With the increasing transformation in e-commerce technologies from production to delivery, the need to adapt newer versions of production techniques becomes an inevitable part. For effective management of an e-commerce website, online merchants are applying several technologies to match the expanded market worldwide.
Here, the e-commerce performance testing services come into role-play their technical aspects to manage the e-commerce websites and improve User experience, which leads to business expansion and more customer engagement.
Performance testing matters a lot for boosting both user experience and conversion rates. It helps increase user engagement by satisfying their needs and boosting overall impressions while interacting with the website and application. Ultimately, that leads to increased user experience.
Overall performance testing ensures your website’s functionality, such as loading speed, available products, and consistent delivery of your products. So, when a user surfs your website or application and is satisfied with the desired products, he/she opts to buy those products. So, the customer completed the task that the merchant needed from the customer, as it helped him to boost conversion rates to expand his business performance.
In a nutshell, e-commerce testing services are an essential part of business expansion as well as overall customer satisfaction.
Understanding Performance Testing
Many e-commerce organizations use different testing types to optimize their business websites, apps, or software development. So, a performance testing service is a type of testing tool to determine the bottlenecks of a website’s performance and fix them for effective optimization.
The main objectives of performance testing services are to ensure the overall website’s functionalities, such as speed, limitations, and utilization of the resources under different workloads.
Other objectives include increasing reliability, user experience, risk reduction, elimination of performance congestion, scalability, meeting industrial standards, and overall robustness of the website.
Performance testing or non-functional testing is different from functional testing in many ways. The major difference is that functional testing checks that the code is performing to provide desired results, while performance testing validates the code’s performance.
Generally, functional testing is expensive, and performance testing is a slightly cost-effective measure that most organizations are incorporating this tool. However, other organizations are implementing both testing methodologies to reduce their cost engagement and improve their overall functionality.
As per the Doofinder report, more than 26.5 million e-commerce websites are already present, and new websites are being developed every single day. Between 2019 and 2023, 9.2 million e-commerce websites had already been designed, with 204% growth in 2021. That means, for effective management of the websites, different advancements are also implemented, and testing methodologies are being developed day by day.
The data shows the need for testing on websites is inevitable, and among all the testing services available, several e-commerce testing companies are providing methodologies for the effective running of their websites.
While talking about performance testing of websites becomes a crucial part that helps business websites engage customers with better loading speed with the help of automated testing tools and good bandwidth accessibility.
Other important aspects of performance testing are user satisfaction and increasing sales. Due to the testing services, customers can easily go through the websites and search for their relevant purchases without any hassle and purchase their desired products. That ultimately increases customer loyalty and satisfaction, and leading sales revenue will result in the business’s success.
Read Also: A Balanced Look: Manual Testing Advantages and Disadvantages
Core Components Of E-commerce Performance Testing
The core components of e-commerce performance testing ensure compatibility, security, reliability, and other webpage testing for the effective functionality of an e-commerce website.
If you are new in the website testing field and want to know how these core components are tested and, in a nutshell, how to test e-commerce websites, then let’s discuss the types of performance tests incorporated by developers to run the websites.
1. Load Testing
It is a type of performance testing that helps determine a website or software product’s performance under real-life-based application load behavior. It ensures the system can handle the workload in any stressful conditions before the product is launched.
Let’s discuss the techniques of load testing during website performance.
- Stress Testing- The testing ensures the system’s handling capacity on high-load usage is above the normal range of usages.
- Spike testing- It tests sudden hikes in website traffic.
- Soak testing- It tests some continuous load over a long time.
Tools used for e-commerce load testing are Locust, Apache benchmark, Neoload, web load, K6, Blaze meter, etc., to check resilience and functionality over stress situations of website applications or sites.
The main objectives of load testing include evaluating scalability, identifying bottlenecks or flaws, checking for the handling ability, analyzing the responsiveness, and fixing memory flaws, etc.
2. Stress Testing
This is software testing under Performance testing, which ensures the versatility of websites over the normal usage of applications, known as endurance testing. The test helps particularly in the reliability and verifies the stability of the websites under heavy load.
The objectives of stress testing include:
- Analyzing the situation after a website software fails to perform tasks to find any error is happening.
- After analyzing the causes of the failure, it checks out any plan for software recovery to make it workable.
- Also, hardware issues and any data corruption problems that occur in the system must be checked.
- The stress test also ensures security vulnerabilities in the website system during a heavy load work process.
- Another objective of stress testing is that it helps with data integration even after the software failure due to heavy load.
Some stress-testing tools are Gatling, Taurus, Load Ninja, Tsung, heavy load, etc., to ensure the website’s overall stress ability.
3. Scalability Testing
Scalability test comes under load testing that ensures how the website performs on several workload situations. It adapts the changeability to perform a function with increasing website traffic or sudden spikes in end-user requirements over the load situation.
The types of scalability tests include both upward and downward adaptability of software applications under extreme load. The main objectives of scalability testing include:
- Checks the scalability of the website when increasing load situations.
