In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the intricacies of Salesforce performance testing, exploring the common challenges faced and providing valuable insights and solutions to help you unlock the full potential of your Salesforce environment. So, get ready to be on a journey that will empower you to optimize user experiences, uncover hidden bottlenecks, and supercharge the performance of your Salesforce instance.

What is Salesforce Performance Testing?

Performance testing for Salesforce involves assessing the speed, scalability, and stability of a Salesforce application or system under various load conditions.

The goal is to guarantee the system operates at its best, free from any interruptions or downtime in performance. This process entails simulating different user load scenarios using tools like Apache, JMeter or LoadRunner to measure system response times, throughput, and resource utilization. By doing so, it identifies potential performance bottlenecks that could adversely impact system performance, such as sluggish database queries, network latency issues, or inefficient code.

The test results obtained from these evaluations are then used to enhance the system’s performance and scalability. Salesforce performance testing is vital to guarantee that the system consistently handles peak traffic and user demands, maintains user satisfaction, and delivers optimal business value.

What Are The Different Types of Performance Testing Exist for Salesforce?

Testing Salesforce can pose challenges due to the dynamic nature of Salesforce pages and the limitations of conventional testing tools like UFT, Provar, Selenium WebDriver, and QTP. However, employing AI-driven solutions for Automated Testing can help address these problems. Unit Testing is well-suited for examining specific Salesforce performance and swiftly generating results for code debugging or issue resolution.

On the other hand, automated End-to-End Testing with prebuilt test cases and natural language processing can be the preferred choice for administrators. In fact, there are several types of Salesforce performance testing utilized to pinpoint various performance issues, including:

1. Load Testing

This testing involves replicating client loads to assess the system’s response when dealing with substantial workloads. It measures reaction time and output to ensure that the system meets the desired performance prerequisites under distinct user loads. Identifying possible performance blockages, aids in optimizing the system’s performance.

2. Stress Testing

Stress testing drives the system to its limitations to discover possible default points. It examines how the system performs under intensely heavy burdens that exceed its intended capacity. Assessing the system’s response to unexpected events, such as hardware failures, network outages, or surges in consumer traffic, helps identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

3. Spike Testing

Spike testing calculates how the system functions when subjected to sudden and significant boosts in consumer traffic. It is particularly valuable in assessing the system’s response to traffic points that may occur during marketing campaigns or seasonal periods. Identifying potential bottlenecks caused by sudden surges assists in ensuring optimal performance.

4. Endurance Testing

Endurance testing estimates the system’s execution over a prolonged duration under standard load conditions. It aims to determine any performance debasement that may occur over time. By detecting issues like connection problems, memory leaks, or other challenges that may originate during prolonged usage, it helps maintain system performance and stability.

5. Capacity Testing

Capacity testing regulates the maximum burden that the system can sustain without smashing or experiencing performance problems. It aims to identify the system’s maximum capacity and assess its stability under heavy loads.

6. Scalability Testing

Scalability testing examines how satisfactorily the system can manage the increased load when additional resources or hosts are added. It helps evaluate the system’s ability to scale high or low effectively in response to varying traffic loads.

7. Configuration Testing

Configuration testing demonstrates the system’s execution under distinct configurations, such as various operating systems, network setups, or web browsers. Its purpose is to point out any performance issues related to specific configurations that could impact the system’s performance.

8. Regression Testing

Regression testing reviews whether recent or existing code changes have an effect on the function. This type of testing assesses the effects of small functional changes or large-scale modifications to ensure that the system continues to function correctly and efficiently.

9. Visual Testing

Visual testing involves reviewing UI screenshots to stop consumer frustration caused by unintended changes. It focuses on identifying any undesired or unexpected alterations that could spoil consumer encounters or adoption, potentially leading to irritation or an increase in support inquiries.

10. Integration/API Testing

Integration/API testing observes the flow of digital workflows across the platform, confirming appropriate data exchange between applications and systems. It verifies that data is correctly transmitted in and out from different systems, ensuring smooth integration and functionality.

Also Read – Guide to NoCode Salesforce Automation Testing

11. User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) occurs after the latest releases or formation, where a selected group of business clients evaluates their expertise with various devices such as laptops and mobiles. Its purpose is to assure that Salesforce digital workflows orient with how consumers operate in real-world scenarios. Sometimes, UAT involves emulating typical activities or tasks performed by users throughout the day to validate the system’s usability and effectiveness.

What is The Salesforce Performance Testing Process?

To guarantee that your Salesforce implementation can effectively manage the anticipated workload and deliver the desired accomplishment to its consumers, performance testing company assess and evaluate factors such as responsiveness, speed, scalability, and stability. This evaluation takes place under various conditions, including scenarios involving high consumer loads, combination with other systems, and complicated workflows. The typical testing process comprises the below-given steps:

1. Define Performance Goals

Determine the essential key performance indicators (KPIs) for effectively evaluating the success of your Salesforce implementation. These may include response times, throughput, system availability, and scalability targets. Establishing clear performance goals helps guide the testing process.

2. Identify Test Scenarios

Determine the types of activities or transactions that will be simulated during salesforce CRM testing. For example, logging in, creating records, searching for data, running reports, or performing bulk data operations. Describe both typical and highest-demand scenarios to evaluate how the system performs in different situations.,/p>

3. Design Test Scripts

Develop scripts or test cases that simulate user actions and interactions with the Salesforce application. These scripts can be created using automation tools specifically designed for Salesforce, such as Selenium or third-party tools like Apache JMeter or LoadRunner.,/p>

4. Set Up the Testing Environment

Establish a testing environment that closely mirrors your production setup. This includes configuring servers, network settings, and databases to mirror the production environment as closely as possible. Consider the number of users, hardware resources, and any additional integrations or customizations that may impact performance.

5. Execute Performance Tests

Run the performance tests using the predefined test scenarios and scripts. Track and evaluate critical performance indicators like response durations, transaction frequencies, resource consumption, and the stability of the system. Perform tests under different load levels to assess system performance at various capacities.

6. Analyze Test Results

Gather and assess the data acquired during the performance testing phase. Pinpoint performance bottlenecks, including instances of delayed response times. or system crashes, and investigate the root causes. Use performance monitoring tools to pinpoint specific areas for optimization and improvement.

7. Optimize And Retest

Once performance issues are identified, work on optimizing the system by fine-tuning configurations, optimizing code, or upgrading hardware resources. Implement the necessary changes and retest the system to ensure that the performance meets the defined goals.

8. Document Performance Testing Results

Document the performance testing process, including the test scenarios, scripts, test results, and any performance improvements made. This document functions as a guide for upcoming testing endeavors and offers valuable information about performance attributes of your Salesforce implementation.

9. Regular Performance Monitoring

Establish a regular performance monitoring plan to continuously track the performance of your Salesforce application in the production environment. This helps identify any performance degradation over time and allows for proactive optimization and maintenance.

What Are Some Common Salesforce Performance Testing Challenges?

There are various challenges encountered in Salesforce performance testing, including:

1. Dynamic Nature Of Salesforce Pages

Challenge: Salesforce pages often contain dynamic content, such as dynamic forms, components, and data. The ever-changing characteristics of this phenomenon pose a difficulty in effectively emulating real-world user engagements in performance testing scenarios.

Solution: To address this challenge, it is important to identify the critical elements on the page that impact performance and focus on testing those areas. Use Salesforce-specific performance testing tools that can capture and replay user interactions effectively. Additionally, collaborate with Salesforce administrators and developers to understand the underlying architecture and optimize the page components for better performance.

2. Limited Access To Test Data

Challenge: Acquiring realistic and representative test data can be difficult due to limited access to production data or sensitive data privacy concerns. Without proper test data, salesforce testing services might not precisely depict real-life situations.

Solution: Generate synthetic test data that closely resembles production data in terms of volume and complexity. Use data anonymization techniques to mask sensitive data while preserving data integrity. Collaborate closely with key business stakeholders to pinpoint and create meaningful test data scenarios. Contemplate utilizing data management software to optimize the procedure of creating and overseeing test data.

