The incident dates back to 2015, the websites of Tesco and Argo failed to meet the record-breaking demand of online customers in the wake of Black Friday. The websites had crashed in just the matter of hours when customers preferred items getting delivered at their doorstep. The consequences rather turned fortunate for Currys as they made a history in breaking the online sales record.
(Argos had apologized for this fiasco saying they were inundated with online visitors and had also mentioned their incapacity to handle delays in carrying out the transactions.)
(John Lewis wasn’t untouched with this overwhelming customer demand on their website.)
And then the latest crash took place in July, 2017 when the Premiere of Game of Thrones had taken down the HBO website. It was not until the half season had passed, when the website had returned to catering to all its viewers.
Some useful statistics
Undoubtedly, the rise in consumer expectations for seamless app and website services is directly proportional to the consumer trust. Relying on the statistics, almost half of the internet users expect a website to completely load in not more than 2 seconds. There are 30% of the audiences expecting a website to load in just 1 second while 18% of the audiences think a website should load immediately. If in case a particular URL fails to load, more than 50% users switch to another URL to finish their task. More than 22% users will never return to a URL once an error occurs on it. Furthermore, there are more than 75% of the tablet or mobile phone users who will never use the app or a website if they ever find it slow, buggy, or tend to crashing.
And this calls for Performance Testing!
What is it?
Any crashes or bugs on your website can cause major revenue losses to the company as well customer reliability. Every app calls for the appropriate measures the developers and maintenance team should incorporate. It is essential to minimize the probability of failures in major visitor spike scenarios. Performance testing is, beyond a doubt, imperative to avoid the occurrence of any bugs causing adverse impacts on revenue and customer retention.
Performance testing focuses on assessing the components’ performance in a particular system setting, given a specific scenario. The testing arena will cover –
- Capacity Testing– It is done simultaneously with capacity planning to ensure the number of transactions and/or visitors will be able to complete their task on a system. The system still meets its performance target. Capacity testing will ensure that the scope of growth in the future is a continuous process.
- Stress Testing – It is a process that testers perform on their computer, network, device or even a program. It checks for the ability of completing their task, fetching the expected results even in hampering conditions. It may include testing for any system crashes or tracking the bug frequency.
- Load Testing – It is associated with introducing the load to the software in order to study its behavior and efficiency. It is related to assessing the difference when the system is subjected to higher than normal loads.
- Volume Testing – Is associated with testing particular software by introducing certain data amount to it and then assessing its performance.
- Spike Testing – It is a kind of load testing that ensures the stability of a system when there is a sudden spike in the number of users. It also tests the stability when the varying loads are subjected to the system.
- Endurance Testing – You can also call it as Soak testing which involves introducing the load (more than normal) for an extended time frame. It is essential to comprehend the system behavior and necessitating the measures to avoid any issues arising during the sustained use.
- Reliability Testing – Given a specified environmental conditions, software should repeatedly fetch same results for a defined period. It is essential to double check the system reliability.
- Scalability Testing – It is the testing done to study the system’s behavior when there is a significant change in the volume of the load introduced to it. It tests whether the system is able to meet the demand or not.
The notable benefits of Performance Testing (PT)
- Time is everything! – Every customer or a website visitor expects the transaction to complete in just no time. PT ensures the same!
- How healthy is the software? – PT ensures that the software remains healthy and works as expected.
- Maintaining the capacity is important– Capacity maintenance will involve testing the system behavior upon introducing a set of new inputs. This is essential to check before the product is made live.
- Can you assure quality? – Fine tuning of code is an essential part of Performance Testing. Ensure the same and take necessary measures such as training of the development department.
- Proper utilization of resources is essential – Of course, your business might have had done some decent investments. But, if your software fails to perform as expected on the live platform in terms of stability, speed, and scalability aspects then the significant amount of resources and efforts are at stake. PT, thus ensures that there is a proper utilization of business resources.Â
Wildnet has its expertise in the Performance Testing!
This 24 November 2017 will be the Black Friday bringing very many opportunities for buying gadgets in impressively inexpensive prices. Wildnet is endeavoring to provide the top-notch performance testing environment to ensure that no website has to experience this fiasco. The organization caters to clients all across the globe, helping them take all the necessary measures to avoid encountering any crashes and failures.