The collapse of software systems due to high demand damages the user experience and digital quality of life, generating huge losses for companies. My aim in this article is to explain the performance testing benefits and why you should focus on them to grow your business and reach scalability.

Our first impression is often decisive when we use an application or visit a website for the first time. When a platform is slow and makes us waste time, what impression do we form? And what if it throws different errors without explanation?

We’ve all experienced this at some point. When this occurs, we don’t usually analyze the fact that the application could be under heavy load, with many users performing the same action at the same time, or that there might be a performance issue. We don’t slow down. We simply think: “This application doesn‘t work, it is unusable”, and we stop using it.

This is where Performance Testing Services come in. By conducting thorough performance testing, you can identify and resolve performance issues before they negatively impact your users’ experience. Employing the right performance testing tools allows you to harness the performance testing benefits, optimizing software quality and enabling a top-tier user experience.

Don’t miss our Continuous Performance Testing Guide!

What are The Benefits of Performance Testing for Your Business?

Performance testing is a critical part of the software testing process. It helps to identify potential performance bottlenecks, which can significantly degrade the user experience.

When you conduct performance testing efficiently, you may enjoy the following benefits:

• Improved User Experience: Performance testing helps to enhance the responsiveness, stability, and speed of your software applications, leading to a better user experience.

• Increased Customer Satisfaction: By improving the performance of your software, you can increase customer satisfaction, which can lead to higher user engagement and retention.
• Higher Revenue: Improved performance can lead to increased user engagement, which can ultimately result in higher revenue for your business.
• Bottleneck Identification: Testing tools can help you identify potential performance bottlenecks in the test environment, allowing you to address these issues before they impact your users.
• Enhanced Software Quality: By conducting performance tests, you can enhance the overall quality of your software, making it more reliable and efficient. The performance testing process refines software for a production environment.

Do you remember any time this has happened to you? Countless people have not been able to make a digital purchase on Black Friday, or have not been able to access the contents they needed at specific times due to performance issues.

Students around the world have reported not being able to enroll in multiple subjects in their majors at the time of enrollment. In many cases, it was later found that this was related to the number of concurrent users trying to register at the same time, without the system being prepared for it.

Have you ever missed a premiere because of a software “glitch”? There are many examples of this. One of the most memorable was the premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones series.

Years ago, the high demand of Latin American users to watch the premiere of its seventh season caused the system to collapse. The issue exploded on social networks, with users demanding refunds and compensation from HBO GO Latin America.

The same failures can occur in all kinds of platforms. Health, impairing access to important medical information at the right time. Banking systems, affecting the completion of necessary transactions in situations that cannot be postponed. Or simply for entertainment, when someone wants to slow down and take a break after a long day’s work. The options are endless.

As RSA CEO Rohit Ghai recently expressed at the RSA 2022 Conference in San Francisco, “We live in a hyper-connected world, where the physical and the digital are now indistinguishable.”

There is no doubt that the collapse of systems because of high demand is detrimental to the user experience in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world. As a result, people’s digital quality of life is directly impacted, and their daily lives are affected as well. That’s why Performance Testing Services are so relevant nowadays.

It is inevitable that this will result in losses for companies. Here are some data that supports this claim:

Performance Testing’s Significance

Performance testing benefits can’t be overstated. Performance testing empowers businesses to gauge their software in a performance-testing environment. Such performance tests polish software, enabling user satisfaction:

• Response Time: Prolonged response time in web and mobile applications affects user retention.
• User Engagement: Inferior applications can tarnish brand’s reputation.
• Financial Impact: Inadequate software quality has economic consequences.

In the digital era, gauging software performance testing metrics, like concurrent users, is vital.

Read this article and get to know 3 Key Performance Testing Metrics Every Tester Should Know!

Optimal Timing for Performance Tests

The application’s exposure dictates its performance testing needs. However, conducting performance tests regularly during software development is advised.

Diversified Performance Testing Types

Load Testing: Assesses how software behaves under expected loads, understanding how it will perform under anticipated conditions during typical user activity.

Stress Testing: It evaluates the software’s recovery after reaching its breakpoints. It pushes the system beyond its limits to check its robustness and failure mechanisms.

Endurance Testing: Often called soak testing, this verifies the system’s prolonged performance stability. It ensures that the software can maintain its performance over extended periods without degradation.

