As you’ve likely seen, we pulled together a comprehensive list of load testing best practices for you to visit, and revisit, at your convenience to help you maintain high performance websites and applications that keep your customers happy.
As helpful as we hope these guidelines are, we know sometimes our readers want to hear how load testing works from the end users themselves. We’ve compiled a few best practices that have come right out of the mouths of customers using our load testing services:
Test different types of traffic at different times of the day.
“We started by using a model of expected user behavior—consumers, manufacturers, and retailers—and testing features individually for each type of traffic. We see higher traffic at certain times of the day, so that was a factor too. We tested lots and lots of scenarios and finally, to be really sure, ran a ‘perfect storm’ scenario with traffic spikes from all our users.” – Dave Cumberland, VP of engineering, Shopatron
Test when you expect hikes in traffic.
“We had a good handle on the size and scope of the stress tests to run… It took a couple of days to build the scripts and subsequently each test iteration was completed within a single day. We were able to demonstrate that the platform could easily handle the expected load over the holiday season after just one iteration. We plan to execute additional iterations after significant code changes or in anticipation of events that will impact system load.” – Steve Romney, CTO, Shutl
Replicate the true user experience.
““First, we tested what it’s like when people log in [to our online auction site]. Then we replicated heavy bidding, with bids coming every 15 seconds. Finally, they tested the refresh process, where bidders get real-time updates. This allowed us to pinpoint what to expect during peak loads.” – Brian Ellis, Director of IT, Taylor and Martin
For more information on how we’ve helped our customers and what they have to say about our load testing services, take a look at our case studies here.
Do you have any best practices to share from your own load testing experiences?
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