3. Integration With Third-Party Systems

Challenge: Salesforce often integrates with various third-party systems, such as external databases, APIs, or middleware. Performance testing becomes challenging when the system under test relies on these external integrations.

Solution: Identify the critical integration points and simulate realistic load and response times for each integration. Use specialized frameworks to simulate the behaviour of external systems during performance testing. Collaborate with the owners of the third-party systems to ensure proper configuration and optimization of the integrations. Keep a close watch on the performance of these integrations while testing and pinpoint any slowdowns or performance concerns.

4. Complex Business Processes And Workflows

Challenge: Salesforce implementations often involve complex business processes and workflows that span multiple pages, components, and user interactions. Testing such complex scenarios can be time-consuming and difficult to replicate accurately.

Solution: Prioritize and segment the complex business processes into smaller, manageable test scenarios. Focus on testing the critical paths and high-impact processes. Use automation tools to create reusable test scripts that can simulate end-to-end workflows. Collaborate with business users and process owners to understand the expected performance benchmarks for each workflow. Perform thorough performance testing on these critical workflows and validate the system’s performance under realistic conditions.

5. Lack Of Resources

Challenge: Limited resources, such as hardware infrastructure, licenses, or skilled performance testers, can pose challenges in conducting comprehensive performance testing for Salesforce.

Solution: Optimize the usage of available resources by prioritizing critical tests and scenarios. Leverage cloud-based performance testing platforms that offer scalable infrastructure on demand. Consider using performance testing tools that provide efficient resource utilization and allow for parallel test execution. Invest in training or collaborating with experienced performance testers who can effectively plan, execute, and analyze performance tests.

6. Scalability Issues

Challenge: Salesforce implementations can face scalability issues when the user load increases beyond the system’s capacity. Identifying and mitigating these scalability challenges is crucial to ensure consistent performance under varying workloads.

Solution: Perform load testing and stress testing to determine the system’s scalability limits. Identify and address scalability bottlenecks, such as inefficient queries, suboptimal configuration, or architectural limitations.

7. Difficulty In Identifying Performance Bottlenecks

Challenge: Pinpointing the root cause of performance issues or bottlenecks within the Salesforce environment can be challenging due to its complex architecture and multiple layers of configurations.

Solution: Utilize performance monitoring tools and profiling tools to capture detailed performance metrics at various levels, such as the application, database, and network layers. Analyze the collected data to identify patterns, anomalies, and potential bottlenecks. Conduct performance tests with various configurations and settings to isolate and reproduce performance issues.

Collaborate with Salesforce administrators, developers, and database administrators to troubleshoot and optimize the identified bottlenecks. Use performance tuning techniques, such as query optimization, caching, and code optimization, to improve overall system performance.

What Are The Best Practices For Salesforce Performance Testing?

Here are some recommended strategies, techniques, and best practices for Salesforce testing:

1. Identify Critical User Scenarios

Prioritize testing critical user scenarios that require attention rather than attempting to cover every possible scenario, which can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

2. Generate Realistic Test Data

Utilize authentic and representative data for performance testing to replicate real-world usage patterns.

3. Test In A Production-Like Environment

Conduct tests in an environment that closely resembles the production environment, including data volumes, integrations, and third-party systems.

4. Embrace Automation

Employ automation tools to reduce manual effort, save time, and enhance accuracy and consistency during testing.,/p>

5. Define Performance Goals

Establish clear performance goals and benchmarks for the application, such as response times, throughput, and resource utilization, and evaluate performance against these metrics during testing.

6. Analyze Test Results

Thoroughly analyze the results of performance tests to identify bottlenecks, areas for improvement, and opportunities for optimization.

Also Read – A Deep Dive Into Application Performance Testing

7. Foster Cross-Team Collaboration

Promote collaboration among developers, testers, and operations teams to ensure alignment on testing goals and objectives.

8. Plan For Scalability

Test the application under various load levels to ensure its ability to handle increasing user volumes and maintain performance.

9. Stay Informed And Updated

Stay current with the latest performance testing tools, methodologies, and best practices to continually enhance the performance of the application.

Conclusion

Salesforce applications that exhibit optimal performance can provide exceptional customer experiences, even during periods of high usage. While achieving 100% certainty of high performance is challenging due to Salesforce’s inherent conditions, conducting thorough performance testing can ensure that performance remains at a satisfactory level. Therefore, consider integrating performance testing services into your process starting today to enhance the performance of your Salesforce applications.

In reality, it is the exact opposite. A brand, or an owner of an app, would never understand what is driving their uninstalls unless they have effective testing and metrics to show how an application performs in real life and how it can be improved. A key part of understanding the importance of performance testing is to understand that it has its own set of challenges, which include a change in how an application behaves in an environment that is scaled back. It is, however, first necessary for us to understand why this is a requirement in the first place.

Why use performance testing?

Organizations can use performance testing services to identify computing bottlenecks or communication bottlenecks within their systems. The bottleneck in a system is one component or point that slows down its overall performance.

For instance, a computer that operates at even the fastest speed will have a hard time using the web if the bandwidth is below one megabit per second (Mbps). The reason for slow data transfer rates may be inherent in the hardware, but it may also be a result of software problems, such as too many apps running simultaneously or a corrupted web browser file.

The goal of performance testing is to help identify where software-related performance problems might be occurring by highlighting areas where an application might be failing or lagging. An organization can also use this type of testing to ensure it is prepared for predictable major events. The performance of a system can also be verified to ensure it meets the specifications described by its manufacturer or vendor. In this process, two or more devices or programs are compared.

Major Challenges of Performance Testing in 2023 with full proof Solutions

The complexity of applications and their development stages has resulted in drastic changes in performance testing tools and environments over time. In the following section, we have listed some of the biggest challenges that performance testing will face in 2023 with its full proof solution. Let’s take a closer look at them without ado.

1. A not so Perfect Plan

When designing a comprehensive testing strategy for a project, there is a lot of work involved in identifying and prioritizing the risks that are associated with the project and deciding on the actions that are supposed to be taken in order to mitigate those risks.

There are several steps involved in this testing process, including determining application performance characteristics, designing appropriate tests to exercise those characteristics, simulating actual user interactions, and testing the API services as part of the test strategy as well as verifying that all these services are working. It is difficult to achieve effective results from performance tests when there is no proper brainstorming during the creation of test strategy and test coverage.

The Solution: Strategic approach

Ideally, the performance team should devote considerable attention to analyzing and understanding the application architecture as well as other performance characteristics such as load distribution, usage model, geographical location, reliability requirements, availability requirements, resilience requirements, technology stack, etc. The performance characteristics should be validated through a clear test strategy to get effective test results.

Also Read – How To Plan A Foolproof Performance Testing Plan?

2. Lack of Time and Resources

A load test requires a significant amount of time and money to yield effective results. When software development is not planned properly, budgets and resources are not allocated to many important execution parts than performance testing activities are dependent on low-skilled resources who lack a thorough understanding of their scope. This may lead to the use of open-source tools in the project, which might increase the risk of the project in the long run. Taking all of these factors into account impacts the overall quality of the process of performing a performance test.

The Solution: Calculating Budget Parameters Prior

In this sense, it is essential that businesses plan their performance testing activities at the beginning of projects in order to account for the necessary resources, timeframe, and proper budget allocations associated with them.

3. Using inappropriate tools for testing

When selecting tools for software testing, various factors must be taken into account. Among them are the cost of the license, the skills of your team, or even the features of the application that you are using. You can waste a lot of time by choosing the wrong tool, which may have a significant impact on the SDLC as a whole and thus affect your whole team and project.

The Solution: Deep-dive knowledge of various tools

Various tools have to be thoroughly understood by the quality assurance team in order for them to be effective. It is also essential that the team have a clear understanding of what the application’s functionality is before deciding which tool to use.

