Load testing is a kind of performance testing for the business application that simulates a real-world load on any software, application, or website. Without the load test, your business application could crash miserably in real-world conditions. Load testing measures how the system functions during normal and high loads and determines if a system, piece of application, or computing hardware can handle high loads caused by a high surge of end-users. This process is usually employed when a software development project is in its final stage.  It helps discover how the application behaves when multiple users access it together. Performance testing is not something you can just overlook, which includes load testing as a major step. This performance analysis process prepares your infrastructure to be ready when it comes to real-world load handling.  

Mobile app load testing normally identifies:

• Number of simultaneous users that an application can support and scalability to let more users access it.
• The maximum operating capability of an application
• Sustainability of application in case of peak user load
• Determine whether the current specification of the system is sufficient to run the application
  
  

Performance Testing: Load Testing vs. Stress Testing

There is a minimal difference between load and stress testing, the reason why they are often confused with each other. They both are also subsets of performance testing. Performance testing means monitoring system behaviour and performance. It includes monitoring the response time, scalability, speed, and resource utilization of the applications and infrastructure.

But how do you distinguish these two from each other? Load testing indicates how the systems function under normal or peak load circumstances. Stress testing, on the other hand, is implemented to check how the system functions past normal or peak load conditions and how it responds when it is back to taking normal loads.

Importance of Load testing

Load testing reproduces real-world situations on your sites, applications, and systems. Developers can estimate the limits and obtain insight into the metrics through the knowledge gathered during and after the load testing process. If you launch your software without load testing it beforehand, you’ll likely have missed a lot of bugs. The worst-case scenario is when the users find out these issues, which leaves a bad first impression and tarnishes your application’s dependability. Mobile and web apps that perform poorly can hurt conversion rate, sales, and most importantly, ROI. Even a few seconds of downtime can influence a business bottom line.  A survey conducted by ITIC  in 2017 found that an hour of downtime can cost a large organization over $100,000 per year. 

You may also read more about the Load testing benefits

Load testing simulates real user load

While performing software automation testing on a website or an app under a load, the tester simulates how it will function when hundreds, thousands or even millions of users visit it in real-time. The application might function well for one user during functional testing but its performance might deteriorate when multiple users try to access it at once during load testing due to a shortage of system resources. Therefore it is better to perform a load test to learn, analyze and fix bugs before they happen in the real world.

Code change could influence the performance of the application

Even if you did load testing as part of the testing process a few months ago,  but if the code got changed many times after that, then it is better to perform load testing again. All the developments that are done to the code after the load testing session might affect the system’s capacity to handle the load. It is always a good idea to perform automated testing for business apps as part of a continuous integration cycle, it eliminates any confusion the end-user can face by the system’s performance. 

Improvement in customer satisfaction

With a decrease in system downtimes and the capacity to serve a large number of customers, the overall customer fulfilment with the application improves which makes users return to the application more often.

Testing against production

The configuration of test environments may not be identical to production and thus may create misleading test results. This is more common than you think, particularly with services based on complex infrastructure and software. Testing against production always ensures that you are testing against a valid configuration. It provides an environment with full potential as opposed to a scaled-down test environment. It allows you to test high levels of concurrency, which may not be feasible in a scaled-down environment and lets you test the complete end-to-end technology stack including network access points, firewalls, load balancers etc.

Lets you load test specific servers rather than the whole stack

‌API load testing lets you configure your load testing by applying load only on specific servers. This comes very handy with more complex applications that involve several components and would require a considerable amount of effort to reproduce in a test environment.  Using APIs, you can test only the functions and servers you want to test.

It is well-supported and cheaper.

App load testing has been around for decades. You can choose from a lot of robust tools, both commercial as well as open-source, and most of these tools have large communities and comprehensive documentation around how to script the most common queries. Every section you don’t need to perform your tests on is one less section that you’ll have to pay to store (whether on-premises or in the cloud). The effectiveness of resource utilization translates directly into cost savings. ‌ For this purpose, load testing is one of the most cost-efficient ways. You can get started with load testing, letting you scale up your load comparatively cheaper while getting quick results.

Possible Use Cases and Examples

• Government Web Portal. Analysing a website of government agencies, especially during the due date of filing income tax returns when traffic will spike.
• Airline Website During Promotion Period. Analysing an airline’s website that is going to launch a flight promotion offer and is expecting more than tens of thousands of users at once
• When more people purchase products during a promotional event like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Diwali or when there is a promotional offer/discount.
• Running numerous simultaneous requests on a server, thus, subjecting the server to an extensive amount of traffic. For example, more people tend to book flights and tickets during holidays or on the days when an airline comes with an offer.
  
  

Conclusion

Load testing is an essential part of the software testing process as it assures that the software functions to deliver high user satisfaction. A successful load testing will eventually help to release high-quality applications. We would recommend it to anyone implementing change in web, mobile and business apps and even wanting to implement gaming app development testing. The outcomes of not testing aren’t worth the risk. Missing out on load testing your apps can cost a lot of money, distress and negative feedback from customers.

One of the services that we provide at Evon Technologies includes independent software testing of mobile & web apps and mobile app performance testing that comprises Automated testing for business apps, Manual testing, Load testing, stress testing and Security testing. In our Load and Performance Testing, we provide true, user-centric performance testing that’s simple to apply. We check the responsiveness of your system under minimal load and ideal conditions while measuring application response to sudden spikes in traffic volume. Know more about our testing services? Reach us here or Email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and share your requirements with us.