What are the objectives of Performance Testing
Tags: testing
Published: 2020-09-17 13:57:26


Introduction: 
Every day thousands of websites and applications are released in the market, but out of these, only a few can attract customer attention. Performance Testing is done to ensure that your application works fine before it reaches the end-user. It ensures that your system has no bottlenecks and is ready for an actual release. 


What is Performance Testing?

It is a non-functional type of software testing that is done to check the performance of software under various workloads. It checks the reliability, scalability, and quality of the software. It is mainly performed to get rid of the bottlenecks in the system.
What are the objectives of performance testing?
1.	Shorter Load Time
Slow-loading websites and applications tend to lose customer interest. Therefore your websites must load fast. In a recent survey conducted by Google, it was observed that over half (53%) of people said that they would leave the website if it does not load within three seconds. On average it takes 22 seconds for a website landing page to load on mobile devices. Therefore it is very essential to do performance testing to know the load time of your websites and applications. 

2.	Faster Response Time
Response time is the time an application takes to give output to the input received from the user. Usually, it should be low to keep the user engaged. Response time should be between 2 seconds to 3.5 seconds. Thus, it is very important to do performance testing to check the response time of your websites. 

3.	Higher Scalability
The software product is considered to be poor if it is not able to handle user load properly. Websites should be able to accommodate a wide range of users. Therefore Load Testing is done to improve the scalability of the website.  

4.	Eliminate Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks are the barriers that decrease the performance of the entire system. Bottlenecks could occur due to coding errors or hardware problems which results in decreased throughput rate. Performance testing helps in finding these bottlenecks by identifying the areas which are causing the problem and helps in fixing those problems. 


Below mentioned are some bottlenecks that are usually seen during performance testing:
•	Software Bottlenecks
•	Hardware Bottlenecks
•	Network Bottlenecks
•	Test Environment Bottlenecks


What are the types of Performance Testing?


1.	Load Testing: Evaluates the potential of an application to work under various load conditions. It is done to identify bottlenecks in the system.
2.	Stress Testing: It tests the application under various load conditions and checks how much traffic it can handle. It is done to ensure that the software does not crash when a sudden load is increased. 
3.	Endurance Testing: It checks the performance of the system when it is under significant load (around 70% of peak load) for a longer period (usually 8 hours to 72 hours). 
4.	Spike Testing: It is a subset of Stress Testing and it checks the performance of the system by suddenly varying the no. of users. It checks if the system can handle the user load or not.
5.	Volume Testing: In this testing, data load is increased in the software and then its performance is checked. It helps in knowing the volume of data that can be handled by particular software.
6.	Scalability Testing: It helps in determining the effectiveness of the software, by checking the user load it can handle. It helps in determining the extent of reach that particular software can achieve. 


Conclusion:
Performance testing is very important before the actual release of any software. It not only reduces the risk of failure but also increases customer satisfaction. Performance testing checks various factors in software like speed, reliability, scalability which makes the software fit for the market. 



About the Author: 
I am a technical content writer and write articles on various IT topics. In this article, I have tried to share my views on the objectives of performance testing.