A/B Testing for PhoneGap Application

Question

I've tried using Google Mobile Analytics for a phonegap application. I know that Google Analytics supports Context Experiments, but I couldn't find anything about Google Mobile Analytics doing the same.

My project needs to do A/B Testing and I've been looking around if this is possible using PhoneGap since all my assets/css/js will be shipped together in the appstore and will not be obtained via a remote server.

A workaround I'm thinking about is to create 2 different html versions of one screen and ship all of these in one app.

Is this a wise move? If not, is there a better way?

Answer 1

Any A/B general web testing library cannot be used for a phonegap app for two main reasons:

1. You cannot use a service like Optimizely to configure your experiment because you app is not online like a website. Optimizely needs to browse the website and load it in its user interface
2. The A/B testing framework needs to handle the case when the device is not connected to the internet

Arise.io (an A/B testing framework for mobile) supports a phonegap version of its framework: https://arise.readthedocs.org/en/latest/phonegap.html

DISCLAMER: I am the founder of Arise.io

Answer 2

Since you are using Phonegap, you can pretty much use any JS library out there.

Making 2 versions of each HTML file will get cumbersome and a harder to manage. IMO, it is essentially doubling the work for yourself. Instead, I would recommend using a JS A/B testing library. Here are a few:

1. Genetify
2. Optimizely -- paid service
3. Visual Website Optimizer -- another paid service

These will allow you to tweak variables in a Javascript file to reflect changes in your templates.

If your app requires the user to be connected at all times, I believe you might be able to tweak changes remotely without having the user update the app. If you go with the 2 HTML files approach, you will have to ship an update with each update.