4. Managing and reporting test results

It has become the norm to expect flawless code quality. Especially in today’s highly competitive market with limited resources, it has become increasingly important to offer high-quality code to customers as a quality assurance measure. The first step in ensuring code quality is to script and run performance tests. Testing and engineering teams will need to identify if any memory, CPU, or other bottlenecks have been identified after the tests have been run, as this can result in slow-downs or other discrepancies in transactions.

Development and DevOps teams can resolve code quality problems by looking at test results. The process of analyzing audit logs or code-based results can be tedious and does not always provide engineers with a clear understanding of the main problems. It is difficult for engineers to derive actionable insights from these results because they lack information and context.

The Solution: Actionable and Insightful Observability Reports

A tool that generates reports and displays application and protocol testing results clearly and comprehensively can make code issues easier to understand for engineers. When metrics such as error rate, response time, and hits/s are displayed, users can drill down into problems and research them further. This allows developers to focus on fixing issues rather than deciphering them.

Furthermore, it is recommended to take a look at a tool that can integrate with APM solutions like DynaTrace, New Relic, and Datadog. Using these solutions, you’ll be able to gain even more insight into events and the impact they have on your infrastructure and server.

Also Read – Guide To Write A Quality Bug Report

5. Lack of knowledge about need for performance tests

There is a general lack of recognition by stakeholders and budget makers regarding the importance of performance testing company services during software development. Most of the time, after a software release, is made public, many performance issues will occur, which can result in the website, application, or software crashing. And all of this happens just because of performance problems.

The Solution: Expert Team needed

Tests should be conducted by subject matter experts, and results should be again analyzed by them only. A good expert knows what the customer wants and how to make it possible. It is, therefore, essential to have an expert team that can successfully perform various tests, understand the complexity of the application, and acts accordingly.

6. Managing the User Experience Under Traffic Loads

Tests are typically divided into frontend and backend tests. Testing the backend examines aspects like server performance, load, and memory, whereas testing the front end focuses on what the user will see. But what is the connection between them?

For engineering teams to maintain competitiveness in the market, they must understand what users see under heavy loads in order to provide a proper user experience. Normally, a dedicated tool is needed to accomplish this since running a frontend and backend test simultaneously is not precise enough in terms of coordinating the timeline well. Furthermore, overlaying the two tests is a technical challenge as well.

The Solution: End User Experience Monitoring

The open-source Taurus tool allows running Selenium tests simultaneously with load tests, resulting in an integrated report. Reports show engineers and testers how the user views their website when it’s busy. After reviewing the results, teams can decide if they need to adapt their user interface in some cases. As an example, you can pause JavaScript executions once the site reaches a certain number of visitors.

7. Securing APIs

In recent years, cybersecurity attacks have become more sophisticated and frequent, and this will not change in 2023. Attackers could use API vulnerability to access your Services, Infrastructure, and Data in order to gain access to any information they consider sensitive. API vulnerabilities such as code injections, broken authentication and authorization, excessive exposure, and insufficient logging can all be exploited by threats and put your data at risk.

The Solution: Shift Left Security

Security is shifting left in the current era, allowing developers and DevOps teams to take responsibility for minimizing risks rather than just security teams or departments. Testing API security is also an essential part of API testing. Using such tests, API gateway security policies can be validated, abnormal hits per second can be identified and logged as an indication of an attack, and the results can be monitored.

Also Read – Introduction to API Security Testing

8. Graceful Shutdown

The process of users logging off of your application or website at various times and frequencies is commonplace in real-user scenarios. Despite this, it is a regular practice in developing performance tests to terminate them abruptly at the end of the test. Hence, the system cannot be tested to see how it reacts to users leaving sporadically. Also, abruptly shutting down threads may result in errors that interfere with test results. An inaccurate test could have an impact on your production and your customers’ experience.

The Solution: Incorporating Iterations in Test

Time-based tests can be enhanced with iterations to simulate real-world shutdowns. Moreover, threads will have the ability to limit the number of iterations they use, preventing them from starting a new one only to shut down soon after. Therefore, threads can gracefully end their iterations after iterations have been completed.

9. WebSocket Testing

In a nutshell, the WebSocket protocol is a method for communicating two-way between web browsers and servers through one TCP connection. Due to its increasing popularity, more and more enterprises are seeking WebSocket testing solutions as part of their testing programs. Furthermore, they need the ability to view the WebSocket in its entirety.

The Solution: JMeter WebSocket Samplers

The JMeter software includes WebSocket plugins that can be downloaded and used. The plugins allow for the load testing of WebSockets as well as visibility into them.

Also Read – Jmeter Vs LoadRunner: Which One Is Better for Performance Testing?

10. Wrong interpretation of results

You can analyze the functionality of your application by performing a performance test. It is unfortunate, however, that incorrect analysis of test results could lead to performance failures. The test’s purpose will not be served if the results are inappropriate, which will result in an inefficient application for the market.

The Solution: A team of Subject matter experts

The testing process should be performed by a performance tester with experience who can analyze the scenarios and keep refining the tests and adding new ones as necessary to make sure they are consistent. Performance testers should have a good understanding of application architecture.

It’s also important for the performance tester to have knowledge and experience spanning multiple areas, such as OS concepts, OSI models, web architecture, networking concepts, client-side performance concepts, data structures, and server-side performance concepts. The results of these tests can be quickly analyzed by performance experts.

11. Performing tests in a real production environment

A production environment that is fully functional makes it difficult to conduct load tests. It is really important to take into account the fact that real-time users are using the product during these tests, so any change made to the production environment will likely affect the user experience.

The Solution: Replica the environment

A close watch is necessary in the production environment to spot irregularities. It would be ideal for planning performance testing activities in a production-like environment instead of a real-life production environment.

Whenever a business requirement demands a particular activity to be executed in an actual production environment, such activities should be performed only during periods of off-hours so that perfect time can be given for corrective actions if an application crashes under load in the production environment.

Earlier, load testing was mainly executed as a means of simulating basic user actions on a protocol level. Nevertheless, load testers should balance automation with exploratory testing today as more complex applications are being developed with intricate user actions.

Also Read – Ways In Which Performance Testing Enables A Massive Digital Transformation

Wrapping Up

Regardless of how dependent your continuous integration workflow is on performance tests, it is a necessity to integrate them. Even if testing takes a little time, the benefits it can yield are well worth it. Furthermore, it can help you reduce risk.

All in all, tests are an essential part of the development process that cannot be ignored. However, performance testing certainly poses some challenges. But we are confident that you won’t face them if you sincerely follow our suggested solutions.

The majority of consumer interactions with companies are digital, which is driving a transformation of companies to meet consumer needs with complete digital transformations. Particularly when it comes to digital interactions with companies, customers are expecting more than ever before. The consumer wants quality apps, they want them released quickly, and they want them to work across more platforms and versions.

App developers traditionally tested their apps on a variety of platforms, operating systems, and devices to account for customer experience (CX). However, this is not the most efficient method of ensuring an app’s functionality. Instead, we need a highly advanced performance testing approach that focuses on developing quality and optimized functionality throughout the entire development process.

Therefore, today with this article, we’ll let you know how performance testing enables a massive digital transformation in our lives. So that you can use it in the best possible way for solid outcomes.

What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing is a kind of non-functional software testing which verifies responsiveness, application speed, scalability, and dependability. The purpose of this load test is to determine if the application performs smoothly across a variety of bandwidths, networks, and user loads.

In this type of testing, runtime errors, latency and response time optimization issues, load balancing, and application issues are all identified. Performance testing is the process of determining if a mobile app, web service, website, server, database, or network has the ability to handle a certain load, while functional testing is the process of testing the functionality of the website.

Performance testing examines how a web application functions under a realistic workload by using software tools and comparing the results to industry benchmarks.

Why is Performance Testing essential?

As the digital space becomes increasingly competitive, Performance Testing becomes more and more important for enterprises. As a result, it is necessary to ensure that the application runs smoothly, is reliable, and can be scaled with ease. There is a specific set of goals and outcomes that the application is designed to achieve in order to achieve these goals. As an example, a gaming application online must display certain actions in order to provide the best experience for the player.

