Ecommerce website performance testing, whether you already understand it or not, you must be aware of its importance to your ecommerce website and give it deserved attention. For those who still question what performance testing is, the Important Notes to Perform Effective Ecommerce Website Testing has mentioned it.
In this post, let’s go into details and clarify what ecommerce website performance testing should focus on.
Why Do We Need Performance Testing for Ecommerce Website?
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Before starting, we hope you will not be blown away by these conclusions by Unbounce:
- 7 out of 10 online customers say page speed impacts their willingness to make a purchase.
- 45.4% of customers are less likely to make a purchase when they face a sluggish page.
Like one of the most important attributes of an ecommerce website, slow loading speed even leaves more damage (e.g., customers tell others about the bad experience or reach your competitors to shop instead, your web pages are underrated by Google and miss high ranks on search engine result pages). But consequently, your sales will likely decrease as the download time increases.
Why do we set the ball rolling with some facts about page speed?
Performance testing reveals how your website responds and reacts in various situations by allowing you to measure the page speed, scalability and stability. Importantly, this type of testing also helps you realize what areas need to be improved for a new level of performance. Therefore, it should be the top priority of every ecommerce website.
What Does Performance Testing Focus On?
Speed testing
First of all, speed is the initial factor in which every store owner should pay much attention. If you still wonder why after the above statistics, please put yourself on customer shoes and decide what you would do when facing a sluggish website the first time you reach it.
It’s concluded! Slow page speed is such a foe of ecommerce that stills potential customers away from stores. Whenever you realize your website is running slow, don’t delay to review and fix it as soon as possible.
If your website was built on Magento, the experienced service team from BSS Commerce could give you a hand if Magento speed test and optimization are not your areas.
Load testing
The purpose of load testing is to check how many users can work on your website at the same time. In other words, the test identifies the maximum operating capacity of your website, any breaking points, and the element degradation.
Thanks to load testing, you can check whether the website performs as expected under normal and anticipated peak load conditions as well. All system lags, page load issues can be easily detected in the testing environment.
Besides, passing functional tests does not mean that all the functions can perform the same under any stress of user load. This is another point that explains the importance of load testing.
Scalability testing
Scalability testing is checking how well your website handles the increasing surge of user load. This is one of the most critical conditions for a web application’s success, but many newcomers don’t think about some problems they may encounter someday. For example, the surge in the number of visitors or the expansion of the product range can negatively impact your website performance and slow down your page speed.
Thus, scalability testing is performed to determine how and when the website reacts with increasing user load. If you don’t understand your website from this point of view, you cannot make sure it can handle an unusual amount of traffic when you offer flash sales, promotion campaigns, or peak seasons.
Stress testing
More traffic brings more customers and more sales. However, could you imagine what will happen if your campaigns succeed far beyond your expectation? When this scenario happens out of the blue, it brings a surge of traffic, causing your website to slow down or even crash.
Stress testing comes to check what happens when your website reaches the extreme capacity. Also, it determines whether your website can recover without serious damages and the customer database is kept intact after the workload decreases.
Stress testing is necessary before important events such as Black Friday or other big promotion campaigns. This allows you to prepare for unexpected traffic spikes and saves you more time and resources to fix the bottlenecks.
Endurance testing
Endurance testing means testing your website with a heavy load over a significant period of time to check how it behaves under sustained use. In many cases, a website may perform exactly as expected when tested for 1 hour, but when it is tested for 2 hours, problems such as memory leaks cause the system to fail or behave randomly.
The goal of endurance testing is to ensure that the throughput and response times after long periods of sustained activity are as good or better than at the beginning of the test.
Volume testing
Ultimately, volume testing is to review the system’s response to different volumes (amounts) of the database, also known as flood testing. “Amount” can be the database size or the size of an interface file which is the subject of the test.
Why do we need to test this respect in ecommerce website performance testing?
Let’s think about the first hours of Black Friday sales when the number of records is low and your system runs fast. But the database keeps expanding with every new order, so the system rejects processing new ones and fails to handle anticipated amounts of data. Consequently, you will regret thinking about missed orders.
Thanks to volume testing, you can:
- Uncover what problems may be resulted in by a large amount of data
- Review the website’s performance by raising the volume of data in the database
- Figure out the point at which the stability of the system get weak
How to know if your website performs well?
Online performance testing tools like Web Page Test, LoadNinja, NeoLoad or 5+ Free Page Speed Testing Tools are what you can use for these purposes. Those tools will finally return the result of pivotal metrics that give you the insights of performance on your website like page load time, request per second, peak response time, First Contentful Paint (FCP), Time to First Byte (TTFB), etc.
(An example of web performance testing tools)
For ecommerce websites using Magento, store owners can go for Magento 2 Speed-Up Consulting Service to get your page speed reviewed by experts. According to speed insight data tools, experienced developers will come with detailed requirements to optimize each area affecting Magento page speed.
Bottom Lines
In a nutshell, ecommerce website performance testing should be a major priority among other types to make sure your online store can serve users well along with your business growth. Focusing on the mentioned aspects is the best way not to miss any important insight.
BSS Commerce is one of the leading Multi-platform eCommerce solutions and web development services providers in the world. With experienced and certified developers, we commit to bringing high-quality products and services to optimize your business effectively. Talk to our experts now!
