How performance engineering can help you scale to meet the needs of your customers

When time is tight, it can be tempting to focus on project delivery above all else. Many companies are willing to settle for web performance that is merely “good enough” if it means they can launch a new service or application immediately.  

We understand the pressure to go live, but web performance shouldn’t be an afterthought. Today’s customers expect optimum performance across the board, and they will reward the companies who can provide it:

• 70% of consumers say that page speed affects their willingness to buy from an online retailer
• Ecommerce pages that load in less than two seconds have a much higher conversion rate
• Conversion rates drop by over 4% for each additional second that a page takes to load 

The message from customers is clear: “good enough” is no longer good enough.  Perfection is the goal, and we can help you achieve it.   

The pandemic put performance at the top of the agenda

The dangers of “good enough” were thrown into stark relief by the pandemic. Web traffic surged, and many companies found that their existing service wasn’t up to the task. Websites that had only been tested under normal conditions buckled under the pressure, leaving businesses scrambling to make changes when it was already too late: 

• In March 2020, several major supermarkets experienced technical issues as millions of customers tried to book online deliveries. 
• Last year, Primark’s website crashed just minutes after the company launched its  Click & Collect service.

We felt for these companies, and we wanted to make sure that our customers were protected from similar difficulties. We believe in testing early and testing often, making quality assurance (QA) an integral part of the development process. We can’t prepare for every eventuality, but we can ensure that nasty surprises are kept to a minimum. This requires a fundamental shift in the way we approach QA. In fact, it requires two fundamental shifts.  

Working a double shift

Most developers understand the importance of QA, but not everyone agrees on when it should take place. Recently, there has been a lot of talk of “shifting left”. That is, introducing QA at a much earlier stage. When you shift left, you give developers that chance to spot problems before they become embedded in the architecture of a project. 

“Shifting left” has become a common strategy, but we take it one step further. We don’t just introduce QA at an earlier stage. We perform multiple rounds of testing, raising the stakes each time:

• First, we use test assets to set criteria and measure the effects of changes in real time. This happens locally on each workstation, allowing us to spot weaknesses before they are integrated into the application.
• Next, we perform a cycle of tests in a more controlled environment. This is a chance to gather more feedback, and to block any changes that don’t meet our criteria. 
• Finally, we simulate a peak day in a production-like environment. This lets us spot any last minute issues that could arise from an unexpected surge. We simulate web traffic 20% above the projected maximum to reassure clients that the application has plenty of breathing room.

This approach makes a huge difference, as our principal consultant Kieran Girvan explains:

“It’s a night and day comparison. Clients who were delivering changes once or twice a week can now test and implement ten to twelve changes a day.”

“Shift left” has become a mantra for many companies, and with good reason, but it’s only part of the equation. For testing to be effective, you need to ensure that what you're testing is accurate. This is where shifting right comes in. 

If shifting left is about testing an application in development, shifting right is about seeing how it fares in the wild. It means testing the ways in which customers interact with it, and adapting to any new behaviours. This was vital during the pandemic as hygiene-conscious shoppers gravitated towards touch-free payment methods. Now, with living costs on the rise, customers are shopping in a more value-conscious way.  By shifting right, we can ensure that these behaviours are taken into account when measuring the success of changes. 

Scale with confidence

Investing in web performance is money well spent, especially if you plan on scaling up. Focusing on performance at an early stage reduces the likelihood of a costly error down the line. It can also drive sales by improving your abandonment rate significantly. 

Even if your web performance is adequate, there are plenty of reasons to improve it. Optimization is like peeling an onion. We start with the glaring issues, but then we dig deeper, peeling back the layers to make as many improvements as possible. This allows us to offer more than a short term fix. We want to build applications that can outperform the competition for years to come. 

We do this by focusing on three key areas:

• Performance assurance- As mentioned previously, we perform QA at every step of development to ensure that every change has a positive effect 
• Page speed optimisation- We make sure that your customers see the most important content first, and that third parties don’t slow you down
• Application optimisation- We dig into the code of your applications to fine tune them for optimal performance

As well as these core services, we offer a number of additional ways to boost performance. Our Performance Maturity Matrix allows us to measure your performance against a detailed set of criteria, and then provide an action plan for improving your score. We can also upgrade your monitoring and alerting capabilities to ensure that problems are flagged up as soon as they occur. 

Get ahead of the game

We believe that there will come a time when development and operations merge into one. Performance won’t be viewed as an optional extra. It will be an integral part of functionality. 

Embracing this mindset now will give you a decisive head start. Companies like Facebook make and test hundreds of changes every day, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same. 

Don’t settle for good enough in 2023. Get in touch today and let’s aim for perfection.