spriteCloud Case Study – LoadStorm

Andy McDowell, co-founder and CEO, spriteCloud

“LoadStorm PRO is an affordable and intuitive solution that doesn’t require an engineer to understand how to drive it. This is unlike other platforms, such as SOASTA. But, if you should require help, the LoadStorm engineering team has demonstrated it provides second-to-none support.” Andy McDowell, co-founder and CEO, spriteCloud

In Brief

spriteCloud™ is a full-service software testing and test automation services provider. A large and well-known global fashion brand called on spriteCloud to help ensure its e-commerce application performed optimally. This e-commerce site routinely has more than one million unique visitors monthly and therefore was critical to the company’s overall success. As the testing provider, spriteCloud needed to select a load testing tool that would provide in-depth data while still being affordable to run repetitive, large scale tests. LoadStorm PRO has proven to be a great fit for spriteCloud and has helped the team find bottlenecks in the application before customers experienced any problems with performance. spriteCloud now turns to LoadStorm for their day to day testing to ensure an optimal customer experience and optimal profits for their client.

About spriteCloud

spriteCloud is an independent software testing and test automation services provider. The company also helps organizations increase application development efficiency. SpriteCloud has worked with many organizations around the world including startups, SMBs, enterprises, brands, digital agencies, e-commerce, and mobile solutions providers. They provide a full range of software quality assurance (QA) services such as test planning, functional testing, test automation, performance testing, strategic consulting, mobile testing, load testing, and penetration / security testing. Founded in 2009, spriteCloud is based in the Netherlands.

The Task

spriteCloud was engaged by a global fashion brand to regularly help test the performance of their e-commerce web application. The primary purpose of the global fashion brand’s application is to provide an all-inclusive online shopping experience for customers to purchase a variety of products. The e-commerce web application also works in conjunction with the company’s brick and mortar store locations on brand recognition through various digital marketing channels. Since the online store has more than one million unique visitors per month, ensuring consistent, bug free, and fast web performance is critical.

Due to the volume of traffic this online store receives, spriteCloud developed a plan that involved an iterative cycle of load and web performance testing. The cycle included conducting tests, making performance adjustments, running follow up tests, comparing data, and then making additional performance adjustments. This cycle would continue until test results demonstrate an acceptable performance level and would repeat with new updates. This iterative process was ideal because with every new change, spriteCloud knew that the application was prepared to handle heavy traffic and deliver top performance under load. Such a heavy testing plan required a powerful testing tool, but also required a cost-effective solution because of the number and size of load tests they needed to run.

The Testing Solution

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To find a powerful and cost-effective load testing tool, spriteCloud researched various cloud-based performance and load testing applications. The fashion brand and spriteCloud knew they had to find a reputable solution provider that was also low cost because many top tier solution providers make it prohibitively expensive to conduct daily tests.

After exhaustive research, spriteCloud selected LoadStorm PRO. It met all requirements for cost effectiveness, functional sophistication, and high levels of customer support. spriteCloud has since found LoadStorm’s customer support to be pivotal and uses LoadStorm for work with many other customers. The LoadStorm team has always resolved important requests in a timely manner and spriteCloud has never had to wait more than a single working day for a technical response to a support request. In many cases spriteCloud has requested support turnarounds within the hour, which have been met by the LoadStorm team.

spriteCloud found LoadStorm PRO to be a highly effective load and performance testing tool that delivers affordable, enterprise-class testing to ensure the web application maintains performance under the load of heavy traffic. LoadStorm PRO allows users to easily record a test script without coding, which can then be modified within the LoadStorm application. Scripts allow testers to parameterize virtual user (VUser) actions from generated data or uploaded files. Actions include logins, shopping cart processes, searches, downloads, auction bidding, registration, and more. With this performance intelligence, testers can pinpoint scalability bottlenecks and potential problem areas in any web application.

Results

With LoadStorm, spriteCloud has helped the fashion brand maintain a web shop that performs optimally for customers. The testing tool routinely uncovers many bottlenecks that could lead to a degradation of services. For example, problems with website page average response times, page components, error states, and more are often revealed before they go live thereby keeping the customer experience at an optimum level. A collection of test results is regularly used by senior project stakeholders for decisions regarding go/no-go production rollouts.

The easy script recording allowed spriteCloud to run large testing projects in days instead of weeks. By producing recordings in a browser, spriteCloud was able to produce scripts without any manual coding and found this far easier than using a third party executable that needs to be installed to use. LoadStorm PRO is also helping spriteCloud properly exercise client side components including JavaScript and AJAX, which was critical to their testing.

spriteCloud and the fashion brand have been able to leverage LoadStorm’s level of sophistication in filtering data too. It’s made it far easier to glean key information about website performance. LoadStorm PRO has proven it doesn’t require a software engineer to understand how to use it. In spriteCloud’s experience, this is another advantage LoadStorm has delivered over other platforms.

Another important capability is that LoadStorm has made it easy for spriteCloud to be specific in its benchmark data. spriteCloud can now conveniently align its benchmark data with data gathered in LoadStorm. As a result, truly actionable intelligence is available to make critical decisions about website performance and troubleshooting. LoadStorm has demonstrated strong value and capabilities for spriteCloud. It helps keep the popular global fashion brand’s web shop optimally serving 1+ million unique visitors monthly.