When performing performance testing, it is not always possible to detect application defects. It is important to ensure, however, that the application will be run as smoothly as possible regardless of network fluctuations, bandwidth availability, or load on the network. We believe that performance testing is actually a subset of the larger picture of performance engineering that focuses on performance issues in software architecture and design. Thus, designing and executing these tests is crucial to making sure the website is stable.

Effective performance testing services can help identify most performance issues. It could be an issue with the network, software, database, bandwidth, or hardware. In performance testing, benchmarks are used to ensure that an application behaves in a specific way.

It is primarily responsible for ensuring that test results are accurate and thorough.

Also Read – [Guide] Best Practices in Performance Testing

Ways In Which Performance Testing Enables a Massive Digital Transformation

Users will quickly turn away from your software if your performance stalls or your loading time is too long. Your business’s digital presence will be better over time as a result of performance testing. Here are 16 ways through which it accelerates digital transformation. Let’s take a look.

1. Improves Website Speed To Engage Customers

An unreliable and slow website will never attract many visitors. Rather than attracting visitors, it will deter them. A team can use automation tools to check the speed and performance of the website. Testing the site will allow users to connect and use bandwidth with basic connectivity, enabling them to stay engaged and interested.

2. A website that loads faster makes more money

While this is true for nearly all websites, it is particularly important for companies requiring direct contact with their customers. As an example, applications used in the banking and e-commerce industries need to provide customers with an interface that is both simple and secure. In turn, this leads to more traction for the app, which in turn leads to more frequent visits.

3. Resolves any bugs before releasing the product

Testing the performance of the application, as previously stated, ensures that it performs as expected. You can perform various types of Performance Tests to determine how well your application performs in real-world scenarios and identify risks that could compromise it.

• A fail-over test verifies the redundancy mechanisms.
• High-level loads are used for longer periods in reliability tests.
• The load capacity of a system/application is determined by stress tests.

As a result, all of these contribute to fragmenting the application in order to uncover flaws that will make it marketable.

4. Boosts The Application’s Sturdiness

It is imperative that businesses ensure their applications remain stable under any circumstance, including cyber-attacks, network outages, or virtual threats. Testing the application’s performance using a variety of tests and tools ensures its robustness and ability to deliver results consistently.

A targeted infrastructure test, for instance, identifies performance issues at each layer of an application in order to deliver the desired performance without causing hiccups.

5. Favors Market Claims

It is essential that businesses ensure that their applications/software performs as expected. Online gaming apps and software need to comply with this requirement in particular. As a result, it will be capable of hosting many concurrent gamers while still maintaining high performance and speed.

During the course of executing tests, a variety of statistics are collected to ensure and assure that performance goals will be met. These metrics include Speed, Scalability, and Stability. In this way, performance issues can be identified more easily.

6. Boosts Scalability

Businesses need to develop flexible, scalable applications that can be updated in real time due to the challenges they face in the digital sphere. A performance testing company helps expose the vulnerabilities of an application, and it is also able to identify areas that require strengthening in order to allow upgrades and changes and to make the application more scalable. By analyzing the statistics of test execution, teams can identify potential issues or limitations of an application that could cause delays in its development.

7. Ensures That An Application Is Stable And Reliable

It is important for a software application to be stable and to provide consistent results regardless of the changes it makes to its features over time. A specific performance test can be used by a team to find out whether any recent changes or frequent releases are making it harder for the application to behave in a predictable manner.

Also Read – Key Performance Metrics for Effective Performance Testing

8. Examines Different Technology Stacks

The increasing complexity of software applications has led to the implementation of different technology stacks to support those applications. There is a need to implement these processes to ensure the deliverables and results are what was expected. Testing the performance of an application gives us an insight into weak points found in the technology stack that was used to create it.

9. Enhances An Application’s Responsiveness

It is crucial for businesses to be responsive in order to meet their goals and objectives. There are a number of free and paid tools that can be used to test the speed of a website or application. Additionally, you can determine the performance of your systems with a combination of open-source and licensed tools. Generally, Performance Testing tools are browser-based, which allows them to test multiple platforms and browsers at the same time to ensure that they are compatible with each other and to ensure application compatibility across multiple platforms.

10. Determines Issues With Databases And APIs

Today, data sourcing and the performance of an Application Process Interface (API) are two of the most important aspects of running any business. Load/stress tests, for instance, provide teams with data about how an application behaves and whether the server responds with data to the user within a specified period of time after receiving data from the user. Also, it is a very useful tool for determining how the API will respond and perform under heavy loads, which is an important factor.

11. Manages Framework Capacity

A performance test is run on all new software before it is released to end users to determine if any improvements are needed in the hardware or creation design. It is highly beneficial to estimate framework performance when dealing with organizational constraints.

12. Validate the fundamental features of the software

Solid software foundations are essential to generating software success. By measuring how well basic software functions perform, business leaders can make key software setup decisions. Two great examples of software that nails the fundamentals are Apple and Samsung. The fact that they have built their business strategy on the foundation of a strong software foundation has allowed them to plan their business strategy and make crucial decisions about how their devices will perform.

Due to their confidence in the fact that their software has a strong foundation and has been validated under rigorous testing, they are able to combine their resources in research and development to continuously improve their product offerings and software performance in order to maintain their position as a leader in the industry.

13. Allows you to keep your users happy

The first impression you make on prospective customers is extremely important. A recent study discovered that nearly half of the users expect mobile and web applications to load in two seconds or less. A good impression needs to be made within a short period of time otherwise, users will switch off. Connection speed and network capacity are likely to decrease that time further.

Monitoring application performance helps you understand how your customers interact with your software.  This allows you to identify critical issues before they affect your customers.

Also Read – Complete Guide To Game Performance Testing

14. Achieving larger business objectives

It is recommended to devise a Performance Testing strategy in coordination with the stakeholders of the business, just like any other testing activity. By doing so, it integrates the software ecosystem with the business ecosystem as a whole. Software must not only be healthy, but it must also be scalable to meet changing business requirements.

A digital environment requires Product Managers and Quality Assurance personnel to answer similar questions. Like who is the target audience? Which other applications or platforms compete with yours? Can other similar applications provide us with market-ready statistics, and will this help us get to market faster? Is there an estimated amount of traffic to be expected?

15. Cost Effectiveness

There are many costs associated with resolving performance issues after the release. As problems grow exponentially with time, so do expenses. When you verify your software using stringent testing standards, you will save a lot of money and time in the future, which can be invested in further research and product development. As a result of the cost-effectiveness of performance testing, the quality of the product is further improved as well.

By combining all ways discussed above, we can bring about a greater return on investment through testing for performance. Moreover, it leaves your organization open for future growth without any restrictions in the future. As more and more quality software products are released into the market this way, we see an enhancement in the digital space as a whole.

16. Eliminates bottlenecks

There are barriers that slow down the response time of the entire system, which are referred to as bottlenecks. By identifying the causes of the performance bottlenecks earlier, developers can make progressive growth.

Also Read – Difference: Load Testing vs. Performance Testing vs. Stress Testing

Wrapping Up

A performance test is important for a number of reasons. Some of these are technical, but one of the most important reasons is to make sure that your web application, website, and server can handle an increased load efficiently when it comes to performance.

Performing regular performance tests on your website will enable you to increase user interaction, increase uptime, and reduce maintenance costs.

Although it takes time for this investment to be made, it can provide your business with accurate, long-term benefits, such as an improved user experience that leads to repeat purchases in the future.

Since customers have a lot of choices up their sleeves, it is essential to invest in building a scalable, reliable, secure, and robust product. In many cases, a microservices architecture might reap more benefits than a typical monolithic architecture. An Agile approach to software development and testing will help in improving the product quality from all perspectives.

Application performance is of prime importance since those tests will be useful in ensuring that the AUT (Application Under Test) is meeting the desired criteria in terms of robustness and responsiveness. Testing on an environment that mimics the production helps in unearthing issues that your users would normally encounter in the shipped product.

