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Prepare for the Black Friday – performance tests

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It is that time of year once again. Black Friday is here and you need to be ready for it! If your site can’t handle the traffic, no one will buy anything from you.

Performance testing lets you know how prepared your website actually is by simulating a heavy load on it before Black Friday hits. This way, if any bugs arise, they are fixed early enough or you have more time to address them.

You can also see how well your server handles the increased load which will give insight into its strength-weakness ratio as well as what needs improvement among other things. For example, if all performance tests come back with good results then this means that everything is running smoothly and there’s nothing to worry about on the performance front. If some tests come back with bad results, this means that you have a problem somewhere and need to work out what it is ASAP!

November is probably one of the most important months for the sales industry, especially the last Friday of this month has the biggest value for salesmen and customers. If you are the owner of some internet store you know it perfectly well.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday e-commerce preparation

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and before the Christmas period, as we call this sale’s holiday is an amazing phenomenon in the e-commerce world. Customers start searching occasions in the internet shops already on Thursday and sellers preparing their websites to this load much earlier. Black Friday is coming, so worth picking up your mind on the performance of your website.

Magento load testing

The internet store which perfectly managing customers’ load traffic will bring profits. The store will work fluently, serve all customers, orders will following in but are you sure that everything will work as perfectly as you think?

Worth checking it with the load test!

Now you have the best moment to test your store about performance. If you start checking the capacity of your website just now, you will have more time for fixing performance bugs and get rid of bottlenecks.

Our clients attract attention to performance testing too and let our developers and testers work with improving their websites to avoid situations where some clients will not purchase products that they need. More about automation testing at Panda Group please have a look here.

The one client who can not finish the order is not a problem, but 30 000 clients who can not do anything, because the shop crashed are a serious huge issue!

Yes, it is a possible scenario, especially on Black Friday. If we are considering threats, let’s try to list possible cases from the lowest to the highest level of risk.

Ready for Black Friday? Check on the risk level list and be ready!

1. The lowest risk – user experience testing tips

The lowest level of risk has cases where single clients can’t finish their orders. It can be frustrating for the client, but the customer always may try to finish the order in a moment, if it fails it won’t be a big loss for sale.

To avoid this case you should check the customer journey to recognize the bugs and problematic moments long before the holiday shopping period to have enough time for reaction and fixing procedure.

Customer Experience – prepare for Black Friday

Track real user interaction with your site and determine how traffic volumes affect the website. Verify that navigation is optimized for consumers’ needs by adding items to a shopping cart or checking out as needed without difficulty, ensuring checkout functionality works properly each time an order is placed on-site. Be sure there are no errors, pop-ups such as banner ads blocking certain functions like generating bills or when using credit cards online, etc. Check if pages load quickly so users can explore all corners of your company’s offerings before making any purchases. Make sure you’re communicating clearly through both text links & pictures in accordance with customer requirements.

Realistically speaking nothing will be foolproof 100% every single second, but this process should help empower legitimate efforts at addressing known issues within minutes instead of days later after they’ve been reported and hopefully resolved.

2. The higher level of risk – load speed

The second threat which is possible to happen is to slow down your website. It does not sound so scary, because clients still may make orders but only a little slower, so is it a real problem? Sure! Even bigger than the single clients who may not finish their order. Why?

Because the user who waits for loading the page longer than 1-3 seconds start to be angry. It is confirmed by research! So what does the user who is bored by waiting for the website to load? Looking for the new, faster option, where probably will make shopping. It’s tested that such clients are more willing to leave the site or abandon shopping carts. On Black Friday cart abandonment is over 80%, smart merchants make huge efforts to lower this number.

It looks similar to the previous case but this issue concern not only one but all users, so how many customers will resign for shopping because the website has poor performance? It depends on their patience but probably a lot.

Page loading time counts in the holiday season

Page loading speed influences the shopping willingness as well as loyalty. The website ideally should load in 1-2 seconds. Over 50% of customers expect the page load time less than 2 sec. otherwise, they leave it.

Clients are not the only ones expecting the page speed increase. Google also measures page speed loading and rewards the fastest sites with the higher position in search results as it takes into consideration user experience indicators.

Testing the loading speed is thought an important step for The Black Friday preparation and so we advise even continuous testing.

3. The highest risk level – high traffic server crash

The worst scenario which can happen is a total crash of the server which hosts the website. If your store is integrated with Google Analytics you perfectly know how many visitors your website normally has. And Google statistics will show you the difference when collapse happens.

It is crucial to predict enough server capacity for high traffic.

You should prepare for the biggest traffic because differences between normal sales day and Black Friday can be huge especially if you are going to introduce a big promotion for your products. So if your server gives up, no one will do the shopping. So make sure everything is in top shape before opening those doors so that no customer walks away disappointed.

Performance tests let you check if your website is ready for traffic that you assume. You will know your site strength, you will have time to fix all bugs and finally, you will be ready for the craziest sales day in the year. Everything that you should do to achieve it is taken care of by performance testing. It is that time of year once again. Black Friday is here and you need to be ready for it!

More on the Magento automation testing please find here.

Get ready for Black Friday with load and performance testing

Online retailers should do everything they can to ensure their website is up and running this Black Friday. In recent years, worldwide shoppers doubled traffic compared to a normal average during the holiday season when it’s time for all-out retail chaos – but with consumers expecting more than ever before, you’re likely going want an order ready!

Improving your load time by 0.1 s can increase the average order value by 9.2% (Google/Deloitte, Milliseconds Make Millions).

Black Friday is just around the corner and it’s time to prepare your online presence for this year’s event. This year, there are more than 4 billion reasons for merchants to be ready on November 25th. There will be an increase in traffic due to discounts, which means that conversion rates will also increase.

The best way to stay ahead of the curve is with performance tests, so you can feel confident that your site won’t crash when shoppers start coming in waves looking for deals. As a merchant or e-commerce owner, take some time now and test out how your site fares under heavy loads – without having any actual customers yet!

The above short review may help you prioritize tasks to be taken for your Magento e-commerce platform performance.

Ready for your next e-commerce test? We’re excited to help you get started. Let’s talk!

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