How to Test Geolocation based Mobile Apps & Websites?

 

Geolocation is an important feature if you are developing a social media web or mobile application there are lots of apps out there that use GPS based features as the core functionality. But are they all successful?

In this blog post, let’s understand the basics of Geolocation testing and gather knowledge about the different options we have, to tackle the demanding Geolocation testing needs.

Key Geolocation Use Cases

In simple terms, knowing the location of an object with regards to location of other known objects. We use the coordinate system to arbitrarily assign coordinates. For example, the coordinates 0,0 are where equator and prime meridian meet. All geo-locations are derived in reference to the coordinates 0,0.

You need to take three measurements from three different points to know location of an unknown point (from elementary geometry). Therefore, the triangulation technologies mentioned by Justin such as radar, cell phone towers, satellite phones are used to derive geo-location of any other point.

If you are looking for geo-location of a location you can use any mapping services such as Google maps, Bing maps, or MapQuest maps.

Now, let’s go through the different practical applications of Geolocation services:

Geo Localization: Geo-location is the identification of the real-world geographic location of a computer or mobile device connected to the Internet. Geo-location can come in handy for many purposes including analyzing your website traffic data, redirecting website traffic to location-specific sites or pages, customizing your website to cater to visitors or customers from different regions, and targeting marketing offers and advertisements based on visitor location.

Geo-Fencing: Geofencing, as the term itself suggests, is a sort of fencing for mobile devices or RFID tags when they enter or exit the boundaries created virtually by the geo fencing technology. The geo-fencing technology can be created for both indoors and outdoors, as per the requirements. The technologies used for geo-fencing include GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi or cellular data.

Here are other common geo-fencing applications:

Social networking: There can be great uses of geo-fencing in social networking. One most notable example set by the app Snapchat with its location based filters, stickers and other sharable content.

Marketing: Many businesses are using geo-fencing for in-store promotion, alerting customers when they are in close range of their stores. They can provide customers with targeted ads containing customized offers.

Audience management: With geo-fencing technology, even management companies can organize crowd gathered in several events like concerts, festivals, fairs and more.

Smart appliances: Geo-fencing can also be used in making gadgets smarter. Take the example of a geo technology enabled air conditioner which can detect that you are reaching home and upon reaching on particular range, it automatically switches on the AC so that when you enter the home, it will already have suitable temperature.

Geo fencing can also be used in human resource management, telematics and security purposes at businesses or sites.

Geo Tagging: Geo-tagging is the process of adding a geographical location to various media in the form of media data using GIS applications.. The data usually consists of coordinates like latitude and longitude but may even include bearing place name and altitude. Geotagging most commonly use for photographs and can help people get information about where the photographs were taken or the exact location of the device.

Geo Blocking: Geo-blocking exists for several reasons, a primary one being licensing and copyright agreements. Some businesses are only licensed to operate in particular countries and thus use this technology to restrict their visitors to a particular location or grant limited access to only certain pages of their website.

Another reason could be that businesses want to remain within the boundaries of local laws and regulations. For example, a business selling tobacco products might wish to disallow access to their website in countries where the commercial distribution of these products is prohibited.

In other circumstances, some websites might wish to block users from a particular location if traffic from these areas is usually associated with cyber risks.

All said and done, some businesses might just wish to target audiences from a particular geographic location as their potential customers.

In all of the above instances, geo-blocking would be a handy tool for controlling what your website visitors can and cannot access.

Geo Targeting: Geo-targeting is the practice of creating and delivering online advertisers to users based on their location. Geo-targeting can improve marketing ROI for online merchants by taking advantage of regional trend.

Region-specific marketing is currently utilized in a variety of marketing campaigns. A fairly basic marketing concept can be used, but it is presented to a location or market that has shown a demand for that specific product or service. This can be a certain State, City, neighborhood or even a specific building. Programs like Google Ad words lets you target these specific locations and tailor your marketing. On a more broad scale, you can target a certain demographic based on their language.

Some publishers and networks have even developed performance-based marketing plans based on Geo-targeted ads. Ads and marketing are only placed and paid for when there have been proven results to show that this venture is worth it. It has always been very effective to target a certain demographic based off of their age, gender, or career. This can be taken even further by taking a look at certain locations and what demographics reside there. Website data can be used to determine what geographic locations are most frequently perusing a site and that area can be targeted as well.

How to Test Geolocation-based Applications?

Since now we know the different implementation areas of Geolocation, we can understand the in practicality it is impossible to physically be present in locations and test. Geo location testing is required for an application that has global reach to improve the customer experience, minimize data inconsistencies, reduce roadblocks and production failures, and to keep the competitive edge. In order to achieve the required testing coverage and to ensure that the application is Geolocation supported, we have to resort to other feasible testing approaches. If your company has hardware resources (on-premise / cloud) in the required regions, then all we need is to figure out a shared usage plan for the hardware and establish a remote desktop connection. This way we can make use of the existing resources without any external dependencies. If that’s not the case, then below are the most common approaches used to tackle Geolocation testing.

Cloud-based services
VPN & Proxies
Mock services

Cloud-based Services: Due to its increasing importance, many cloud-based services are now supporting
Geolocation testing. They allow the team to test Geolocation apps on cloud in real devices and desktop browsers from different countries without any hassle. These cloud services allow the team to choose from different plans, which would help to simplify the overall testing approach. Few of the popular ones are BrowserStack and LambdaTest. Testing team can avail these cloud services based on the app audience, volume of testing required, frequency of testing and budget.

VPN & Proxies: Another way of testing Geolocation-based application is to use VPNs/Proxies. VPN & Proxy services allow the user to choose the desired country and help in testing the localized content. The important thing to keep in mind is to use a reliable VPN/Proxy since we cannot guarantee the security of the data being passed. Cost-effective plans are available from VPN service providers which could serve the testing purpose. We also, need to check if this masking should suffice for the testing, since the browsers/devices have a way to identify the actual location and even with VPN/proxy, things can go sideways. Few VPN/proxy services available are ExpressVPN, NordVPN, VPNCity, WonderProxy and SmartProxy.

Mock Services: These services allow the user to fake the actual location and provide the desired location for mocking. There are diverse applications which support mocking for mobiles (Android, iOS) and for web browsers. The required configurations are different for the device type and might require installation of third-party applications, browser extensions or modifying few parameters in browser / devices etc. In addition to browser extensions, currently browsers have inbuilt feature for location mocking to support HTML5. Basically, this feature allows turning on the feature via flag and allows the location specification via latitude and longitude.

In this article, we have explained the concept of Geolocation, its practical areas and provided a glimpse into how to test these applications. This is just the tip of the iceberg – each of these concepts or solutions can be explored in depth which offers deep insights with a lot of technical learning. As discussed in this article, the location-based testing strategy will vary depending on the application, its target audience, target devices and ultimately the budget and ROI. Hope this article shed some light into the basics which would help your team to explore the world of Geolocation testing, come up with the appropriate solution and a robust testing plan.