From f961f2a8a2f87d19b63bd90c7ae5c44d68b429e4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Andrew Whitmell Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2024 12:19:20 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Add Performance Testing blog post --- ...-often-overlooked-ingredient-in-web-application-success.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/_posts/2024-09-17-performance-testing-the-often-overlooked-ingredient-in-web-application-success.md b/_posts/2024-09-17-performance-testing-the-often-overlooked-ingredient-in-web-application-success.md index 3e827cad75..1c5917fef1 100644 --- a/_posts/2024-09-17-performance-testing-the-often-overlooked-ingredient-in-web-application-success.md +++ b/_posts/2024-09-17-performance-testing-the-often-overlooked-ingredient-in-web-application-success.md @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ author: awhitmell In today's fast-paced digital landscape, the performance of a web application has a direct impact on user satisfaction, business success, and overall competitiveness. Whether it's the speed of page loads, scalability under heavy traffic, or the smoothness of key interactions, users expect applications to perform flawlessly. Performance testing is essential for identifying and addressing potential issues before they affect real users, ensuring an optimised and reliable experience. From improving resource utilisation to enhancing security and boosting SEO rankings, comprehensive performance testing is playing an ever-growing role in the success of applications. This blog explores some of the key benefits of benchmarking performance. ## Enhance user experience -Performance testing plays a crucial role in enhancing the user experience of web applications. Slow load times, unresponsive features, or frequent crashes drive users away quickly, leading to high bounce rates and poor engagement. [A study by Google](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/2340/bc22e_The_Need_for_Mobile_Speed_-_FINAL_1.pdf) found that 53% of mobile users abandon a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load, and sites that loaded within 5 seconds boast a 35% lower bounce rate, and 70% longer average session time, compared to their slower counterparts. This demonstrates how critical load testing (testing performance under typical and peak usage conditions) is in retaining users and ensuring a seamless experience across devices and platforms. By simulating various scenarios, such as peak traffic loads or different network conditions, testing performance helps identify areas where speed and responsiveness can be improved, ensuring a smooth and consistent experience for all users. +Performance testing plays a crucial role in enhancing the user experience of web applications. Slow load times, unresponsive features, or frequent crashes drive users away quickly, leading to high bounce rates and poor engagement. [A study by Google](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/2340/bc22e_The_Need_for_Mobile_Speed_-_FINAL_1.pdf) found that 53% of mobile users abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, they also found that sites which load within 5 seconds boast a 35% lower bounce rate, and 70% longer average session time, compared to their slower counterparts. This demonstrates how critical load testing (testing performance under typical and peak usage conditions) is in retaining users and ensuring a seamless experience across devices and platforms. By simulating various scenarios, such as peak traffic loads or different network conditions, testing performance helps identify areas where speed and responsiveness can be improved, ensuring a smooth and consistent experience for all users. Beyond speed, users expect web applications to work flawlessly without issue during critical interactions like form submissions, payments, or media playback. Poorly optimised applications lead to a frustrating user journey, where features lag or malfunction at key moments. By conducting thorough load tests, these issues can be identified and mitigated before they affect real users. In the long term, this builds user trust and loyalty, as they are more likely to stick with applications they know performs reliably. @@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ Security vulnerabilities often emerge when applications are stressed or overload ## Validate compliance with SLAs Service Level Agreements (SLAs) outline the expectations for performance, availability, and responsiveness between service providers and clients. Performance testing helps ensure that web applications meet these critical benchmarks by simulating real-world conditions allowing the evaluation of the application's ability to stay within agreed-upon metrics. Whether the SLA requires a web page to load within two seconds or guarantees 99.9% uptime, rigorous soak testing helps bring the application to a point where it delivers the promised experience and provides tangible proof when it does. -In 2016, [a Ponemon Institute study](https://www.vertiv.com/globalassets/documents/reports/2016-cost-of-data-center-outages-11-11_51190_1.pdf) showed that unplanned downtime, which could easily be caused by performance deficiencies, was costing businesses an average of approximately $9,000 per minute, with [more recent studies](https://itic-corp.com/itic-2021-global-server-hardware-server-os-reliability-survey-results) putting that number as high as $83,000 for large enterprises. By validating performance against SLAs, organisations not only ensure compliance but also protect their bottom line and customer trust. +In 2016, [a Ponemon Institute study](https://www.vertiv.com/globalassets/documents/reports/2016-cost-of-data-center-outages-11-11_51190_1.pdf) showed that unplanned downtime, which could easily be caused by performance deficiencies, was costing businesses an average of approximately $9,000 per minute, with [more recent studies](https://itic-corp.com/itic-2021-global-server-hardware-server-os-reliability-survey-results) putting that number as high as $83,000 per minute for large enterprises. By validating performance against SLAs, organisations not only ensure compliance but also protect their bottom line and customer trust. ## Boost SEO ranking Finally, performance testing has a direct impact on SEO rankings. Studies show that search engines, such as Google, factor in page load times and overall user experience when determining website rankings. Slow or poorly performing applications lead to higher bounce rates, signalling to search engines that the content is not valuable or relevant to users. By optimising an application's performance through stress testing, load times can be improved, bounce rates reduced, and overall user engagement enhanced - all of which contribute to a better SEO ranking.