- Set the user limit for software products.
- It ensures that the client side and the end-user experience the heavy load.
- It determines the website’s latency and fluctuations in bandwidth to ensure the operation is continuing in various ranges of settings.
- The scalability testing warranty minimizes performance decline and ultimately increases user experience.
3. Endurance testing
It is a type of Performance testing that ensures the website should run under a prolonged stress situation. Overall, it allows users to surf the website without any hassle. It allows hundreds or thousands of users to interact with the same websites at a time without facing issues like loading, scrolling, product viewing, etc.
The objectives of endurance testing or longevity testing are include:
- It gives different tasks to a website to check for any crashes, website slowdowns, payment failures, etc. Also ensures the memory consumption should not exceed while there is lots of user engagement.
- The testing constantly monitors any performance hinders and fixes them for effective running of websites.
- Also, determines the memory leakage of the websites that may crash the website systems.
Some of the endurance testing tools are Gatling, Open STA, Parasoft load test, Appvance, etc.
Best Practices For Effective Performance Testing
To effectively run an e-commerce website, web developers have to ensure that all the tests are done before the launch of a website. It is also important that the testing is ongoing while the website is running. For that, the developers use e-commerce QA testing using best practices of performance testing. Let’s explore the strategies for the effective running of your e-commerce website.
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Establishing Clear Testing Objectives
The success measure ensures the website’s testing expectations, whether improving user experience conversion rates or bounce rates. After your success measures are done, you can go to your next step towards achieving your goals and benchmarks.
The next step towards performance testing starts with getting knowledge about your website’s testing objectives. The QA testing team should ensure the business’s goal and discuss it with the team. They should set clear goals such as conversion rates, track loading speed, and reduce steps to low dependency on user performance. Your goals should be accurate, achievable, and timely deliverable.
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Select The Right Tools
There are several tools available in the market for testing the performance of your website. However, before choosing any tool, you should set your needs and know why performance testing is necessary. So, after learning all the important aspects of performance testing, you can opt for your next move and choose the right tools for your website.
Performance testing is truly an essential part of website testing to ensure the overall optimization of websites that include scalability, reliability, and user experience. For analyzing these criteria, some tools are designed for performance testing. These popular tools are:
1. Apache JMeter
An open-source tool that determines different loads that arise in multiple systems at a time. This tool supports several languages for code completion and uses a Graphical User Interface or GUI for effective running of codes and ensures the functionality of the website.
2. Gatling
This is also an open-source testing tool that helps developers access all the concurrent large loads and increases the ability to maintain smooth website performance. Also provides real-time reports of user response, code creation in different programming languages, and concur heavy traffic on the website.
3. BrowserStack
The performance testing tool is specifically designed to provide mobile app responsiveness. It tracks some major metrics, such as ANR rates, webpage loading speed, FPS, etc., on a real-time basis. It supports both iOS and Android websites.
4. Load Runner
This type of performance testing tool is designed to track the app’s or website’s real traffic, check performance, and handle heavy loads by improving scalability.
5. BlazeMeter
This tool uses a cloud infrastructure to access the website’s performance during heavy load traffic. It supports several languages like Selenium and Gatling GUI for instant code editing. Also provides real-time monitoring of user response and error percentage of the website running.
6. Locust
It is an open-source performance testing tool that uses Python code script to test the reliability, scalability, and flexibility of your website. It helps in successful load development in heavy traffic and allows customer satisfaction.
These are some of the best testing tools for testing your website’s performance effectively and accurately. Let’s discuss the factors that affect the decision on the tools for effective testing of your website’s performance.
Considering the following factors while deciding the accurate performance testing tools:
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Adaptability
You should choose the right performance tool that should be adaptable to handle any load matters effectively with scalable testing.
Result Analysis
The tool should analyze the result effectively. It should give you a clear response on a real-time basis. Also, provides your website’s loading speed, user engagement, error detection, and many more.
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Flexibility
Your chosen tool must be flexible enough to create and enable customization testing. The test objects should provide flexibility to the frequency of the test scenario to fix the system’s error repeatedly.
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User-Friendly
One of the important aspects of choosing a tool for performance testing is that it should follow a user-friendly interface. That means running a tool is easy and takes less time to operate. Mostly, open-source tools are good for choosing a performance tool.
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Integrations
Another major aspect of choosing the right performance testing is that it can be integrated into certain major platforms like CI/CD interface and other language supports, as well as combined with other types of testing tools.
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Cost
Lastly, the performance testing tool you choose should be cost-effective. You should choose the tool that matches all your website’s requirements but costs less. So, a clear benchmark will help you decide on the right tool for effective running of your website.
These are the criteria when choosing the e-commerce testing services that enable you to manage your website effectively and boost productivity and user experience.
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Simulate Real user behavior
Testing with real user behavior enables us to identify the issues regarding user behavior, real-time user experience, and overall user satisfaction. Also helps in appropriate product launching according to user interaction in a time-bound manner.