The QA (or test) team can then triage the issues that are witnessed in the near-production environment.  Once the issues are fixed by the development team, performance tests can be run in a CI (Continuous Integration) pipeline thereby ensuring that a product built at scale is released to the intended users of the product.

In this particular blog, we deep dive into the important aspects of application performance testing. We will also cover the key differences between Application Performance Management and Application Performance Monitoring. Partnering with an outsourced QA vendor with experience in providing quality performance testing services can be beneficial in short-term as well as long-term.

What is Application Performance Testing?

As the name indicates, application performance testing is a form of non-functional testing that is primarily used to test the application (or website) from speed, scalability, and performance standpoint.

By devising performance tests, you would be able to unearth issues that hamper the performance and robustness of the application. Transfer speed, CPU utilization, GPU utilization (optional), memory utilization, concurrent users, database access time, etc. are some of the important factors that are evaluated (or analyzed) using performance tests.

JMeter, Gatling, Locust, Taurus, and Goad are some of the most popular application (or web) performance testing tools.

Also Read – [Guide] Best Practices in Performance Testing

What is Application Performance Management (APM)?

Application Performance Management (or Application Performance Monitoring) is the process of monitoring and management of performance of system resources. It extends the observability aspects of the AUT beyond system availability.

Contrast to performance testing, APM looks into the availability and performance of the AUT. APM tools make extensive usage of telemetry data to achieve the same.

APM can be used to monitor and manage performance & availability of websites, mobile applications, or any other piece of software. APM (Application Performance Management) tools like TraceView, DataDog, New Relic, Application Insights, etc. are some of the most popular APM tools.

Different aspects like services, hosts, networks, logs, etc. are monitored as well as managed from the lens of application performance, availability, and management.

Key Metrics Of Application Performance Management (APM)

Now that we have touched upon the basic aspects of APM, let’s look at some of the key software metrics that must be a part of APM.

Application response times under varied loads, usage of computing resources, and uptime (or availability) of the application are some of the key set of performance metrics that are a part of APM.

Image Source

Mentioned below are some of the integral dimensions of APM as per Gartner research report on APM Conceptual Framework (Source):

• E2E (End-to-End) observability [Active & passive]
• Complete application monitoring
• Endpoint monitoring
• Detailed profiling of user (or business) transactions
• Detailed reporting with in-depth analytics
• Automation powered via Integration with third-party tools (and frameworks)

Application Performance Monitoring vs. Application Performance Management

There are cases where Application Performance Management and Monitoring are used interchangeably. However, there is a thin line of difference between the two.

As the name indicates, a monitoring solution simply monitors data (or information) from different data points (i.e. software, hardware, servers, etc.). For instance, if 1000 systems are being monitored and each of them have close to 10000 metrics; the APM tool will collect (1000 * 10000) metrics. However, data derived from the metrics can be put to best use with a management solution.

Application performance management solution not only collects the data from different data points (that we discussed earlier) but also analyzes them and identifies problems so that there is minimal (or zero) impact on the business continuity.

Now that we have looked into the integral aspects of performance testing, performance management, and performance management; let’s deep dive into the best practices of application performance testing.

Also Read – Different Forms of Performance Testing

Consider performance testing a priority

Gone are the days when companies followed the traditional waterfall model for software development. In that era, testing would start only after the entire development is complete. Fast-forward now, the agile approach has completely taken over the industry. DevOps, CI (Continuous Integration), Continuous Deployment (CD), cloud, etc. have now become the standard norms.

Just like any other form of testing, it is recommended to run performance tests at every stage of the product life cycle. In fact, unit tests and integration tests when run at a large scale can be used for checking the readiness of the AUT (Application Under Test).

Automated Performance testing tools when integrated with the CI pipeline can help in isolating the performance bottlenecks even before the code reaches the staging (or production).

Run varied types of performance tests

Though there are different types of performance testing, you must consider the performance tests that suit the project requirements. It is a fact that you might witness some performance issues when a large number of users are simultaneously using the app. To set the right benchmarks for comparison, it is better to run single user tests since it will give an idea about the best possible performance and response times.

This data can act as the performance benchmark such that it can be used in subsequent tests for the purpose of comparison. Load tests should be run to test the system performance and reliability under different load conditions. Load and user concurrency will provide deeper insights into behavior of the system.

Apart from the above documented tests, you should also consider running soak tests, stress tests, and peak load tests. Availability tests are extremely critical since they help in testing the system behavior when there is any kind of failure under certain loads. The intent must be to have maximum uptime of the AUT so that the end-users are not impacted in a negative way.

Document performance criteria

Akin to different software requirement documents, a good practice is to have crystal clear documentation about the performance requirements. Depending on the type of application, you should prioritize the right set of performance goals.

Some of the goals could be maximum concurrent user sessions, maximum response times, user scalability,  performance when the system is subject to varied loads, etc.

Consider Average Response Times and beyond

Average response time (i.e. total response time/requests) is one of the key performance KPIs that is important from an app performance standpoint. However, considering only average response time can sometimes turn out to be slightly misleading.

The solution to this particular problem is to look at the average and standard deviations. It can be loosely compared to the case of false positive(s) or false negative(s) since that also impacts the end-result of the test. In performance tests, tests with a higher deviation can be used effectively for improving the user experience.

Also Read – Load Testing vs. Performance Testing vs. Stress Testing

Triage Issues in a timely manner

Isolation of issues is important in any form of testing. In fact, it is the first step that needs to be carried out once a performance issue is identified in the system. Issues must be prioritized (or triaged) so that more severe issues can be resolved on top priority.

Issue resolution can be delayed if the right stakeholders (e.g. developers, testers, product owners, etc.) are not involved at right stages of the discussion. Whether the issue is with client side or server side or infrastructure side, doing a proper RCA (Root Cause Analysis) and assigning to the right stakeholder must be done at the earliest.

Issue (or defect) triage is an art that must be executed with utmost perfection. An experienced performance testing company can prove to be pivotal in scenarios where the internal team members do not have sufficient experience to handle and triage performance issues that come along with large scale.

Conclusion

Features, interface, and other integral aspects of the application (or website) can be at stake if they fizzle out when used at scale. This is why application performance monitoring, application performance management, and application performance testing can come super handy.

Performance can turn the tides of the application upside (or downside) depending on the end-user experience. Hence, it is important to invest in performance tests at early stages of the product development cycle. A much better practice is to have performance tests run as a part of the CI pipeline.

KiwiQA, a performance testing company in UK, has proven expertise in providing a range of performance testing and performance monitoring (& management) related services to a wide range of businesses. Time is always ripe to start performance related tests, else it might be a lost battle for your product (or application).

As a developer, you may want to woo your customers (or users) with new features but it should not come at the cost of scalability or performance. Many companies do not invest on performance testing tools (or frameworks), due to which performance issues are unearthed when the website is already available to the end users.

Banking institutions, e-commerce companies, and many other businesses can benefit by investing in performance testing since it enhances the usability aspects of the application. It also helps in reducing the operational expenses; thereby providing an opportunity to win customer’s trust.

Companies that do not have in-house resources to run performance tests can onboard a performance testing company for doing the job. Is there a magic wand to make the most out of performance testing? Well, there isn’t. In hindsight, you could follow the best practices of performance testing to turn the tides of performance testing.

In this blog, we will look at the various aspects of performance testing – basics of performance testing, types of performance testing, differences between functional & non-functional performance testing, and more.

So, let’s get started…

What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing is the process of evaluating the features & functionalities of the product from a performance standpoint. The evaluation is done from the scalability, reliability, usability, and efficiency point of view.

Like any other form of testing, performance tests can also be executed using manual and/or automated ways. At the end of rigorous performance testing cycles, you would get a product whose features do not falter at a large scale.

Apache JMeter, LoadNinja, WebLOAD, EggPlant, etc. are some of the most popular automated performance testing tools.

Also Read – How To Plan A Foolproof Performance Testing Plan?

Importance of Performance Testing

The normal question that many developers have is “Why should I do performance tests when I know that not many users would use my site (or application)?” As per our experience, this is a wrong notion since you never know when a large number of users would start accessing your site. And, these numbers will only grow once your site gains more popularity!

