When customers walk into a brick-and-mortar store/shop they expect to be greeted warmly and enter clean and well-stocked premises. Most businesses also have an online presence and the websites serve as the store in a digital world – it is the face of a business. A good website is one that allows speedy and easy navigation and ensures that customers remain happy with their experience. Customer happiness is directly proportionate to the ROI of any business – there is a proven connection between the loading speed of a website and gaining new customers and retaining existing ones. Fast loading pages will keep visitors and customers coming back, and they would be more likely to conduct business on the site. However, as a company excelling at Performance Testing Services we know the converse of this truth as well. A slow loading site is one of the top reasons for customers/visitors to skip a website and abandon shopping carts midway. Customers expect websites to load within a few seconds and if a business expects them to remain engaged, the customer wishes must be granted.
We at Codoid consistently help clients to keep a strict watch on how their website functions and perform – and ensure that all functionalities and features run optimally, even under load conditions. There are times when every business experiences peak loads such as during holidays, major announcements or events, and other such times. It is necessary for a business to know the peak volume/load their website can withstand else it may shut down leaving customers furious. When existing and new customers are unable to access services and products, a slump in revenue and reputation are expected outcomes. Keep your business safe from these risks – speak with our experts.
The Importance and Best Practices of Load Testing
Load testing is a critical method that helps to alleviate risk. A fast-loading site is a great way to ensure customer happiness, bring peace of mind for the stakeholders, and add significantly to the bottom line of a business. We, therefore, put forth some of the best practices that we as a leading performance testing company follow, and apply to the projects entrusted to us.
Understanding Business GoalsWe help businesses understand the correlation between their goals and the testing environment, such that the right aspects of the application are tested to ensure performance under load. Businesses must pay attention to the user experiences that would be the drivers for engagement, revenue, advertising, and other such metrics, and know what expectations users have that would accelerate these metrics.
Understanding Web and Application Key Performance IndicatorsKnowing business objectives would not suffice without establishing some indicators of performance – real-time performance compared to expected performance. Some of the KPIs would be response time, the number of requests the system processes per second, utilization of resources (memory and CPU consumption and other resources)
Selecting the Right Tool for Load Testing Since the success of load testing depends on the kind of tool and methodology, your business would need the best-in-class partner to deliver proactive service. It is important to understand the possible issues even before they affect the performance – this will ensure an optimally functioning website and ultimately happy customers consistently doing business and spreading the word of mouth to others, which would create more customers.
Putting Together the Best Test CaseA test case that simulates the user behavior in the real world will be best equipped to predict the performance of the website under a similar load. Experts create these test cases with virtual users on emulators or even physical devices.
Ascertaining the Load EnvironmentThe premise of load testing is the similar replication of the production environment – we understand that a test environment can never exactly duplicate the production environment, but it is important to gain as much accuracy as possible. It is necessary for a business to understand the limits of the hardware and through that ascertain the possible defects before they occur.
Load Tests to be Run GraduallyIt is never wise or feasible to test everything at once – beginning to test a smaller number of scattered users is a better way to identify any problems and the breakpoint of the system. Post running the first set of tests, it is necessary to check the results and remedy any defects/obstacles, before moving to the next set of testing scenarios.
Load Testing is Best Done from the End User PerspectiveThe entire objective of load testing is to ensure that the end-user/customer is happy with their experience when using the website and or application of a company. Load testing must revolve around the aim of elevating these experiences, such that customers remain engaged and continue to do business with the company thereby maintaining a good bottom line.
In Conclusion
As experts we know that there are several things that are strictly unacceptable to run load tests – for instance running tests in a real environment. There are several factors and network traffic that affect a website, and running tests in such a scenario is sure to skew results. Another thing that must not be done is trying to break down the tested server – this is not the objective of load testing – but rather to check the performance of a website under varying load conditions. The best practices mentioned do not constitute an exhaustive list but do provide a clear indication of how to ensure meticulous load testing. Connect with our load testing champions and leave the worrying to them.
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