The use of mobile devices to access applications has jumped to an all-time high, making up 56% of all website traffic this year, yet most companies with remote testing teams are struggling with proper device access and the ability to replicate customer bugs, according to mobile testing company Kobiton. 

Web conversion rates on mobile wind up around twice as slow as those on laptops and other devices, Alex Drag, the product marketing manager at the mobile testing platform Kobiton, explained in a recent webinar on SD Times. Additionally, Drag said that the mobile shopping cart abandonment rate is at 85%, and 70% for site abandonment due to pages not functioning or loading correctly. 

“This just shows that there is so much potential to capture even more revenue when it comes to improving that mobile customer experience,” he said.

With remote work here to stay, Drag offered a few steps that distributed teams can take to ensure high coverage and high-quality apps.

He recommended teams leverage real-device cloud access in which vendors offer cloud-based access to real devices so that teams can shift procurement and management responsibilities to a specialist while easily being able to access to devices in the cloud no matter where they are. 

“If you’re really trying to test your mobile application right before you release it to a customer, you’re going to want to make sure that it’s tested on a real device. So this is really where the real device cloud comes in,” Drag said. “And if you have devices hosted in the cloud, it doesn’t matter where you are in a remote team.”

There are many different types of cloud options to choose from to enable flexible real device cloud access. 

One is the public cloud, which is hosted by a vendor and offers shared device pools that everyone can access. Since tooling is distributed on a first come, first serve basis, not all tools are always accessible. This is where the private cloud comes in. 

“The real benefit of private dedicated access is it guarantees that those devices are going to only be used by you,” Drag added.

Drag also looked at a “BYOD” cloud access approach as well as a hybrid cloud approach to enable users to mix and match between different cloud access. 

For more tips on dealing with remote mobile testing problems and utilizing the cloud, watch the full webinar here.