For accurate user simulations, some measures should be followed, such as:
- Firstly, you have to collect user data through various surveys or focus groups. Here, the goal is to determine the user’s needs and expectations.
- After collecting the user data, categorize the users according to their similar preferences and sort them for each category of users.
Then, in the final step, choose the right performance testing tools to successfully implement all the aspects of user data that have perfect load-handling capacity during multiple interactions with your website.
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Monitor and Analyze The Right Metrics
Key performance Indicators or KPIs are important measures to monitor and analyze performance metrics. KPIs are necessary to track growth, profit margin, client declination rates, order value, cash flow, employee turnover rate, user response, etc.
For monitoring and analysis, you should follow the following measures to effectively manage your KPIs.
The first step is defining the specific KPIs of your business objectives. Set all your business goals specifically, such as revenue growth, user engagement, product specifications, etc.
- After defining your KPIs, choose the right performance-testing tools to meet your business website’s requirements. Some of the best performance testing tools’ key features are reliability, flexibility, and user-friendliness.
- The next step is to visualize your user’s data that copes with your KPIs and highlights the user’s insights, preferences, and current trends.
- After visualizing all the data, allow KPIs to perform the last rituals to implement those requirements or features on your website to optimize your website to a greater extent effectively.
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Test Across Different Devices And Networks
The important measures of best practices include website testing on various devices. It helps identify issues regarding compatibility, which allows developers to fix these issues to optimize the functionality of websites on different devices.
Different device testing helps developers impact the user experience by providing app interactions, loading speed evaluation, and overall user satisfaction.
Read Also: A Comprehensive Guide to Software Testing Methodologies
Common Performance Bottlenecks in E-commerce
There are several flaws found in e-commerce websites that require attention and corrections. Let’s find out some of the bottlenecks in e-commerce websites, and it’s necessary measures to tackle them.
The most common bottlenecks of e-commerce sites are server configuration and response time. To avoid these issues, the necessary measures should be taken, such as using the right hosting services, using bot management solutions, keeping things updated, eliminating 404 errors, pre-fetching your data, and optimizing your CMS data.
Talking about the next bottleneck can be a resource for heavy content. Large-size images or videos can slow your website’s optimizations. So, to reduce this issue, use images that can be compressed and optimized externally. The use of vector images and CDN plugins helps in loading the videos or images fast. Another tip you can follow is to reduce unnecessary user data.
Lastly, the bottlenecks of e-commerce websites are third-party screens and plug-ins. To optimize these flaws, some auditing and optimizing rules can be taken into consideration.
- The technique starts with using lazy-loading features. This step is only taken when necessary. You can use lazy-loading features for social media feeds, YouTube videos, and Google Maps.
- Deferred attributes can be applied to the browser, and the script downloads the background to help protect the script, blocking other types of content.
- Third-party scripts can be controlled by the use of self-hosting resources.
- Other techniques include using different tools like web page tests or Google page speed insights to control third-party scripts. As these tools help to identify page loading time, other metrics such as speed index and interactive time.
Optimizing Ecommerce Performance Post-Testing
Steps to take After Identifying Performance Issues
- After detecting all issues regarding your website, firstly, check whether the website’s performance is running efficiently. It helps to improve your website performance by providing information about any significant variations that have to be modified.
- Secondly, you have to identify the reasons for your performance issue. You can use E-commerce testing company tools like GTmetrix or YSlow to analyze the size and website’s asset orders.
- In the next step, optimize your website’s assets and codes to reduce the number of requests and sizes. Common techniques include using HTML and JavaScript files that help reduce your website’s image size to JPEG, WEBP, etc.
- The final step is to run your website after rectifying all the issues and monitor if the site is running perfectly or not. To test these, you can use tools like New Relic or Datadog to monitor your websites effectively.
Performing continuous optimization helps in ensuring the website or software application is built with reliability, scalability, flexibility, and security. Using different tools and techniques, you can ensure your website runs efficiently with increasing loads and usability to the website traffic.
Content Delivery Networks or CDNs help improve your site’s speed globally and increase overall user experience by reducing the image or video file sizes and enhancing server infrastructures. It collects data worldwide and delivers the desired data to users using geographical location. Also reduces the load time and improves overall website performance effectively.
Seize The Opportunity: Amplify Your E-commerce With Testing Now!
Performance testing is an essential part of website testing that plays a vital role in ensuring the website or application can handle unexpected loads effectively. Boosting the management of website traffic helps overall user satisfaction in all aspects. Customers can flawlessly interact with your website and purchase their desired products, which increases the business’s revenue.
So, to improve performance testing your websites, it is inevitable to follow the best practices to effectively run your website, which helps boost the scalability, reliability, load-taking capability, and obviously, increase the user experiences. Using respected performance testing tools is mandatory to implement the above measures on your website.
Here comes the role of a load & performance testing company that provides the right testing tools to optimize your website’s performance to boost productivity, usability, and user engagement. So, invest your money in a perfect testing company’s tool for your website.