So, performance testing is not optional 🙂 Here are some of the major reasons to run performance tests for your project:

1. Helps in delivering a more consistent top-notch end-user experience
2. Ensures that the product features work seamlessly when a large number of users are simultaneously using the product
3. Unearths scalability and usability issues earlier in the development lifecycle, thereby helping build a more user-friendly product
4. Automated performance tests can be run at scale when integrated with a CI/CD pipeline
5. Measure product stability at peak traffic

Now that we touched upon the integral aspects of performance testing, let us deep dive into the major differences between functional & non-functional performance testing. The learnings from the differences will help you in prioritizing the tests that matter to your project.

Functional and Non-Functional Performance Testing

Here are some of the major differences when it comes to functional and non-functional performance testing.

Functional Performance Testing

As the name indicates, functional performance testing is primarily used for verifying the functional (or feature) aspects of the product. Functional performance testing can be performed using automated testing tools.

In this form of testing, the output is compared with the expected output. Database, UI, client/server interactions, and many more functional areas are tested to ensure that the features work as expected at a large scale.

Also Read – Load Testing vs. Performance Testing vs. Stress Testing

Non-Functional Performance Testing

As a part of this testing strategy, the non-functional parameters like stability, reliability, usability, interoperability, etc. are tested for readiness. Even if one of the parameters falters, the product quality might take a hit.

It is important to run both functional and non-functional performance tests, as the combination will ensure that a top-performing product is released to the end users.

Security of websites (and apps) is an integral part of product quality. It is important to note that users wouldn’t want to use a product that is compromised on security. Security testing is used to unearth the potential security vulnerabilities in the system.

Product features that are not built for scale might falter when a large number of users are using the app (or website) simultaneously. For example, the traffic on e-commerce websites jumps by a huge margin during the holiday season since customers are on the lookout to buy products at a lesser price.

What if the customers witness slow page loads or other errors due to the increase in the traffic? Such an experience will not only result in loss or sales but will negatively impact your brand name (Source). This is where scalability testing comes into picture, as it helps you test the website features under different load conditions.

Number of simultaneous interactions with the server are also tested at scale to ensure that there is no deterioration on the performance.

Also Read – Key Performance Metrics for Effective Performance Testing

Major Types of Performance Testing

Since there are various forms of performance tests, it is important to focus on the ones that add value when testing the product. For example, Stress testing is a form of performance testing strategy that lets you test the website (or app) under different stress (or load) conditions.

KPIs like throughput times, response times, etc. are checked to verify if the system performance is reinstated after there is a decrease in the load (or traffic). Memory leaks, CPU/GPU usage, RAM usage, and such other metrics are measured during the process of stress testing.

Shown below are the major types of performance testing:

• Stress Testing
• Load Testing
• Spike Testing
• Soak Testing
• Volume Testing

Here is a simple infographic that covers all the forms of performance testing:

Since there are varied types of performance tests, it is important to focus on the tests that matter the most to your product. In case you are still having doubts, you could onboard a performance testing company like KiwiQA that will help you in prioritizing the performance tests and building a formidable performance testing strategy.

Performance Testing Best Practices

Till now you would have learnt about the forms of performance tests and which ones to include in your priority list. However, having this information is not enough since it has to be backed by the performance testing best practices. Some of the best practices are mentioned below:

1. It is important to include performance testing during the early stages of product development. Since performance testing can be time-consuming, the tests must target features that might slow down under heavy loads. Developers and testers can work together to identify such scenarios.

2. A good practice is to include automated performance tests into the CI/CD pipeline. There are a number of automated performance testing tools that let you run performance tests after code changes are pushed to the server.

3. At the early stages of testing, you would not have any performance benchmarks. In such scenarios, you should benchmark the performance against minimum acceptable performance standards.

4. Performance tests must cover all the relevant aspects of the product (i.e. database interactions, UI interactions, third-party services, and more) from a performance standpoint.

5. Reporting is an integral part of performance tests. Almost all the automated performance testing tools like Apache JMeter, LoadNinja, WebLOAD, EggPlant, etc. have built-in reporting. It is essential to leverage that feature to come up with performance test reports that can add value at every stage of the testing lifecycle.

Also Read – Key Differences Between Performance Engineering and Performance Testing

Conclusion

Your product might have best in-class features but if they are not tested to work at scale, they are of no use! This is why performance testing is an inseparable part of the product testing cycle.

Backing the performance testing plan with the best practices can do wonders to your project. We covered a few of the best practices in this blog. Onboarding a proven and experienced performance testing company like KiwiQA can help in further accelerating the performance test cycles – a factor can do wonders in this hyper-competitive environment!

Your product might work like a charm when fewer concurrent users are using the product. However, the product features must work seamlessly when a large number of concurrent users are using your website (or app). This is where performance tests come into the picture. It primarily determines the speed, reliability, scalability, and performance when the product (app or website) is subjected to a particular workload.

Like any other form of testing, performance tests must also be conducted in a continuous fashion. It helps in ensuring that introduction (or fixes) of product features are not resulting in any performance issues. Memory utilization, maximum user concurrency, processing speed, latency, etc. are some of the goals of a full proof performance testing strategy.

At the end of rigorous performance cycles, you will be able to identify the potential bottlenecks in the website (or app). It is recommended to have a know-how of different forms of performance testing so that you can prioritize the ones that fit the project requirements.

At a top-level, performance testing primarily falls in two categories – Infrastructure Performance and Application Performance. Let’s look into the different forms of performance tests in more detail.

Infrastructure Performance

It is a given that any kind of website or application will require some kind of infrastructure (e.g. client, server, etc.). Consider an e-commerce application (or website) where a number of to & fro communication would occur between the client (i.e app) and database. What if the tables are not designed optimally or the time taken to fetch relevant item data from the database is too high?

Also Read – Key Performance Metrics for Effective Performance Testing

This is where the website performance can get deteriorated due to glitches in the website’s backend. Stress and load on the infrastructure can have a significant impact on the website’s performance. Irrespective of the type or complexity of the website (or app), infrastructure performance can be broadly classified into three categories:

Client Performance

In almost all the applications, there is a client and server component. To minimize the load on the client, a majority of the processing is performed on the server. Server-side caching helps in temporary storage of the web files and data so that the requisite information can be accessed from the cache (in case the same is available).

This approach is instrumental in minimizing the number of transactions that happen between the client & server. Nowadays, client machines (e.g. desktops, tablets, mobile devices) are becoming more powerful as they are equipped with increased RAM, ROM, Graphics, etc. Hence, many operations that are not super heavy on the processing side can be performed on the client-side, thereby relieving some load on the server.

Here are some of the critical conditions that need to be monitored as far as performance testing on client-side is concerned:

• UI rendering that involves a significant load on the CPU and GPU (e.g. games)
• Handling of concurrent events
• Complex rendering scenarios where multiple frames are getting rendered on the screen
• Handling of large chunks of data that is sent by the server

Server Performance

A majority of websites and applications use some kind of cloud infrastructure since it helps reduce the overall costs. Scaling up or scaling down the infrastructure becomes easy with a cloud-based model.

Since server (or cloud) also consists of machines, it is necessary to monitor its performance by regularly checking the CPU, Memory, and Cache usages. Performance must also be monitored when a varied set of requests are sent to the server.

Also Read – How To Plan A Foolproof Performance Testing Plan?

Server infrastructure normally consists of racks hence, a fail-safe mechanism needs to be in place for ensuring that any issues in hardware/software does not result in a usability problem. Server-side performance monitoring tools^[1] like Dynatrace, DataDog, New Relic, App Dynamics, etc. must be used to monitor the performance on the server side of things.

It is recommended to onboard a performance testing company like KiwiQA so that your team can make the best choice when it comes to choosing performance monitoring tools.

Network Performance

Network performance (or network speed) plays a vital role in the overall performance of the website. The data on the client-side is bound to get delayed if it is being accessed from a location with lower network speed.

