I know a large number of LoadStorm’s clients understand load testing, scripting, and [insert all the technical jargon here] that comes along with it, but what about those of us who don’t?
Therefore, I am writing this article for the people like me who just want quick, easy, plain english 
answers to the questions:
- What the heck is load testing?
- Why do I need it?
- How do I get started?
What is Load Testing?
In plain English, load testing is putting a large simulated “load” of virtual users on a website or web application and measuring the web servers capacity and the effect it has on performance. Virtual users are used to simulate traffic spikes and produce high server demand which are conditions that arise when many real users access the site concurrently.
The goal is to simulate real user behaviors like browsing pages, logging in to sites, adding items to a shopping cart, and completing a check out process while measuring the site’s response. On a basic level, you are testing to see if the website is going to slow down or have errors pop up when a large load of users access it at the same time.
A load test will measure the site’s response by identifying three main things:
- The speed with which a website under load will respond from the end-user’s perspective.
- The number of visitors a website can handle simultaneously before the user experience deteriorates, such as frequent errors being returned by the web server.
- The specific bottlenecks or infrastructure limitations that lead to poor website performance.
Why Do I Need to Load Test?
We have all experienced it: the painfully slow website. You hit refresh, push random buttons, twiddle your thumbs, and then eventually give up. . . either resigned to try again later or maybe find a similar website. As a business person, you should translate “find a similar website” into “go to your competitors.”
This is the #1 reason load testing is an imperative step in web development. If too many people try to access a site all at the same time, performance is affected. To the end user, it looks like slow loading pages or even errors on the page.
If your marketing team is launching a new campaign, hopefully traffic to your site will increase. But can your site handle all the extra users? Or will it slow down or even crash?
Did you know that 57% of people will leave a website if pages take more than 3 seconds to load? If you are a small scale business and 100 people are surfing your site at any given time, will pages load in under 3 seconds? Are you sure? To be able to answer that question, you have to try it– hence the need for load testing.
How Do I Get Started?
LoadStorm offers a really useful free account to help you get started.
The first step is to sign up using only your name and email– no credit card required. From there, you can use LoadStorm’s simple tool to build scenarios, run load tests, and analyze the results. The free account will allow you to use a full version of the software and run up to 4 load tests per month with 25 concurrent VUsers. And the best part is, the free account never expires!
After you sign up for your free account, we have all kinds of materials to help you get started and comfortable using the software. We even offer a personal Load Testing Specialist who is available to answer any of your questions and help you through the process.
Ready to learn how to use LoadStorm? Take a look at our learning materials on our getting started page. You’ll be surprised by how easy it is to get your own test results!
