stress test : load testing: website traffic growth

Stress tests are good for finding out how many people can be on your website at the same time. A good test plan for an e-tailing site includes scenarios that represent people browsing your product pages and searching for specific items. It should also have realistic traffic for buyers going through the shopping cart experience and purchasing products with a credit card.

I had a call yesterday from a customer that wanted to stress test his e-commerce site with about 100,000 concurrent users. He explained that their marketing department is expecting significant growth of their sales because of a combination of the economic outlook, increased advertising, and a cool new unique channel technology that is going into production.

Thanks to some data from Gallup, Experian, and Pew Research, Marketing Charts produced some great graphs that show how the U.S. economic financial growth indices are improving in the past year or so. Consumers are spending more online with e-tailing sites, perhaps because they are more confident that their financial situation is improving.

Online Spending is Healthy

In January, 58% of survey respondents said 2011 will be better than 2010, 20% said 2011 will be worse, and 21% said it will stay the same. As the mood has improved, so has online spending which hit a record of $43.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010. That’s up from $32.1 billion in
Q3 2010, and it is the fifth consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth and second quarter of double-digit growth rates in the past year. So, online spending is one of the most vigorous parts of our economy right now. Is your site ready for growth?

Don’t Wait to Stress Test

Every week there are stories of websites that have crashed under the unexpected heavy load of traffic caused from some inadvertant marketing success. A nice write-up and link on Digg or a front page article on Yahoo about your business can send 100,000+ people to your domain within minutes. It happens all the time. Are you ready for it?

Millions of dollars are wasted each year because of the web development team not having the funding or support to stress test their sites properly. Most IT departments still think of load testing tools in the context of legacy products such as Rational, LoadRunner, or SilkPerformer. The cost is beyond reach. The hassle factor is a killer. It’s not worth it. But not anymore! Don’t be the web developer that gets caught with a crashed site because of no performance testing. Cloud technologies are changing the landscape of load testing tools because now you can run a test of 5,000 concurrent users for under $200. It’s easier too since there is no download, no install, and no configuration. Therefore, you have no good reason to wait before providing your marketing manager with a simple report showing how your site is ready for the coming boom. Make them feel good, and make yourself a hero.

Online buyers are flocking. The Slashdot Effect is coming your way soon. Be prepared for it, and take advantage of new innovation in the load test tool space. It’s at your fingertips. The time investment is a couple of hours – tops. The cost has never been lower. Building test scenarios has never been easier. Now is the time, so stop procrastinating.

The statistics don’t lie – good times are coming for online retailers because the purchases are hitting records consistently. All boats in our industry are rising. Heed the signs and get ahead of the curve relative to performance of your website. Know your limits. Optimize as much as you can. You’ll be a superstar!