S.O.S.: The SERP Optimization Suite

Copyright © 2013–2014 Maximilian Speicher. The commercial use (i.e., use that is primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation) of this software or derivatives thereof is not permitted.

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The plug-in provided by this repository extends WaPPU—a tool for split testing based on usability scores--to form S.O.S.: The SERP¹ Optimization Suite. S.O.S. can be used to evaluate SERPs based on WaPPU's scores. As soon as the suite detects suboptimal usability scores, it points out potential causes for these and proposes corresponding adjustments to improve the SERP interface.

¹ SERP = search engine results page

WaPPU: Was that Page Pleasant to Use?

WaPPU is a tool for usability-based A/B testing that enables the prediction of usability scores from user interactions, e.g., webpage A has a usability of 99 while webpage B has a usability of only 42. The default configuration is to show a minimal questionnaire before a user leaves the first webpage. The usability score of the second webpage is then predicted based on user interactions alone. This is done by usability models that are trained from users' answers to the questionnaire on webpage one.

How to use S.O.S.?

1. Set up a WaPPU server, as is explained under https://github.com/maxspeicher/wappu-service.
2. Copy the complete sos folder into the public directory of your WaPPu server.
3. In your WaPPU server's views directory, open wappu/analysis.jade.
4. Insert script(src='/sos/serp-best-practices.js') right after script(src='/javascripts/wappu-analysis.js').
5. The causes and countermeasures proposed by S.O.S. are now automatically displayed in the dashboard of a WaPPU A/B test, as available under <endpoint of server>/wappu?projectId=X, with X being your unique project ID.

How to run the Demo?

1. Set up a MySQL database called wappu and create tables using the scripts provided under demo/db-scripts.
2. Clone my statistics-utils repository.
3. Enter your database credentials in statistics-utils/src/main/resources/application.properties.
4. Deploy the statistics-utils software using mvn package tomcat:run -Dmaven.tomcat.port=8082. It now runs under http://localhost:8082/statistics-utils.
5. Clone this repository.
6. Enter your database credentials in the second credentials block in demo/server/db.js.
7. Change host and port of the statistics-utils software in demo/server/globals.js if different from localhost:8082.
8. Run wappu-service using node app. It now runs under http://localhost:8081.
9. The demo project is automatically installed. The dummy interfaces are deployed under http://localhost:8081/wappu-demo/indexA.html (with questionnaire) and indexB.html (without questionnaire). The corresponding analysis can be found at http://localhost:8081/wappu?projectId=0. The demo features a rather simple set-up by only considering the absolute amount of clicks inside the grey box for predicting usability. This is to ensure good prediction quality even with small amounts of data. The demo is also presented in the video referenced below.
10. If you deploy WaPPU with a path different from localhost:8081 you have to change this path in demo/server/public/wappu-demo/js/wappu-tracking.js.

Publications

• Maximilian Speicher, Andreas Both, and Martin Gaedke (2015). "S.O.S.: Does Your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Need Help?" In: Proc. CHI. 🏆 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award. Electronic Edition | Full Text
• Maximilian Speicher, Andreas Both, and Martin Gaedke (2014). "Ensuring Web Interface Quality through Usability-based Split Testing". In: Proc. ICWE. Electronic Edition | Full Text
• Maximilian Speicher, Andreas Both, and Martin Gaedke (2014). "WaPPU: Usability-based A/B Testing". In: Proc. ICWE (Demos). Electronic Edition | Full Text