In my last article, I wrote about the paradigm shift in web application architecture and why performance testers have to re-think their strategy around testing Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for performance. Web application development processes and user expectations continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Sadly, the techniques and approaches employed to test those applications have not kept up with the same growth rate. But the good news is that newer tools are coming up and methodologies are being defined to close in on that gap. Hence, it is essential that performance testers make use of them at every phase of the performance testing lifecycle.
 
Early on in the performance testing lifecycle, testers gather requirements and collecting application usage statistics is typically one of the primary tasks. In this article, I will explain how “Web Analytics tools” can be a great source of information to gather historical data about the application usage and user behavior.


 

Traditional Web Server Log Approach


Traditionally, performance testers have been relying on the web server log files to collect historical application usage data. A web server log was and still is a great source of information. They contain enormous data on web usage activity and server errors. Downloading log files from the web server and running report generation tools will help testers get meaningful info out of them. However, web server logs have their limitations. For example,

• Usage data contained in the web server logs do not include most “page re-visits” due to browser caching. For e.g. If a user re-visits a page, no request is received by the web server as the page is retrieved from browser cache. 
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While data contained in the Web server logs can provide insights into system behavior, it does not help much in understanding “user/human behavior”. 
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Web server logs do not provide user’s geographical info, the browser they used and the device/platform they accessed the application from. All of which are vital metrics to understand user behavior on the application. 

While Web Server log files are still a great way to measure user statistics, new ways to measure web traffic have propped up that provide information from a user-perspective rather than a system perspective. A large number of organizations are implementing what is called “Web Analytics Tools” as part of their Web application infrastructure. For example: Industry reports suggest that Google analytics, a leading Web Analytics tool provider is used on 57% of the top 10,000 websites.