Sale announcements, which are followed by an increase in website traffic are one of the top reasons why our clients ask for load testing. Recently, one of the huge telecom providers in Europe approached us with the challenge. They were expecting a huge increase in their websites’ traffic due to their company’s birthday celebration. Along with the release of a new version of their website they also planned to have giveaway activities, special offers and discounts available for a limited amount of time. According to the statistics, as of the end of 2022 the company had about 75 million subscribers.Thus their expectations and concerns were evident. It was significant for the company reps to ensure that their website was able to handle the influx of users.
Project scope
This scenario required the expertise of Quality Lab professionals. After we signed the Contract and the NDA and received the approval from the client, our team immediately began to dive into the project on the next day. It is important to add that the client’s company had their own QA team set up which consisted mainly of autotesters. However, they lacked load testing engineers and decided to outsource this task to us.
To ensure load testing for telecom’s company website we involved our key specialists. The account manager, who was responsible for the communication with a client regarding organizational and financial matters. And two QA engineers who were responsible for testing itself.
- Firstly, together with a client our QA engineer compiled business scenarios which included the most expected and anticipated steps that users perform on a website.
- Secondly, the load testing engineer implemented scripts that simulate user behavior, which initiated the stage of passing the user scenarios. Those scripts were introduced with pre-set parameters: the number of virtually simulated users was gradually being increased to the recommended maximum, while at the same time, the team was searching for that maximum load value that the website was able to handle.
- Thirdly, we performed stress testing. In order to make sure the website was actually ready to handle the discovered maximum number of users, we simulated the approximate expected user load for 24 hours.
As a team, we strive to provide the highest possible quality service to our clients. This project required our urgent attention. Recognizing the importance of delivering the result as soon as possible, our experts worked both weekdays and weekends to ensure that the project would be completed within the settled time frame. It was beneficial for the website as well. To minimize the potential disturbance to the website’s user experience, we conducted load tests only on Saturdays as according to clients internal statistics less number of users visits their website during Saturday night rather than on Mondays or friday
Project outcome
As a result, when the company presented the new version of the website to the general public and held giveaway activities – everything went smoothly. The website was able to handle heavy user traffic and allowed users to smoothly engage with available offers and activate their discounts. It is possible to conclude that load testing has proven to be a valuable tool for ensuring that the website is able to sustain the required user load.
Outsourcing QA to Quality Lab provided company’s reps with a sense of confidence that allowed them to focus on their business objectives, such as the execution of e-commerce strategies. Furthermore, outsourcing QA also allowed our client to save time and to redirect their efforts towards achieving other business goals. This is also one of the primary benefits of outsourcing the QA (even when the company has their own in-house QA team).
Why load testing is important?
The load testing as itself is a crucial element of the overall quality assurance process. For example, if the e-commerce website is not able to handle high volume of users, it can break right there and then resulting in reputational and financial complications. For instance, the e-commerce website might crash during the checkout process whilst the customer has already provided his payment details. He would be charged, however the website would not have a record of his purchase. This is a less than ideal situation. Similarly, if the news portal goes down for a noticeable period of time, its users may opt to switch to competitors’ websites for their news, causing a loss of traffic and therefore, decrease in revenue.. Thus the cost of the load testing is completely justified when viewed from a broader perspective.
