In today’s internet generation every action has an almost instant approach from instant messaging to video calls, a click of a few buttons for the news or a new pair of shoes. With rocket speed internet speeds and slower wait times, there is no room for error-prone applications, app crashes or downtimes. While these things are bound to happen with the weight of heavy traffic, imagine if it does during a huge Black Friday or Boxing Day campaign, maybe even on payday? It could cost your enterprise to lose millions, affect your bottom line and create a negative brand impact. The global pandemic has steered customer behavior into online shopping and with the festive season coming up, it is evident that traffic on the web and e-commerce stores will be much higher than in previous years. According to Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, the e-commerce shopping level during the peak of Covid-19 was much higher ($153 billion) than the holiday season ($142.5 billion) from November to December 2019. Keeping these factors in place, it is important to have a performance testing framework in place to enable seamless operations. However, first one must understand the basics of how performance testing works

What is Performance Testing?

A segment of non-functional testing, performance testing is used to test the readiness of an application based on factors of responsiveness, speed, scalability, and endurance under a workload or a set of conditions.

Types of Performance Testing

  • Load Testing: To check the performance of a system with a rising load of users and transactions using the systems at the same time until it reaches a threshold value. It is monitored to calculate response time within working conditions.
  • Stress Testing: Also known as fatigue testing, this kind of performance testing involves testing the stability of software or applications when resources are not sufficient and how it recovers from failure.
  • Spike Testing:  A form of stress testing, spike testing validates the performance of a system when it is put through varying unanticipated and repeated loads and volumes over short periods.
  • Endurance Testing: Otherwise called soak testing, endurance testing evaluates how an application performs with normal workloads over prolonged intervals of time. It assesses memory leaks to inspect if it can cause a system to succeed or fail.
  • Scalability Testing: A form of testing to understand when systems will stop scaling its peak. It entails gradually adding users, data volume, and loads while monitoring levels.
  • Volume Testing: In this type of testing, applications are tested with large volumes of data to check efficiency and monitor performance under different volumes. It is also called flood testing.

Recommended Watch: Unleash the power of Aspire’s Performance Testing Framework and achieve superior load testing results. Register for our webinar and transform your load-testing strategy.

In the process of performance testing, there are critical factors to consider in order to make your performance testing cycles successful each time.

  1. Test throughout the SDLC journey

While performance testing is a critical factor in the development cycle, leaving it towards the end may be a bad move. Instead, employing an agile approach and making iterations on the go can close the gaps quickly.

  1. Focus on End Users

Keeping customers happy with the application they develop and deploy is one of the primary goals for any enterprise. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct tests that involve virtual users for interface testing, user experience and more. Besides, it also tests the capabilities of the servers and clusters that run the application.

  1. Simulate real-world scenarios

Mimic common scenarios to ensure the success of your application across varied devices and environments using virtual users that access the system. By blending devices and environments, you can also secure the reliability of your application.

  1. Pay enough attention to mobile

Given how smartphone usage is increasing at a steady rate, if a business’s applications are not on mobile, it does not exist. Mobile testing involves checking if apps do not crash under loads by simulating peaks across networks, devices, and platforms and address performance issues.

  1. Cloud-based testing

The cloud is dependable due to its ability to cater to scalability as it comes with options to increase or decrease the required configurations as and when needed. Performance testing on the cloud is affordable and makes it possible to test repeatedly from different locations without having a physical setup.

  1. Conduct testing across geographies

Whether you are in the banking or retail space, your customers are present all over the world and this means your website and application must function without impacting their experience across their devices or browsers. Key functionalities and workflows must be tested along with testing before peak periods of holidays or season sales.

  1. Defining the Testing Environment

Before indulging in the testing environment on all fronts, a comprehensive study must be organized and this involves analyzing testing goals and defining the objectives. They must also consider the software, hardware, network considerations, physical architecture, and the production environment too.

  1. Set up triggers and alerts:

Most performance testing is done without human intervention and testing teams must set up notifications or email alerts that will reach the right stakeholders during abnormal load times or if there are any other issues. This will increase the proactive resolution of bottlenecks.

  1. Reports are mission-critical for continuity

To understand if the design and execution of tests lead to great levels of performance testing, one must be able to decode the report and reprioritize tests that do not work effectively.

  1. Test all units:

Considering the complexity of multiple systems in an application, they are bundled as units, such as services or databases. To check that they can work individually and together, they are tested with loads of varied volumes to expose weak links that can be corrected or isolated.

Coupling things together into a single framework that can enforce all the elements of Performance Testing is Aspire’s Performance Testing Framework (APTf 2.0). As it is a one-stop shop for end-to-end application performance testing for enterprises, APTf ensures your testing is in the best hands.  As a ready-to-use framework, kickstart your journey into performance testing in a matter of 4-6 hours and soon enough you can experience 40% cost savings with all the pre-requisites that you need available in one place.

Want to know more about how APTf 2.0 can make a difference for your enterprise?

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