Spike Testing: Measures the software’s responses to sudden and significant user spikes, determining its ability to handle abrupt increases in load without adverse effects.

Throttle Testing: This type of testing evaluates the system’s behavior under gradually increasing loads to its limits. It helps to understand how the system performs as the load increases but before it reaches its peak.

Peak Testing: Assesses the software’s performance under maximum anticipated user loads, focusing on its ability to handle the highest possible number of concurrent users and transactions.

Scalability Testing: Evaluates the software’s ability to scale in response to an increase in load. This involves understanding how adding resources (like CPUs, memory, or storage) will affect performance, ensuring the system can handle future growth.

Would you like to know more about performance types? In this article, we delve into the various types of performance testing in a testing environment, highlighting the key differences among them like load and stress tests, throttle, peak, and scalability tests, which are crucial for identifying and rectifying issues.

Performance Testing in Depth: Additional Perspectives

• Capacity Testing and Soak Tests: While load tests evaluate software under expected usage, capacity testing determines the software’s maximum capacity. Soak tests, also called endurance testing, ascertain performance over extended periods.
• Stress Tests vs. Spike Tests: Stress tests push software to its limits, while spike tests simulate abrupt load increases.
• Performance Engineering and Continuous Testing Platforms: Beyond basic testing, performance engineering encompasses the entire software development lifecycle. Using continuous testing platforms allows for regular software evaluations.
• Virtual Users and Cloud-based Testing: Simulating virtual users helps recreate real-world scenarios. Cloud-based testing tools enhance this by providing scalable testing environments.
• Memory Utilization and Network Configurations: Monitoring memory utilization and adjusting network configurations can pinpoint performance inefficiencies.
• Performance Metrics and Benchmarks: Establishing performance benchmarks based on critical performance metrics like response time and user requests ensures software meets performance goals.

In the interconnected world, performance testing challenges arise due to increasing user demands. Hence, Performance Testing Services’ relevance is undeniable.

Why Performance Testing is Important

Performance testing is important because it enables businesses to understand how their software performs under various loads and conditions. It helps to identify performance issues that could negatively impact the user experience. By conducting performance tests, businesses can enhance the quality of their software and improve user satisfaction.

✔️According to Business Wire, 88% of Americans have negative feelings about brands with poorly performing websites and mobile Apps. These negative feelings are associated with annoyance, frustration, distrust, and anger.

✔️According to Google, 53% of mobile users abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. 

✔️According to a CISQ publication, the cost of poor-quality software was at least $2.41 trillion in 2022 in the United States, and it was about $2.08 trillion two years before (CISQ report 2020.)

System failures and inadequate performance in the face of high demand can have a major impact on retention and conversion rates, as well as the sustainability and scalability of companies. Digital platforms are increasingly central to people’s lives in a globalized world that is almost completely interconnected. So, as you see, losses can be really huge.

Thus, it is a priority to evaluate the performance of any application, under different conditions and continuously, to ensure the correct user experience and improve the quality of the software.

In Which Cases Is it Essential to Run Performance Tests? How Can Performance Testing Services Help?

The more exposed an application is, the more users and variables there are around it, and the more important it becomes to perform performance testing. Another naturally relevant factor is the criticality of the system: for example, a banking or health system vs. a system for personal use for entertainment or with little impact on users. 

At this point, performance testing benefits are evident. In any case, it is good to always have some performance test. Conducting performance testing helps to verify that the application behaves within the expected parameters. As in all tasks, it is necessary to balance costs, risks, and benefits. 

“The cost of finding and fixing bugs or errors is the largest single expense element in the whole software development lifecycle. Large systems have much higher defect potentials that are more difficult to remove than small systems due to size and complexity. The earliest you find the defects in the development’s lifecycle, the cheapest the overall delivery will be”, outlined the CISQ report.

In this context, being able to choose the right performance testing tool for each step is paramount. We invite you to read our TOP 10 performance test tools for 2023!

As stated by our CTO Roger Abelenda in this article, we consider that continuous performance testing is the best way to test performance in continuous integration. In this post, we tell you what practices are relevant in continuous performance testing today, featuring an expert panel.

Looking for a Quality Partner for Performance Testing?

Embrace agility and cost-effectiveness through our Performance Testing Services, hand in hand with our performance test engineers.

We are quality partners! Learn more about our solutions here and understand why we have received such praise. Contact us to discuss how we can help you grow your business.

Follow us on Linkedin & X to be part of our community!