However, the website (or app) must be able to handle all such scenarios. As a part of network performance testing, the team needs to monitor network latency, behavior with flaky network environments, network packet size & performance, and all other aspects related to the network infrastructure.

Application Performance

As the name indicates, application performance entails the performance tests that are run on the website (or application). The design of the performance tests largely depends on the type and complexity of the application.

In case of e-commerce applications, frequent transactions (or reads) take place with the server whenever information related to a particular ‘item’ from the inventory has to be displayed on the page. The number of transactions depends on the design of the page and the caching mechanism used when designing the app.

When monitoring the app’s performance the following factors need to be taken into consideration:

• Usage of CPU/GPU resources
• Usage of Memory and Cache
• Third-party dependencies (if any)
• Performance under different network conditions

Performance testing of the application can be majorly classified into two categories – Client side performance and Server side performance.

Nowadays many websites (and applications) are leveraging the advantages offered by Client Side Rendering (CSR) when compared to Server Side Rendering (SSR)^[2]. Many web browsers also do caching of data and reusable scripts on the client’s machine.

Also Read – Key Differences Between Performance Engineering and Performance Testing

A majority of the websites (and web applications) use AJAX and dynamic loading of elements to improve the page load time. As a part of the client side performance tests, you need to monitor AJAX performance, JS (JavaScript) performance, and/or performance of the web frameworks used in the development of the site.

Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, and Puppeteer are some of the test automation frameworks that can be used for automating UI interactions. Performance testing tools like Apache JMeter, LoadNinja, WebLOAD, etc. can be leveraged to run performance and load tests on the UAT.

Along with the client side performance, the performance aspects of the server also need to be monitored on a regular basis. Many client-side performance testing tools can support server-side performance tests. Request-response time, resource utilization on the server, and performance at different load levels are some of the aspects that are considered in server-side performance testing.

Stress tests and load tests are also run at regular intervals for ensuring that the website’s performance does not deteriorate under heavy load.

Also Read – Performance Testing for Large-Scale Gaming Applications

Conclusion

Like other forms of testing, performance tests have become an absolute necessity. It helps in ensuring that the website (or app) is ready to be released to a larger user base. Performance testing services companies can be beneficial for developers and enterprises if they are looking to run performance tests at a huge scale.

Before devising the performance tests, it is imperative to identify the performance tests that should be a part of the performance testing strategy. Prioritizing the tests that you require attention goes a long way in making the most out of performance testing!

Experiences like sluggishness, crashes, freezes, etc. can irk the gamers and they might end up embracing your competitor’s product. This point holds good for native games as well as cloud-based games where data like leaderboard, achievements, etc. are updated on a real-time basis. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, skill-based games^[1] like Poker, Rummy, etc. have received massive user adoption.

Momentum of skill-based games will only rise with each passing day. In this highly-competitive environment, gaming companies and game developers must leave no-stone unturned to ensure that the game experience is not deteriorated under heavy load (or stress).

Performance testing strategy for mobile (or desktop) games largely depends on the game type, graphics, multiplayer functionalities, and other such features that are unique to every game. Automated performance testing on real devices and desktops can go a long way in building a premium gaming experience.

KiwiQA has provided performance testing services to a wide range of gaming companies across varied skill & gaming volume spectrums. The end result is a robust game engine that offers unparalleled experience to the gaming audience. Now that the platform is set, let me deep dive into some of the performance testing tactics that can be applied to large-scale gaming applications.

Also Read: Key Performance Metrics for Effective Performance Testing

Different Forms of Performance Testing

For starters, performance tests are conducted to ensure that the features (or functionalities) of the app/website work as expected when it is under heavy load.

CPU load, GPU load & frequency, memory consumption, and FPS (Frames per Second) are some of the essential metrics used for performance testing.

In case of online games, the test can be used to check how the game performs when the game infrastructure is heavily stressed (or loaded) with concurrent sessions. With rigorous performance testing, game developers and/or gaming companies can unearth issues related to gameplay graphics, performance, etc. and optimize the game accordingly.

Here are some of the major forms of performance tests:

Performance Testing

Considered as the basic form of performance testing, it helps in understanding how the game play and/or gaming infrastructure can be scaled to achieve better performance numbers. Continuous monitoring of FPS, CPU, memory, and other such important hardware parameters helps game developers to scale up/scale down the game functionalities to realize good performance.

Game developers can use these tests to make their games less CPU/GPU intensive so that games can also run on low-end devices. The results of basic performance tests lays the plan for stress testing and load testing.

Stress Testing

As the name indicates, stress testing is a category of performance testing where the behavior of the gaming application/system is checked when the gaming infrastructure is subjected to heavy stress. An example of stress is a large number of concurrent sessions logged on to the server that houses the gaming infrastructure.

Stress testing gives an accurate idea about the load when the game will stop responding and how the error will be displayed to the end-user. Stress testing is helpful in games that require constant connectivity with the servers – either for game play updates, leaderboard updates, etc. Stress testing also lets you unearth the hardware failures when the device running the game and/or gaming infrastructure is put under heavy stress.

Soak testing (or endurance testing) is a major form of stress testing that is used to check the system (or game) behavior under sustainable stress. Vital game performance metrics like CPU, FPS, memory, etc. are monitored when the game and its associated infrastructure is subject to continuous load.

Spike testing is another form of performance test that is used to check the game behavior under sudden stress. The stress could be a sudden increase in the number of concurrent users, increase in the number of database transactions, etc. The main purpose of spike testing is to determine the system performance when there is a dramatic change in the load.

Load Testing

In load testing, the game and corresponding infrastructure are exposed to a certain amount of load. The purpose of load testing is to identify the performance bottlenecks when the game is subject to load. By the end of the test, team members will have a clear understanding about which particular areas require optimization.

Since load can be applied on the game and/or infrastructure, it is simulated by issuing frequent upload/download requests, querying databases, or giving a range of inputs to the gaming infrastructure. As most of the online mobile games are multiplayer games, game developers can leverage load tests to deep dive into concurrency issues related to the game (and its infrastructure).

Since the gaming device is also put under load; parameters like CPU, battery, temperature, memory, etc. are also monitored during the process. It is used to gauge understanding about how the hardware behaves when it is under differential load.

Also Read: Performance Testing vs. Load Testing vs. Stress Testing: The Key Differences

Key Focus Areas For Game Performance Testing

A majority of the online gaming companies provide game play options to users whereby they can run the game on different devices like desktops, tablets, mobile phones, etc. Hence, the performance testing strategy must encompass testing on all the different device viewports, particularly those that are used extensively by the target audience.

Here are some of the key areas that must be a part of the performance testing strategy:

• All the essential blocks of the game (i.e. device, infrastructure, servers, etc.) must be tested for stress. This helps in unearthing issues not only in the game play but also in the infrastructure related to gaming.

Integration with social media channels, third-party APIs, etc. must also be considered for performance testing.

• Like any other form of testing, all the test activities and test reports must be logged in order to check how far performance tests have impacted the game quality.

Logs must be maintained for every build, so that game developers, QA engineers, and other relevant project stakeholders can have a detailed look at the progress of key KPIs of performance tests.

• Consider performance testing on real mobile devices with different viewport sizes. Priority must be given to tests on game UI and game logic since they are pillars on which the entire game is built.

Animation flows, font rendering, and other things related to game aesthetics must also be considered in performance testing of games.

Gaming companies can onboard performance testing company like KiwiQA that help achieve best-performing gaming apps. KiwiQA uses K-SPARC – an in-house performance testing framework that traverses through every stage of the performance testing pipeline with major focus on throughput and application load.

Also Read: Jmeter Vs LoadRunner: Which One Is Better for Performance Testing?

How KiwiQA helped a major Gaming Company with Performance Testing?

A major multiplayer gaming company approached KiWiQA with a performance testing requirement – access to the product APIs developed must be consistent (in performance) even when a large number of users are simultaneously using those APIs. The response time of the modules must not be impacted even if close to 1000 concurrent users are accessing the modules.

