05Testing+and+Evaluating

= Testing  =

Once the advertisement is implemented, it needs to be tested to ensure that the project has been completed and has solved the problem we were presented in the beginning. One method of testing which should be completed before the application is released to be public is that a control group should watch the advertisement to see what they like about the advertisement and what they didn’t like about it. This information could be used to make some final adjustments to the advertisement before it is released to the public. During this stage it is important to choose the right people to be the control group who fit into the target audience, which in this case it is adolescence. This form of testing would come at a small cost as you would need to pay some people to come and watch the video so that you get the most productive output from them.

A necessary form of testing would be to test the video of different browsers (e.g. Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.) to make sure that the advertisement plays properly no matter what platform or browser the user is using. This form of testing could be incorporated with the method of testing above to save time and resources. If there are any bugs or glitches found it needs to be fixed immediately, especially if they are discovered after it has been implemented. Hopefully if the testing is completed thoroughly, this will not be an issue.

Another form of testing that would be done after the implementation of the advertisement would be to keep track of the number of downloads the application has had and compare it to the number of views the advertisement has had. This could be turned into a percentage to determine the ‘strike rate’ of the advertisement. For example, if 100 people watch the advertisement and 60 of them download it; then the strike rate of the advertisement is 60%. On it’s own it doesn’t tell you much about how effective the advertisement is, but if this is done consistently across all application advertisements, it would be a great way of comparing how effective the advertisements were and this information could be used to develop more effective advertisements in the future. This method of testing would be a relatively low cost and give the company some quantitative data about the advertisement instead of qualitative data, which is much harder for comparing the effectiveness of the advertisements.

= = = Evaluation Report  =

**__ Usability: __**
The advertisement is extremely easy to use. Providing you have access to a computer that has internet access you would be able to view it. On both the Apple Website and on YouTube it is a simple click and play video. There are clear recognisable buttons including play, pause and mute, which will help the user control their viewing experience. The volume control is a slider bar along with the overall length of the video that once again is extremely easy to use. Even someone with the most basic of computer knowledge would be able to view the advertisement.

**__ Effectiveness: __**
The methods of ongoing testing explained above would help evaluate the effectiveness of the advertisement. The strike rate of the advertisement would give you a clear indication of the effectiveness of the advertisement when compared with the strike rates of other applications. If it is not effective then the design team needs to look at what went wrong and what has made other application advertisements successful. The current advertisement then needs to be changed and noted so that the same problem doesn’t occur again. Since the advertisement is online, it can be viewed by people all over the world, as opposed to having to run hundreds of television or print advertisements, which are only viewed by a local area.

**__ Efficiency: __**
Although the application is sold for only a couple of dollars, the overall cost of the project would be relatively cheap compared to any other advertising projects conducted by the Apple company so from an economic point of view it is definitely efficient. Also, if the advertisement is effective, then a similar approach could be taken to develop the advertisements for future application. It would take less time to produce the same result making it more efficient.

**__ Maintenance: __**
There shouldn’t be any maintenance needed in this project of created the advertisement as long as the testing is completed thoroughly. If something does go wrong in the testing phase then it would be up to maintenance to fix the problem. If a problem does occur after the implementation of the advertisement, it would need to be rectified as soon as possible to minimise the damage it would do the company and business.