Online shopping is no longer a new phenomenon. Day by day, people are turning to the internet for all their needs. According to Marxist, in 2018, 69% of Americans said that they had shopped online. According to the Atlantic, in the same year, 30% of all electronic sales took place online. Forbes’ expected that by 2020, 20% of global grocery sales will take place online. These statistics indicate that the number of online shopping websites and apps will go up even more in the upcoming future.

As new businesses spring up, or existing ones turn to the online market, they will have to make sure their apps are secure. Enlisting support from performance testing services is a necessary step to proceed to the online platform. 

So, what processes will performance testing services cover for your shopping app? Here are a few examples:

1. Requirements gathering and analysis

In this first stage of performance testing, the app’s design details, expected user load, acceptance criteria, and workflow knowledge is gathered. For example, shoppers will browse many products before finalizing, hence the app must allow easy navigation. A shopping app will be packed with images that should load quickly and be zoomable. 

Expected user load for retail and electronics will be higher around holidays than on regular days due to high sales.

2. Testing tool selection

In selecting the right performance testing tool, the app’s design and user load are considered, along with project budget and quality assurance expertise. A startup firm will have a tighter budget than an established firm expanding its market to an online forum. Quality assurance analysts have to script use cases and their talent will help you invest in the best performance testing tools.

3. Planning

The infrastructure and environment for performance testing are set up. Use case scenarios are scripted with specifics of duration and number of users. For example, for a check out use case, the following steps have to be tested: customer authentication via a login page, viewing shopping cart, payment methods like PayPal or credit card. 

4. Test Script Implementation

A test script is created based on the use cases. Varied test data is used for different scenarios. For example, if search functionality is being tested, a test script will cover several aspects like searching on different pages, sorting, the number of results displayed per page, filters, product reviews, shipping information, etc.

5. Test Execution

The scripted tests are executed. Test progress is evaluated with aspects like CPU usage, memory, and hit rate. For example, for effective load test execution, there must be enough load generators to achieve the expected load as well as network bandwidth.

6. Results Analysis

Test results are put together to determine the performance attributes of the app. Bottlenecks are identified. Test results are shared with stakeholders. For example, a common bottleneck is a product’s unavailability from what is advertised. This happens because of a missing update from the physical store or warehouse, which does not have the item in stock and fails to update it on the system.