From time to time, we all have one of those days where too many people want something from us all at once. At work, a day like this often means that your inbox is flooded by far too many requests, questions and queries that it’s simply too difficult to keep on top of them all and make sure that everything’s completed that day. If it gets bad enough, you might even find that you simply freeze and end up finding it difficult to do anything at all. Everyone has these types of days sometimes, and so does your software application or website as well. Since these occasions can seriously hurt your bottom line by being extremely costly, performance tests are an absolute essential.
What is Performance Testing For?
In short, performance tests will reveal how a system behaves and responds during certain situations. Although a system may run extremely well with just 1,000 concurrent users, for example, it’s important to know if this would change should the number increase to 100,000. In terms of performance, it’s important to achieve stability, scalability and of course, high speed. There are several different types of performance tests which can be carried out in any industry and simulate different possible user scenarios, for example page loading speed, how the system behaves with more users than normal, software load testing, and how fast the system can be updated.
Performance Goal: Page Speed
Page speed is a hugely important performance goal, with users expecting pages to load as quickly as possible, with a dip in customer satisfaction inevitable should this not be achieved. When pages are taking too long to load it’s not unusual for users to experience heightened stress levels, for example if they are trying to access a website which is glitching, buffering or simply being extra slow in general during the middle of an important visit – for example a financial transaction or even browsing the web to find out important information that they need straight away. In the case of financial transactions, for example, this could even cause you to lose trust with your customers – after all, nobody likes to wonder whether or not their payment has gone through. According to a poll carried out in 2015, at least 46% of online shoppers say that they would never return to a site which they’ve had a bad experience with in regards to page speed.
Importance of Testing for Stability
No matter which industry your business is in, of course you want to ensure that your application and/or website work well at all times. But, it’s inevitable that there will be some times where it is under more stress than others. For example, if you’re a retailer, your app and website is definitely going to be working a lot harder over the holiday season and on Black Friday, for instance. Not only could a system crash during this time cause you to lose reputation with your customers, it could also damage your profits as you lose out on sales.
Performance testing regularly is crucial to ensuring that your website and/or app can handle anything.
