What to look out for in a Load Testing solution
Load testing remains crucial for gathering valuable data to inform key decisions, protect your digital customer experience, and avoid lost revenue during critical times. However, with the complexity of modern websites and eCommerce platforms, traditional methods just don’t cut it anymore.
Here's a look at the essential features your Load Testing solution needs to meet today’s demands.
1) Dynamic testing capability to handle complexity
Websites today come packed with complex business logic, third-party integrations, and dynamic features. Traditional Load Testing approaches, DIY methods and basic record-and-playback tools aren't equipped to handle this level of complexity. They often lead to oversimplified tests that fail to uncover genuine issues.
To get meaningful results, your Load Testing solution needs to be dynamic — replicating real user behaviour, dynamically interacting with page content and test profiles need to be realistic. This approach ensures that no stone is left unturned, catching problems that traditional methods might miss.
2) Accurate insights based on realistic user simulations
Your customers don't follow a single, predictable path, so why should your Load Testing? Testing needs to reflect real-world user behaviour, covering multi-step journeys, customer interactions from page content, a realistic mix of journeys and drop-off rates. This way, you get a traffic profile that mirrors the real customer experience.
Traditional Load Testing often focuses on simplified metrics, which can be misleading and mask serious performance issues. In contrast, realistic testing gives you a clear picture of how your site will perform and what experience your customers will encounter, under real-world conditions, offering a single point of truth to guide your decisions on hardware investments, managing third parties and allocating budgets . This data helps you uncover potential bottlenecks and take action to fix them.
For example, calculating concurrent users is a common metric, but without considering what users are actually doing on the site, it can produce wildly inaccurate data. Your testing should go beyond surface-level metrics to ensure accuracy.
3) Experts to save time and free up your team
Bringing in a third-party expert for managed load testing can save your in-house tech team time and effort. A reliable, fully managed service takes care of everything—from defining a realistic test model and scripting journeys to scheduling and monitoring the tests.
Outsourcing this service allows your team to focus on other critical tasks while still gaining deep insights into your customer experience and website’s performance. Plus, a trusted partner can offer quicker turnaround times and greater testing capacity, especially when you're under tight deadlines.
4) High-level collaboration and live adjustments
One essential feature to look for in a Managed Load Testing solution is high-level collaboration and live interaction throughout the testing process. This allows redirection of tests and the ability to make configuration changes in real-time, ensuring the most accurate results. The ability to adjust on the fly maximises both value, as you can respond immediately to unexpected outcomes and refine your testing strategy in real time.
Accurate, actionable metrics without burdening your tech team
Tribe’s fully managed load testing service takes your analytics and creates the most realistic test models. We script dynamic journeys that incorporate the realism needed to test the most complex of websites including multi-step journeys across a site looking into page content to make dynamic choices.
If you’d like tangible, actionable performance testing data, whilst at the same freeing up internal resources contact us to find out more.
Read more about our load testing service here or find out about managing a realistic load test programme in our eBook.