the original page has crucial information and navigational content? Users will just be frustrated and leave.
Is there any way to specify whether we forward them or not? Or is it
all or nothing, basically?
To solve this, one must create a mirror page of the original page they are testing. The problem is that adjusting PPC campaigns to this new URL lowers their quality score. If they point a PPC Campaign to a test page, will the Quality Score be for the original page, Page A or Page B?
My guess is the original…

With other words, there might be an issue present…
Let’s say we’ve got two landing pages being tested: index.html and index2.html
Index.html is obviously our regular home page and serves as the control. index2.html is a copy of that homepage with some changes. The most significant change is that the number of links and access to the entire site is limited when you’re on index2.html. So, in essence, index2.html is the homepage of a little mini-site that keeps new visitors quarantined unless they take the desired conversion action.

The problem arises when they take the conversion action and are redirected to the main site. The whole site works for them as long as they don’t click the home button. But as soon as they click the home button the GWO script intervenes and sends them back to the index2.html instead of permitting them to go to the real home index.html.
Is there any way to stop this from happening? It’s basically interfering with our preferred traffic flow and is no doubt frustrating our visitors.

Hmm not easy, but how about create an index3 page which is a clone of your normal homepage but doesn’t have the GWO tags on it. Then after the use converts, you redirect him to index3 page.

So…running an AB test but for certain people, always having them go to A (and essentially not partipcate in the experiment), you can add some custom webserver code that only add the GWO tags if the visitors meet certain conditions (e.g. if they come from such and such a referrer, don’t add the tags).

Classical Test Levels

Posted by: Livia on: September 6, 2008

In: Testing
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Classical Test Levels

In software quality assurance the principle of “divide and conquer” has asserted itself just as in software development. In a software development there is the differentiation between the development of individual classes or modules, the integration of the classes and modules into an application with neightbouring applications, for example via interfaces or common data.

Each of the different development and integration phases necessitates appropriate quality objectives or a different perspective. As an appropriate response to the different objectives in a process as a whole, the entire QA process is divided into different test levels. The different QA objectives, responsabilities, methods, and tools are asigned to these test levels. The figure shows one possible partitioning of the test objectives into test levels as practised in many enterprises today.

Documentation testing

In the first level, the documentation test, the accurateness of specifications and design decisions are examined. The focus is on functional and technical design documentation, for example the results of an object-oriented analysis or design. The design documentation is subjected to a test in the form of a review with the participation of developers and domain experts.

In the developer test the developer or a tester from the development team tests the correct implementation (coding) of the specifications. During functional testing the acurateness of the implemented functions are tested from a user’s point of view.

Functional testing

Functional testing can be further divided into functional system testing, which focuses on the individual functions of an application, and functional integration testing (application testing or integration testing in the small), which tests the correct integration of the individual functions within an application. Sometimes an overall integration test (integration test in the large) is also carried out in which the correct integration of the application with other complete systems is verified.

Non-functional testing

Non-functional testing takes place in parallel to these levels, concentrating on non-functional quality characteristics such as performance, fault tolerance, reliability, usability and instability.

You can read more here: QA for Internet Applications