Testing is one of the most important parts of the full life cycle of software development. A software application comes with different components that require that software developers account for the satisfaction of their customers when writing code for each of these components.
Customer satisfaction is complex and coding is a long process that requires a lot of time and effort. Due to this, chances are that there will be issues and bugs with an application that might affect its usage. Testing is used to identify and remove any underlying problems before moving into production.
There are different types of testing. One of the most important is load testing. It is used when testers want to evaluate the response of their application to different load conditions. To conduct load testing, testers automate the testing procedure and allow users to simultaneously access the application.
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Why Load Testing?
Just like other testing procedures, load testing seeks to expose any vulnerabilities with applications but it concentrates on those that arise from user load.
There are other testing techniques such as stress testing that expose vulnerabilities brought about by user load. Developers need to know the difference between load and stress testing. While load testing checks for vulnerabilities under different user loads, stress testing checks for vulnerabilities in extreme workloads or compromised situations.
When checking for vulnerabilities under different user loads, testers are able to identify other issues such as memory mismanagement, buffer overflow, and memory leaks. They are also able to identify issues related to load balancing and bandwidth limitation.
Furthermore, apart from checking the performance of an application on different user loads, testers are also able to know the limits of all the components such as servers, network restrictions, databases that make up an application.
Advantages of Load Testing
Improving Scalability
An application that has issues when handling different user loads creates other issues such as memory leaks and does not utilize resources as expected. With load testing, testers can establish the operational limits of their applications and then make changes to make sure that the application is scalable.
For example, it is expected that in the near future, AI will take over the workforce in companies. Applications will be doing most of the things that people do today. This means that a faulty application will slow down operations, leading to losses. Load testing will help eradicate such problems and improve scalability.
Reducing Failure Costs
When performance issues are identified earlier, the cost involved is significantly lower than when the issues are identified at a later date. For instance, an application that shows issues after been launched might end up ruining the reputation of a company.
When issues are detected after launch, companies are forced to either halt the application to fix the issues or roll back to a previous version. This could cost the company a lot, leading to loss of customers and revenue.
However, companies can reduce costs associated with application failure by the use of load testing. It enables them to identify these issues and solve them before launching their applications.
Improving Customer Satisfaction
Evaluating issues that are brought by different user loads enables testers to identify any other problems that might be related to the quality of their application as well as response time. They detect and resolve these issues before launching the application.
Enhancing the quality of their application and eliminating slow response time is key to giving customers a good user experience that meets their requirements.
Minimizing Applications Downtime
To minimize or even eradicate the risks involved with an application’s downtime, testers use both load and stress testing. These testing techniques make it possible for them to evaluate the performance of an application under simulated real-time app usage.
Subjecting an application to increased traffic, for instance, shows all the issues that might cause downtime. When these issues are resolved before launch, the application will have lower chances of downtime when launched.
Conclusion
Today, customers have become more sensitive about the user experience of applications that they use. Besides, they have several options to choose from, making the user experience very important for those companies that want to retain their customers.
On the other hand, load testing is vital in making sure that applications are robust and can handle different user loads without any problems. It also helps in identifying any issues that might affect user experience and customer satisfaction.
