What End-to-End and APIs Can Do For Your Lead Generation Strategy
Operating a business online is one of the most significant challenges for any business owner. There is more to learn in a relatively short span of time. There are dozens of new terms and concepts that can be daunting even for the tech-savvy among us.
In this article, we will cover three concepts. Those are end-to-end (E2E) testing, API testing, and web scraping. We will explain each of these and then relate them to your lead generation strategy.
What is End-to-End (E2E) Testing?
The main purpose of E2E testing is to assure that users can experience your app without running into any trouble. The user can complete any task they desire in the app, and the process will run and finish smoothly. For example, a user pushes the “login” button, enters their username and password, and is taken to the home screen of the app. The process is tested in an E2E test.
Two Types of E2E Testing
There are two main types of E2E testing: core and edge tests. A core test will test the features that are most frequently used. An edge test will test operations that are rarely used or have unintended uses for the app. The developers do their best to think of unusual ways a user might want to use an app and make sure that it will still work.
Why Two Types of Tests?
You may wonder why they don’t just test all the code for the entire app to make sure there are no bugs. While you may want to test every bit of code, it is highly impractical. The code needed to test the app would exceed the amount of code to build the app in the first place. Testing also takes time. There isn’t enough time to test every string of code.
Who uses E2E testing?
Typically the software developers have a team dedicated to testing. E2E testing is extremely complex. Developers must understand the user’s journey through an app or website and design tests to assure they test the correct elements the user will encounter on that journey.
Over time, the developers can understand what test cases are most relevant. They can then develop a test suite that will maintain an app or site without requiring too much code or time to run the tests.
Is API Testing Different From E2E Testing?
Here is a situation where the business owner can wonder if they need to utilize all these services for testing. Isn’t one just the same as the other?
E2E testing should not significantly displace or repeat the functions of API testing. An API test is a more basic test than an E2E. Think of it as a lower-level test that validates the logic used in the original build architecture of the site.
Java Web Scraping
There is more information on the internet than anyone could comb through in several lifetimes. How does anyone gather or make sense of all that information? One answer is web scraping.
What Is Web Scraping?
Web scraping is a way to harvest and parse information from target websites. A program will glean, gather, and sort information and convert it into a document that you can easily read.
Java
We mention Java web scraping above because not all websites are created the same way. There are several computer languages. Two of the most popular coding languages are Java and JavaScript. Using web scraping programs that utilize Java and JavaScript are useful in most cases.
Two Popular Tools for Java Web Scraping
Two available programs for javascript web scraping are jsoup and HtmlUnit. You would use jsoup for sites written using Java and use HtmlUnit for sites utilizing JavaScript. It may seem like a minor detail if you are not tech-savvy. They seem similar, but they are different coding languages. You will not have good results if you try to use the wrong program.
Whichever program you are using, they will gather and parse information from the target website and present the information as a document. The program also uses proxies to hide the original IP address and mitigate anti-scraping measures employed by many popular websites.
Lead Generation Strategy
Lead generation has become one of the key aspects of marketing online. The inbound lead generation now goes on par with outbound. Modern lead generation software helps you stimulate and capture interest, develop sales pipelines, and increase brand awareness. It also allows you to deliver high-quality leads to your sales team.
Pulling It All Together
What do all these computer technologies, coding languages, and software testing have to do with lead generation? The connection is indirect but necessary for any business owners who are operating online.
Solid business decisions are driven by solid data. You can’t move forward confidently if you don’t have lots of information about who is interacting with your site, competitors’ sites, and what they are doing while visiting.
E2E testing and API testing help you make your site and app the best they can be. You won’t have frustrated users when every button and form field are functioning just as they should.
These tests also tell you how visitors are using your site. When you know what visitors are looking at on your site, you can build in functions that help turn that visitor into a customer.
The information you gather from web scraping gives you much of the same information from your competitors’ perspectives. You will see what visitors are looking at and how they are interacting with the site. Your goal is to make your site the best experience for the customer.
We hope that this article has shed some light on some very technical aspects of running your business website and app. There is a wealth of information available to help you develop a solid lead generation strategy. Don’t worry about learning coding languages either because you can hire out testing and web scraping services.
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