If you are planning a marketing campaign you should load test your website to make sure it could cope with a surge in traffic volumes
The first months of the new year generally mark a time for change. It is a period when business owners often implement strategies and try new tactics for broadening customer base. Start-up entrepreneurs try reaching more people through marketing and social media to bring new visitors to their website. SMEs start using local voucher schemes, or launch a video campaign to offer discounted products or services.
Regardless of how you carry out your plans to win new business, it is essential that your company's website is tip-top and capable of handling increased traffic, before you embark on a major campaign. Imagine what might happen if that video you created with a downloadable voucher 'goes viral' unexpectedly, and you have an influx of new customers trying to access your website to take advantage of the special offer. The last thing you want is your drive for new customers to backfire with a website crash, or your order system going down. Consumer attention spans are short online, and if they find themselves struggling with your website they will simply give up and go elsewhere.
Building load testing into your website development and design is an easy way to avoid these issues, but can be easily forgotten, or viewed as an unnecessary expense. But it doesn't need to be costly: for roughly the price of your team's daily cappuccino you can ensure your website won't let you down.
Ideally, web design firms should be working with testers from the very start – running visitor scenarios and ensuring the website runs smoothly. However, decisions about content and the look and feel of pages often take precedence when you're building a site, particularly when you're not expecting large volumes of traffic.
The good news is that even if you've never done load testing before, it's not too late. If you are about to embark on a new campaign, make sure load testing is factored into any website activity that you're planning. This is especially important if you take payment online.
Here is an outline of how the process works:
*Creating a testing scenario *
This first step is designed to check the website's capacity to cope with a high volume of users. Testing a website to its breaking point is a valid scenario, but we want first we want to make sure the site stands up to an anticipated peak load. Following that, you may want to push the system as far as it will go to see where breakpoints are, and how effectively it recovers from a glitch.
For estimated peak load, you can use analytics or visitor figures, and compare these to your business or growth plan. If it is a brand new site, you can get an idea of visitor figures based on sales projections.
*The test*
Once you've agreed on a capacity number to use as a benchmark, load testers will build up the scenario based on these figures. They can use software to simulate users from disparate locations and devices all following the 'journey' a typical customer would take through your site. This allows them to try the performance and upload times of the site page by page. Using these simulated users, the testers can also gauge how the site will perform under a range of conditions, such as if large volumes of visitors try to redeem a voucher simultaneously during a peak internet usage period.
*Running 'real world' tests *
After the simulations are complete, the load technicians should run the site through tests in a 'real' environment, testing everything at once. This should go from reproducing how people might find your site and come into it, through to the confirmation email they get for registering with you or for making a purchase.
*Share the results*
The testing process can generally be completed quickly, and once it's done, the testers should share the results with you, your website designers and your service providers, so that you can address any problems that have been identified. Most issues that are thrown up by load testing are due to insufficient bandwidth or infrastructure, and both of these are relatively easy to fix. If there is a problem with the website's code, the test results will identify this, allowing you to make adjustments before the big marketing push.
*Maintenance*
The final step is to ensure load testing is a part of your website maintenance cycle. Any time you make a significant change to your website or business that will affect web traffic, you should consider doing a new round of load testing.
People don't tolerate anything but a fast loading time – if pages don't load quickly, they will move to a different site. You spend good money and work hard to attract and engage customers, so make sure you don't lose new ones because of a poorly performing website.
Alan Hall is managing director of technology company SCL
*Sign up to become a member of the **Guardian Small Business Network here** for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.* Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
The first months of the new year generally mark a time for change. It is a period when business owners often implement strategies and try new tactics for broadening customer base. Start-up entrepreneurs try reaching more people through marketing and social media to bring new visitors to their website. SMEs start using local voucher schemes, or launch a video campaign to offer discounted products or services.
Regardless of how you carry out your plans to win new business, it is essential that your company's website is tip-top and capable of handling increased traffic, before you embark on a major campaign. Imagine what might happen if that video you created with a downloadable voucher 'goes viral' unexpectedly, and you have an influx of new customers trying to access your website to take advantage of the special offer. The last thing you want is your drive for new customers to backfire with a website crash, or your order system going down. Consumer attention spans are short online, and if they find themselves struggling with your website they will simply give up and go elsewhere.
Building load testing into your website development and design is an easy way to avoid these issues, but can be easily forgotten, or viewed as an unnecessary expense. But it doesn't need to be costly: for roughly the price of your team's daily cappuccino you can ensure your website won't let you down.
Ideally, web design firms should be working with testers from the very start – running visitor scenarios and ensuring the website runs smoothly. However, decisions about content and the look and feel of pages often take precedence when you're building a site, particularly when you're not expecting large volumes of traffic.
The good news is that even if you've never done load testing before, it's not too late. If you are about to embark on a new campaign, make sure load testing is factored into any website activity that you're planning. This is especially important if you take payment online.
Here is an outline of how the process works:
*Creating a testing scenario *
This first step is designed to check the website's capacity to cope with a high volume of users. Testing a website to its breaking point is a valid scenario, but we want first we want to make sure the site stands up to an anticipated peak load. Following that, you may want to push the system as far as it will go to see where breakpoints are, and how effectively it recovers from a glitch.
For estimated peak load, you can use analytics or visitor figures, and compare these to your business or growth plan. If it is a brand new site, you can get an idea of visitor figures based on sales projections.
*The test*
Once you've agreed on a capacity number to use as a benchmark, load testers will build up the scenario based on these figures. They can use software to simulate users from disparate locations and devices all following the 'journey' a typical customer would take through your site. This allows them to try the performance and upload times of the site page by page. Using these simulated users, the testers can also gauge how the site will perform under a range of conditions, such as if large volumes of visitors try to redeem a voucher simultaneously during a peak internet usage period.
*Running 'real world' tests *
After the simulations are complete, the load technicians should run the site through tests in a 'real' environment, testing everything at once. This should go from reproducing how people might find your site and come into it, through to the confirmation email they get for registering with you or for making a purchase.
*Share the results*
The testing process can generally be completed quickly, and once it's done, the testers should share the results with you, your website designers and your service providers, so that you can address any problems that have been identified. Most issues that are thrown up by load testing are due to insufficient bandwidth or infrastructure, and both of these are relatively easy to fix. If there is a problem with the website's code, the test results will identify this, allowing you to make adjustments before the big marketing push.
*Maintenance*
The final step is to ensure load testing is a part of your website maintenance cycle. Any time you make a significant change to your website or business that will affect web traffic, you should consider doing a new round of load testing.
People don't tolerate anything but a fast loading time – if pages don't load quickly, they will move to a different site. You spend good money and work hard to attract and engage customers, so make sure you don't lose new ones because of a poorly performing website.
Alan Hall is managing director of technology company SCL
*Sign up to become a member of the **Guardian Small Business Network here** for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.* Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.