It’s one thing to have a bad day at work. It’s something else entirely for that bad day to result in a special hearing in the US Senate.
In November, Live Nation Entertainment Inc’s Ticketmaster made global headlines when a high demand for Taylor Swift’s US Tour led to a catastrophic system crash. This comes hot off the heels of demand for Peter Kay’s UK Tour sales crashing O2’s Priority website earlier in the month.
While O2 isn’t facing the same level of political scrutiny Ticketmaster is in the US; both situations highlight the fact that there is more than just a company’s finances on the line when it comes to keeping up with customer demands. For O2, the crash has led to unhappy customers and the tarnishing of partner trust. For Ticketmaster, the touring giant is now in the crosshairs of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights.
In both cases, pre-release sales resulted in the vast majority of tickets already being purchased before general release; however, according to company authorities, it wasn’t pre-registered fans purchasing tickets that were responsible for the catastrophe; instead, it was tens of millions of unauthorised visitors and billions of bots attempting to enter the auctions early. Neither fans, customers, partners, nor the Senate is likely to be satisfied with Ticketmaster’s explanation, which claims that it misjudged demand for presale tickets and was unprepared for the millions of fans who tried to log in.
Ultimately, neither site was properly load tested to ensure their systems were robust enough to withstand the peak traffic.
thinkTRIBE prioritises load testing as part of our performance strategy. While other testing procedures, including user acceptability and penetration testing, are frequently taken into account during the early planning phases, load testing is often an afterthought that can be delayed until closer to the crunch.
Putting off load testing till the very last-minute limits the amount of time that can be used to correct issues and leaves no time for retesting to determine whether the patch was successful and what effect it had on performance.
Not only is it more productive and cost-effective to build a long-term plan for load testing into your strategy, but proper planning also allows for extra time to cycle through different outcomes and retests, giving you peace of mind about the reliability of your platform.
Nightmares like the ones Ticketmaster and O2 are currently experiencing are entirely avoidable. Take a look at our whitepaper for more advice.