Organizations across a wide range of industries — such as retail & ecommerce, financial services & banking, and media & streaming services — are constantly faced with the challenge of providing the best user experience possible for their customers. It’s easy to follow the path from poor UX to a lost customer to lost revenue.
As the general public’s expectations of mobile applications become loftier, testing teams are challenged to find more effective and efficient ways of ensuring seamless application performance. That is why performance testing is so crucial — especially for enterprises.
Because for enterprises, exposure to their digital experience is far greater and the impact of a poor UX is more significant. As enterprise testing teams continue their search for opportunities to maximize the quality of their app, there are common and inevitable challenges that arise.
In this blog, we will discuss the importance of performance testing, four common enterprise performance testing challenges, and how to solve them.
Why is Performance Testing Important?
Performance testing is important because it identifies areas such as speed, responsiveness, and stability that may be lacking or underperforming in an app. Performance test results identify opportunities to improve an app’s speed, scalability, stability, and — ultimately — profitability.
By having performance testing be an integral part of the testing strategy, you can understand your app’s limits through different tests like load testing. It is also a great way of identifying bottlenecks within your testing environment and determining system reliability.
Top Enterprise Performance Testing Challenges
Knowing is half the battle. Whether your team is setting up a performance testing process for the first time or seeking to fine-tune the current one, below are some common performance testing challenges for enterprises.
Test Automation
Automating performance testing can be difficult because it often involves multiple testing components while also accounting for perhaps the most complex aspect of all — real-user behavior. To implement effective test automation, teams must account for device specifications, single user preferences, network connectivity, and other various test environment factors.
Solution: When teams automate their performance testing, it saves significant amounts of time and other valuable resources. Enterprises can use automated performance testing tools (like BlazeMeter) to seamlessly connect those numerous testing components into one seamless loop that repeats as often as needed — churning out valuable results that help the team optimize the app.
Determining Scope
One of the biggest obstacles that presents itself at the enterprise level is determining the scope of performance testing. That is because the scope can vary widely based on the application, system, and software under test. Things like performance expectations, app functionality, and the needs of the user factor into the scope of a performance test. On top of that, the team must determine which testing tools to use, what test scenarios to put the software through, and the performance metrics you will be measuring against.
Solution: Create a roadmap of what the team hopes to achieve with the resources available. Start by identifying the primary key performance indicators (KPIs). Some of the most important KPIs for a testing strategy are resource usage, scalability, and response time. Once KPIs are determined, create a detailed plan that will serve as guardrails as the team progresses. This plan should include testing objectives, test cases, and the test environment — these will determine the scope of your performance testing.
Devices & Networks for Testing
If users all used the same type of device and OS, enterprise performance testing would be a breeze. However, reality is far from that — your app will be used on numerous types of devices of varying age that run on OSs that come in many versions. Additionally, a user’s location and the type of network they use will make a difference. Enterprises should make it a priority that their application works across all devices and networks — and is as many locations as possible.
Solution: This one is fairly straightforward — to ensure your app works on all devices and networks, you must test against all devices and networks (or as many as possible). Enterprises can purchase real devices (which can get expensive quickly), leverage the use of virtual devices, or a healthy combination of the two. You can also use service virtualization to simulate networks and locations.
Integration With Development
Performance testing is just a piece (albeit an important one) of the entire development process, and it can be difficult to integrate when starting out.It demands a major investment of time and resources to execute properly, which could slow down development. And because enterprises often run on complex and widely distributed systems, identifying performance issues can feel like playing whack-a-mole. On top of all that, technological updates are relatively constant and that means ensuring testing updates with them.
Solution: Integrating performance testing into the development process is critical for optimal app performance. Teams will be at their best when they begin testing early in the development process and continue to do so throughout. Waiting to conduct performance testing until the end only results in unnecessary rework and delayed releases. Using a continuous testing tool like BlazeMeter will help automate that process so you can get the most out of the app.
Why Enterprises Choose BlazeMeter as an Agile Performance Testing Solution
Any enterprise facing these common performance testing challenges needs a reliable testing tool to help overcome them. BlazeMeter is the premier performance testing tool on the market — but do not just take our word for it.
Download this paper to hear directly from satisfied customers about how BlazeMeter was able to boost their performance testing to the next level.
Bottom Line
While implementing performance testing can be difficult at first — especially for larger organizations and enterprises — it is a vital component of creating a high-quality and reliable app for customers.
Doing so means encountering performance testing challenges, but with the right tools in your toolkit and testing methods to rely on, enterprise testing teams should be able to sufficiently overcome them. Being strategic about determining your project’s scope, employing test automation when possible, testing against against as many devices and networks as possible, and integrating performance testing into the overall development process are a few big ways to take your app to the next level.
BlazeMeter boasts the best performance testing capabilities on the market to help you overcome any challenge that may arise. So, what are you waiting for? Start testing for FREE today!