Spring is here—time to plan for pre-holiday performance testing
Spring is barely here, but on the web site performance testing schedule it’s already time to think about the holidays. Three ongoing trends in e-commerce indicate that this year, site operators should plan for performance and applications testing earlier rather than later, Joe Fernandes, director of product marketing for web test solutions at performance applications testing services provider Empirix Inc., tells InternetRetailer.com.
As was the case last year, another record holiday season is likely this year in online retailing. “That means more users shopping online at the same time, putting more stress on applications,” says Fernandes. “The increasing volume of online users means you need to be testing your applications with larger load levels, and earlier in the off season to make sure it will be able to meet that demand.”
Performance testing is generally something that is scheduled at the end of the application development process, he adds, but retailers should consider testing a replica of any new application in an environment that simulates actual anticipated load earlier on. Leaving testing to the end of the development cycle carries some risk. “What happens is that inevitably, development delays occur and testing gets squeezed because the holiday season is not going to move,” Fernandes says.
A second trend that should precipitate earlier performance and application testing is that original infrastructure and applications now five or more years old are being upgraded or replaced at many e-retailers. “That requires a re-investment in testing the new platform and technologies to ensure performance,” Fernandes says.
A third factor site operators should keep in mind when planning performance testing is the increasing integration between multiple systems that could ultimately affect the experience at the customer end. “Say an online retailer wants to tie more closely to the ERP system so customers could know whether a product is in stock and exactly when they could receive it. That’s information that is presented to the user, but it relies on information coming from back office systems, so now, the user experience is potentially affected by the ability of those two systems to interoperate,” he says. “Application integration through service oriented architecture is one of the things that is driving demand for testing.”
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