Load testing helps determine website performance under both expected and peak traffic times. It involves scaling up to a large number of simultaneous users to see how many users and transactions a site can handle without substantially slowing down or crashing. Yet, most companies fail to perform load testing on a regular basis. Here are four reasons not to follow suit.
1. To Better Understand Website Performance
Websites often suffer from “build it and forget it” mentality. Yet, features can break. Images or other issues can cause load times to increase. Testers can figure out how your site works with different levels of traffic. This could be critical, especially during high season traffic times like the holidays.
2. To Find Infrastructure Vulnerabilities
Different vendors provide different website components (i.e. bank transactions, content distribution, ads, etc). Sometimes, these components cause conflicts with each other as well as hardware components. This is really noticeable during peak traffic times, reducing both scalability and performance.
3. To Determine Your Website’s Maximum Capacity
No one likes to see 404 errors or completely crashed websites. While a website can fail at nearly any traffic level, it’s more likely to happen when more people are on it, overloading the servers. Load testing’s ability to generate increasing traffic levels will determine how many users can access your site and when you will need to build in additional scaling models.
4. To Avoid a Bad Rep and Lost Sales
Driving traffic to your site oftentimes cost money, i.e. paid search or even content creation. Yet, if someone gets to your site, and it’s down or won’t load properly, you’ve lost a potential customer and sale. Most people want websites to load within seconds. They’re not going to wait around – especially on mobile.
Load testing helps pinpoint what’s causing bottlenecks and affecting how fast your site loads for end users. A fast loading site reduces bounce rate and leaves a positive impression on visitors.
Your website is the gateway to your company. Even a minor failure can be disastrous for your reputation. Don’t load test in the beginning and then forget about it. Invest in continual testing. If you need assistance, consider outsourcing your needs to iBeta.