People are adopting online shopping like never before and the global e-commerce market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.9 percent for the next seven years, making it a 6.2 trillion dollar industry. Current technology trends and accessibility have made it possible for every business to create an e-commerce platform in no time and start selling. In the wake of increasing online shopping demand, it is necessary to do a performance testing for an e-commerce website and application to ensure the website is stable and healthy to serve all your customers.
Load Testing for E-commerce Websites & Applications
Load testing is an effective way to measure your website performance against various parameters under huge user traffic conditions. Load testing is done by simulating a high number of virtual users performing different actions on your website. User actions are guided by creating simple user scripts in the load testing environment. Load testing gives useful information about memory utilization, CPU utilization, disk I/O, load balancers, page issues, etc.
An e-commerce website has more chances of going down under high traffic due to the nature of browsing and transactions happen on it. And that’s a negative impact on revenue as well as credibility. For example, if you are running an end-of-season sale and don’t test your website for the expected number of users during the sale, your users may experience downtime, slow loading, and failed transactions. This can totally ruin your sales goal.
E-commerce websites require load testing to make sure that users on your website experience smooth experience in high traffic scenarios and able to make purchases without any trouble. Load testing for an e-commerce website is equivalent to business risk mitigation. It identifies and resolves all bottleneck issues that can be a blocker for sales during peak traffic times.
Questions to Consider: Load Testing E-commerce Websites and Applications
- How peak traffic affects your website performance?
- Is server configuration correct for handling high traffic?
- Are transactions flow in good health to handle the traffic without any glitch?
- How many concurrent requests your website and application can handle?
- What is the response time for different user paths and transactions?
- How does resource utilization happen during peak conditions and how to scale?
- Point of failures with an increasing number of users, products, orders, etc.
- Database I/O throughput under peak traffic conditions and optimization scope.
- Geo-location issues and bottlenecks profile.
- Scalability issues such as disk usage, CPU usage, memory leaks, stack limitations, network limitations, server limitations, etc.
Elements of an E-commerce Website to Load Test
Critical User Paths
E-commerce websites have various critical user flows that need to be working correctly under high traffic. These include registration, login, product page, shopping cart, checkout, etc. Scripting these user paths and flows and testing them under load conditions will help you identify potential issues that can break your website during peak times.
Tokens & Cookies
Different types of tokens and cookies are created during a user journey on an e-commerce website such as CSRF (Cross-site request forgery) token, authentication token, chat token, preference cookies, session cookies, location cookies, browser-specific cookies. These tokens and cookies ensure a valid and uninterrupted experience for your customers. You need to make sure that all these tokens and cookies are generated correctly and efficiently under load conditions.
Payments
Any meaningful conversion for an e-commerce website means a successful purchase with online payment. Either you are using your own payment system or a third-party payment gateway, you need to test it for a high number of simultaneous users performing payment transactions. This will make sure that every intended purchase gets through with successful payment for a successful sale.
Inventory Management
Inventory management is an integral part of an e-commerce website or application. With every item uploaded by the seller or purchase by the customer, multiple records need to be updated to avoid confusion and bad transactions. For example, if you only have 100 items for a product in inventory, and 150 orders are placed for that product simultaneously, it’s going to be a problem. Load testing your inventory management issue will help to detect and resolve such issues.
Back-end Integrations
Every front-end activity creates back-end events such as invoicing, logistics actions, printing, etc. Under heavy traffic, the back end can also be bogged down with a high number of user transactions. Load testing back-end integrations, including CRM and logistics, will ensure stability.
Third-party Services
Many features and activities such as chat, payment, content delivery, etc. on your e-commerce website and application may be dependent on third-party services. Load testing third-party services for your e-commerce website and application help you identify potential issues under high traffic conditions.
Email & Messaging
Communication through email, SMS, and other mediums are deeply rooted in e-commerce transactions for confirmation and alerts. Load testing those related e-commerce communications under peak conditions is helpful in detecting interruptions and bottlenecks of communication mediums.
These are some of the core elements of an e-commerce website that require load testing for an expected number of users. Along with these, you can create test scenarios for multiple pages on front-end and back-end systems that are significant for the proper working of your e-commerce platform.
Best Practices for Load Testing E-commerce Website and Application
- Load test critical user transactions along with less common behaviors such as back button, remove from cart, discount coupon flow, etc.
- Simulate virtual users in most realistic conditions using different types of real browsers for website and mobile.
- Load test E-commerce website and application from different devices as well to match real-world conditions.
- Perform load testing from different geo-locations.
- Always load test third-party services and APIs.
- Randomly create users, products, and orders.
Performance Testing E-commerce Websites & Applications with LoadView
LoadView is a perfect choice for load testing e-commerce websites and applications. It is a cloud-based tool that offers features for all your load testing requirements. Here is a glimpse of advantages and features LoadView offers.
- You can create virtually any user script using its point and click tool, the EveryStep Web Recorder. It allows you to create complex scripts within no time and without any technical expertise.
- LoadView generates loads using different types of real browsers and devices to create the most realistic test scenario.
- LoadView offers geo-location testing to test your E-commerce website and application from multiple locations around the world to give you a regional performance profile.
- You can adjust the number of users (load) in real-time to measure performance in fluctuating conditions.
- With LoadView, you can perform load testing for all kinds of dynamic media assets, including interactive content.
- LoadView generates detailed performance reports that are easy to understand and give you deep visibility into performance metrics.
Conclusion: Load Testing E-commerce Websites and Applications
Load testing of e-commerce websites and applications focuses on issues related to speed, stability, and scalability. It is vital to test frequently and less common user behaviors under peak traffic conditions to prepare for expected traffic, making sure all transactions are healthy. While creating load test scenarios, you must perform load testing in most realistic conditions using real browsers, devices, and multiple geo-locations. LoadView offers all the features and conditions required for load testing e-commerce websites and applications.
Load test your e-commerce website and applications with LoadView today. Sign up for the free trial now! Or if you would like a one-on-one run-through of the full load and stress testing solution, set up a time for a demo with one of our performance engineers. They can cover all the features and benefits of LoadView, as well as answer any of your load and stress testing questions. Questions about the scripting process? No worries, our team can help you record and set up scripts for testing your e-commerce websites and applications.
Lastly, make sure your critical web pages and web apps continue to perform after they have gone live and in front of hundreds, or thousands, of visitors. Our monitoring platform gives you the ability to quickly set up alerts based on performance thresholds. Ensure your web pages are loading quickly, and content is rendering correctly, as well as making sure each step in the e-commerce process is functioning properly. If at any time performance slows, or images aren’t rendering, you and your teams are immediately notified and provided with detailed information so you can begin the process of troubleshooting to ensuring additional visitors are not impacted. Learn more about our Web Page and Web Application monitoring solutions. Try these solutions, and all the solutions within the Dotcom-Monitor platform, for free.