Measurement-based Experiments on the Mobile Web: A Systematic Mapping Study

The mobile Web is growing as more and more people use a smart device to access online services. This rapid growth of mobile Web usage is accompanied by the evolution of the mobile Web browser as a fully fledged software platform. Due to these two trends, the expectations of users in terms of quality of experience (QoE) when browsing the Web on their mobile device has increased drastically. As a result, the number of studies using measurement-based experiments to investigate the factors influencing QoE has grown. However, conducting measurement-based experiments on the mobile Web is not a trivial task as it requires a significant experience and knowledge about both technical and methodological aspects. Unfortunately, there is no systematic study on the state of the art of conducting measurement-based experiments on the mobile Web that could guide researchers and practitioners when planning and performing such experiments. The goal of this work is to build a map of existing studies that conduct measurement-based experiments on the mobile Web. In total 640 potentially relevant studies are identified. After a rigorous selection procedure the set of primary studies consists of 28 papers from which we extracted data and gathered insights. Specifically, we investigate on (i) which metrics are collected, how they are measured, and how they are analysed, (ii) the platforms on which the experiments are run, (iii) what subjects are used, and (iv) the used tools and environments under which the experiments are run. This study benefits researchers and practitioners by presenting common techniques, empirical practices, and tools to properly conduct measurement-based experiments on the mobile Web.