Performance Testing for Ecommerce – Is your Ecommerce Website ready this Holiday Season?

Getting ready this holiday season

The holiday season is just around the corner and it is time for retailers to get busy for the next couple of months.

One of the biggest sales events of the year Black Friday and Christmas is just days away now.

As an online retailer, this is just about time to ensure your site is ready for this holiday season.

For a brick and mortar store, it is more about stocking up and ramping up staffs.

As for online retailers, it is more about the site performance and making sure the site runs well throughout the season.

Why site performance is important?

Though people still like to visit the brick and mortar store, the number of transactions that happen online is on the rise. Last year, the Black Friday online sales hit a record USD 6.22 billion, which is 23.6% more than the previous year.

Why performance testing

The amount of traffic you get will be doubled or even more in most situations, during the holiday season sale.

It is important or at least in this case mandatory to test your website for performance before the holiday season begins.

Did you know? That 40% of people will abandon your site if your site takes more than 3 secs to load.

YES! webpage loading time plays a vital role in your business. Performance testing services from a leading software testing service provider will ensure your website will be ready to handle the traffic and execute multiple transactions simultaneously.

Test your website for performance

Irrespective of the exciting offers on your website, your customers can abandon you for web page loading time. Hence, performance testing is important. There are 2 important types of performance testing needs to be done.

Load testing

Increase in website traffic can be a good thing for your business as you will make a lot of money.

However, it may turn ugly, if your website crashes due to the sudden influx in traffic. This will affect your business very badly.

Especially in the digital world where people take it up in social media. However, it may turn ugly, if your website crashes due to the sudden influx in traffic.

This will affect your business very badly. Especially in the digital world where people take it up in social media.

A 2-second delay in loading time could cost you fortune. Hence, you have to make sure your eCommerce website has optimal loading time.

Load testing will help you optimize the performance of your website. Schedule a load test prior to the sale so that you will have ample time to fix the issues from load testing results.

Spike testing

Sudden spike in user load could crash your website.

Introducing Spike testing within your performance testing plan will ensure your eCommerce website is ready to handle the sudden rise and fall of user load. This is mandatory especially before the holiday season and during special discount days.

End-to-end Testing

Now that you have tested the performance of your website, it is time now to do complete end-to-end testing of your eCommerce website.

As a first step, prepare a checklist with the list of testing that has to be completed before the holiday season.

Here is a list of testing an eCommerce website must undergo,

Functional Testing

Testing all the functionalities just before the sale begins ensures the website is ready to make money.

A lot of new functionalities could have been added to your website just for the holiday season.

For instance, integration with other new applications, features, etc. It is worthwhile to test all the functionalities of the website before the sale begins.

Security testing

Security testing is not an option anymore. It is mandatory to ensure your website is secure from security threats.

While other types of testing can be skipped (I strongly recommend not to skip), serious security threats may impact your business heavily. Hence, Security testing is a must.

Performance testing

Similar to security testing, Performance testing services is mandatory for your eCommerce website, especially before the holiday sale.

Usability Testing

Though there won’t be many changes to the features of your eCommerce website, it is advisable to perform usability testing, just to make sure everything is fine.

This will be particularly helpful if you have added new features to your website either to improve the shopping experience or for holiday sale purpose.

Mobile app testing

People are not interested to turn on their laptops or PCs anymore.

The smartphone revolution has given the power to people to access everything from their handheld device. For the same reason, many eCommerce businesses have their own android or IOS app in order to retain their loyal customers.

In these situations, testing the mobile app thoroughly will be a good remuneration.

Mobile first (Bonus tip)

According to a recent survey by Boston Consulting Group, almost a third of Americans will give-up sex instead of their smartphones.

I don’t have to stress the importance of mobile-friendly websites here.

Google has made it clear on so many occasions that websites should be mobile-friendly, and it is one of the primary weightage for your website to rank in Google’s search results.

If you don’t care about Google, then you should at least be worried about your future customers. According to Statista, the number of smartphone users is expected to reach 2.87 billion by 2020

You would have probably designed your website for mobile devices during the launch of your website.

If not, it is best to make sure your website is responsive to different screens just before the sale begins.

The focus should be on giving the best experience to your shoppers this holiday season. Since webpages optimized for mobile screens boost conversions and sale.

Stock up

The digital revolution has opened the doors for a lot of small businesses. There are many external factors (which is not in your control) that directly affect your business, such as competition and economy.

You never know, this might be the best or worst holiday season yet for you.

The least you can do is to be prepared and deliver the best experience to your customers.

This blog should help you prepare for this holiday season and keep your website crash-free.

So, go ahead, stock up and happy selling!