The performance testing team at KiwiQA analyzed the aspects of the game APIs and a performance testing strategy was created. Testing was performed in two rounds. In the first round, performance tests were conducted on the production-like gaming infrastructure and the identified issues were assigned to the respective dev teams. Akin to continuous testing, the second round of testing involved verifying the game functionalities with the fixes patched from round one.

The K-SPARC framework was leveraged for running performance tests on the game. As a first step, the APIs with inherent higher response times were identified using full-blown unit tests. Once fixed, they were subjected to performance tests in order to identify & fix performance (or scale) level issues.

All the APIs were subjected to ~500 parallel virtual users and the RedLine13 tool was leveraged for analyzing performance bottlenecks. The NewRelic APM tool was used by the performance testing teams for monitoring the status of servers on which tests were executed.

Various performance metrics like CPU utilization, memory consumption, FPS, etc. were continually monitored for APIs with 3%~35% CPU utilization on database and application servers.

By performing rigorous performance tests using the combination of K-SPARC framework, RedLine13 tool, etc; the team at KiwiQA was able to identify all the lingering performance issues for the gaming company.

Conclusion

Performance testing is a must if you have to release a game that can be used by a large number of concurrent users. Gaming companies need to prioritize which form of testing (e.g. Load Testing, Stress Testing, normal Performance Testing) must be taken up for testing the game from a performance and stability point of view.

Many gaming companies partner with outsourced QA vendors that offer performance testing services so that the games can be developed and tested in a continuous fashion. Such a collaboration also helps in accelerating the time to market as well.

Though developers have the responsibility of running unit level tests; there is a high probability that functionalities might falter when integrated with other software modules. Functional and non-functional tests have to be performed to ensure that the product is top-notch from all the relevant angles (i.e. performance, functionality, etc.).

For large-scale applications, it is important to test the features at different load levels to ensure that there is no performance degradation if there is any increase in the server load. Imagine, an e-commerce website witnessing page timeouts when their customers try buying from the platform during the holiday season sale 🙁

This is where performance testing and load testing becomes extremely important. It makes business sense to onboard a performance testing company that has expertise with performance testing. In this blog, we look at the differences between the three major forms of testing approaches:

1. Stress Testing
2. Performance Testing
3. Load Testing

There is a thin line of difference between these testing methodologies, the understanding of which is important to prioritize the right type of testing.

What Is Load Testing?

Response time, stability, and reliability are the key KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that can be achieved by running load tests. As a developer and tester, you might agree that certain issues (e.g. memory leaks, performance degradation, etc.) can only be witnessed when the product features are tested at scale.

There is a difference between testing an app with 100 users (or transactions) vis-à-vis testing the app with a million concurrent users. This is where load testing is instrumental, as it helps understand the behavior of the app (or website) under expected loads.

Example of Load Testing

A testing scenario where extra 1000 concurrent requests hit the application every few seconds (e.g. 45 seconds). The number of concurrent requests are steadily increased based on the expected load for the app. Once the expected load is reached, developers and testers start analyzing the potential issues related to CPU, RAM, memory, and more.

Issues related to increased loads are rarely evident from the beginning of the app journey, making load tests an absolute necessity once the app witnesses a massive surge in user base.

Popular Tools for Load Testing

Since there are a plethora of tools for performing load testing, you should choose a tool that suits your requirements.

Here is a list of some widely used load testing tools:

• Apache JMeter
• Load Ninja
• LoadView
• WebLOAD
• Silk Performer

The choice of load testing tool purely depends on the scope and complexity of the project.

Also Read: Importance of Application Load Testing for Business Success

What Is Performance Testing?

Performance testing can be loosely termed as the combination of load testing and stress testing. As the name indicates, it helps in testing the system’s performance and monitoring its behaviour when the system is under stress.

Akin to load testing, performance testing is also primarily used for testing the system from a reliability, stability, scalability, and performance perspectives. Performance tests measure the CPU load and memory usage for different requests. Since the system is tested against different loads, it helps in determining the error rate; along with providing an analysis on the frequency of the occurrence of the error rates.

Performance testing does not verify the functionalities; rather it verifies the performance of the application (under different loads). At the end of a rigorous performance testing strategy, you can expect an application that is free from performance bottlenecks.

The type of performance tests can vary from project to project, however it is a recommended practice to test the website (or application) performance under different testing environments (e.g. platforms, devices, desktops, etc.).

Example of Performance Testing

Performance testing is tightly linked to the functional requirements. In an e-commerce website (or app), the shopping cart’s functional requirement could be simultaneous handling of 10,000+ requests without any degradation of performance.

Performance tests for the said functionality will test the shopping cart feature by injecting 10,000+ requests to unearth any performance bottlenecks.

Popular Tools for Performance Testing

There is an intersection of tools when it comes to load testing and performance testing. Hence, a lot of load testing tools also make it to the performance testing category.

Here is a curated list of best performance testing tools:

• Apache JMeter
• Testing Anywhere
• Load Complete
• Rational Performance Tester
• LoadView
• Loadster

Apart from these select tools, there are many other performance testing tools like WebLoad, LOADNinja,EggPlant, etc. Consulting an expert QA vendor like KiwiQA that provides performance testing services can be beneficial in choosing the best-suited performance testing tool.

Also Read: Jmeter Vs LoadRunner: Which One Is Better for Performance Testing?

What Is Stress Testing?

There is a very thin line of difference between load testing, performance testing, and stress testing. They all look the same since we refer to performance, load, stress, and other such factors in all of them 🙂 However, the motive of all these testing methodologies is entirely different.

Stress testing is a testing approach that is majorly used for detecting the breaking point of the application. What this means is that the approach helps in detecting the maximum load that can be handled by the application.

Once the specified limit is reached, the system will start witnessing performance deterioration. Stress tests help in building a more robust and scalable application.

Example of Stress Testing

We again take the example of an e-commerce application. Consider the shopping cart functionality which can handle maximum 10,000+ simultaneous requests. Once this particular stress limit is reached, the application starts experiencing performance issues.

Hence, stress testing must be accommodated to test the robustness of the application.

Comparison: Load Testing vs. Performance Testing vs. Stress Testing

Let’s look at the advantages of each of these testing approaches to drill down at the differences between them.

Benefits of Load Testing

Here are the salient advantages of using load testing:

• Helps reduce the risk of application failure by figuring out the maximum load that can be handled by the application.
• Helps improve the stability and reliability of the application.
• Deep dives into the integral aspects related to memory usage, CPU consumption, and other such vital parameters that can impact the applications’ performance.

Also Read: Performance Testing of Microservices

Benefits of Performance Testing

Here are some of the salient benefits of using performance testing:

• Helps measure the application performance under normal loads.
• Helps identify performance bottlenecks, which when resolved will be instrumental in building a more robust application.
• Helps measure the stability of the application.

Benefits of Stress Testing

Here are some of the salient benefits of using stress testing:

• Helps evaluate the robustness and scalability of the application.
• Helps identify the breakage point (or peak load) at which the application will start witnessing degradations.

Based on what we have discussed so far, this is how the three testing approaches stack up against each other:

• Load Testing verifies how the application performs under a certain load. Like performance tests, load tests can also be instrumental in identifying the performance bottlenecks. This helps in improving the application’s behaviour when it is addressed to a certain load.
• Performance Testing accumulates the essentials of load testing and stress testing. The metrics identified using performance testing help in improving the response time, stability, and reliability of the application.
• Stress Testing helps identify the breaking point of the application. Once the point is reached, the performance of the application is expected to witness slowness. The end-goal of stress testing is to improve the robustness of the said application.

Also Read: Key Performance Metrics for Effective Performance Testing

Conclusion

No one form of testing is enough to test the website (or application) from all the necessary perspectives. A bad (or degrading) performance can act as a deal-breaker for any application.

This is why stress testing, load testing, and performance testing are important for building a more robust and scalable application. KiwiQA has immense experience in providing performance testing services and its experience can be leveraged in building more scalable and reliable applications.