{"id":10163,"date":"2018-08-31T00:45:09","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T00:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/?p=10163"},"modified":"2025-05-05T21:23:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T21:23:39","slug":"top-performance-testing-tools-prepare-website-black-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/performance-testing\/top-performance-testing-tools-prepare-website-black-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Performance Testing Tools to Prepare Your Website for Black Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The e-commerce industry\u2019s busiest day is just around the corner\u2026 Are you ready?<\/span><\/h1>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-11795\" src=\"http:\/\/abstracta.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/artem-beliaikin-49mCO5ZRQDk-unsplash-min-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"sale mannequins\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everyone knows that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the most popular online shopping days of the year (besides <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/feed\/update\/urn:li:activity:6425533773215002624\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amazon\u2019s Prime Day<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">), but it\u2019s also a day that is notorious for website crashes as the dramatic increase in users to any one site can cause major performance related problems. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The good news is that these problems could be prevented and solved by doing performance tests on time and having the proper set of monitoring tools to know the status of your system\u2019s health while processing the peaks loads.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A dedicated performance tester, I work with clients and partners daily to help them avoid crashes and system slowness, so they can generate more revenue and ensure a pleasant user experience. Below, I will list my favorite tools for performance testing and monitoring that you can use to help you gear up for the busiest time of the year!<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"HTTP_Debugging_Proxies\"><\/span><strong><span style=\"color: #00b674;\">HTTP Debugging Proxies<\/span><\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Debugging proxies are really useful to analyze the traffic between the user\u2019s pc and the server. They are trusted middlemen programs that work by catching and decrypting all the requests and responses between the client and the server, taking metrics like processing and response times, packet size and more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These tools are also really helpful for performance scripting as they could be used as a reference to parameterize variables or take values from request responses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ones we use most at Abstracta are:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.telerik.com\/fiddler\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fiddler<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: (Although it is primarily for Windows, Fiddler has beta versions for Linux and MacOS but they don\u2019t work quite as well as the Windows version.)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.charlesproxy.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Charles Proxy<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Load_Testing_Tools\"><\/span><strong><span style=\"color: #00b674;\">Load Testing Tools<\/span><\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As you may already know, load testing tools are the main tools for performance testing. They can record workflows, automate them (usually by creating scripts that simulate a real user performing actions in the application) and execute these scripts, recreating any possible scenario from your system.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are many load testing tools (licensed or free) and choosing the correct one depends on many aspects like the technologies used in the system, the experience of the testers or the size of the load tests. We recommend: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jmeter.apache.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">JMeter<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gatling.io\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gatling<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (The tester may require some programming knowledge as the scripts are written in Scala)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blazemeter.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BlazeMeter<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0&#8211; A SaaS tool especially recommended to run high volume load tests, it can also run both JMeter and\u00a0Gatling scripts.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"APM_Tools\"><\/span><strong><span style=\"color: #00b674;\">APM Tools<\/span><\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Application performance management tools are programs (mostly SaaS but also on-premise) for monitoring and managing the performance, availability and user experience of software applications. They\u2019re useful to monitor the health of a system everyday, and especially on days with higher shopping demand (like Black Friday), detecting and diagnosing performance related problems without adding significant overhead to resource consumption. In addition, they could be used to record metrics of the system during the performance tests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today there is a plethora of great options. The ones Abstracta uses most include: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/newrelic.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New Relic<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/cloudwatch\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CloudWatch<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for AWS servers<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dynatrace.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dynatrace<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nagios.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nagios<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Log_Analyzers\"><\/span><strong><span style=\"color: #00b674;\">Log Analyzers\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Server logs provide very interesting information about a system, but they are usually difficult to understand. Log analyzer tools are very useful to automatically process and parse different types of logs. In particular, they generate graphics and tables to show the information provided and some even use algorithms to automatically detect problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some of these tools are:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gceasy.io\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GCEasy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to analyze GC logs<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/goaccess.io\/\">GoAccess<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Mobile_App_Performance_Tuning\"><\/span><strong><span style=\"color: #00b674;\">Mobile App Performance Tuning<\/span><\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Your website may not be your only source of revenue on Black Friday; perhaps you have a mobile app as well. Just like your website, your app should have excellent performance in order for customers to trust it and open it back up time and time again.<\/p>\n<p>The findings of a 2015\u00a0<a title=\"Mobile App User Survey - Dimensional Research\" href=\"http:\/\/techbeacon.com\/sites\/default\/files\/gated_asset\/mobile-app-user-survey-failing-meet-user-expectations.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mobile app user survey<\/a>\u00a0conducted by Dimensional Research showed that 80% of app users will only attempt to use a problematic app three times or less and 36% said that an app with slow performance issues made them have a lower opinion of the company.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The best tool we can recommend for mobile performance testing and tuning is <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/2A9XFym\">Apptim<\/a>.<\/strong> Apptim empowers you to easily test and analyze mobile app performance, preventing any issues from going live to your users. It provides you with rich data regarding response times and resource consumption (cpu, memory, data transfer, render, database, etc) and more.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I hope that provides you with a good introduction of the various kinds of tools that can be used to ensure the reliability and performance of your website and\/or mobile app for Black Friday! With a well thought out plan and the right tools and tests this could be you this holiday season:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"giphy-embed\" src=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/embed\/3o7TKoI8u489ttdbfG\" width=\"480\" height=\"240\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/nbc-thanksgiving-shopping-3o7TKoI8u489ttdbfG\">via GIPHY<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Have you tried any other tools that you would recommend? Let me know!<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Recommended_for_You\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Recommended for You<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/performance-testing\/ensure-your-website-handles-black-friday-traffic\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How to Ensure Your Website Handles Black Friday Traffic Without Crashing<\/span><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/performance-testing\/how-to-make-a-performance-test-plan\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How to Make a Performance Test Plan<\/span><\/a><br \/>\n<!-- Go to www.addthis.com\/dashboard to customize your tools --><script src=\"\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/300\/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-58d80a50fc4f926d\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The e-commerce industry\u2019s busiest day is just around the corner\u2026 Are you ready? Everyone knows that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the most popular online shopping days of the year (besides Amazon\u2019s Prime Day), but it\u2019s also a day that is notorious for website&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[113,50],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v14.0.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Top Performance Testing Tools to Prepare for Black Friday | Abstracta<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Do you have the performance testing tools in your arsenal to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Avoid a site crash. 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