One of the best things about Magento is that it keeps getting better with each new upgrade. Speaking of upgrades, it’s an undeniable fact that Magento 2 is a one significant upgrade that comes with several different features and bonuses which means better performance. However, it’s quite common for some people to face issues with its performance and sometimes low effectiveness. Reporting the troubles on time can work wonders for such people but first, you need to be sure whether there is a performance issue or not. To test Magento 2 and review if there are any flaws in the system, you can use the performance testing toolkit.
What Is The Performance Testing Toolkit?
To ensure that your online store is running at its full potential, you need to have a strong Magento 2 hosting provider at your end and you should also be aware of how to use the performance testing toolkit. The toolkit enables the user to test the performance of the Magento 2 installations. On top of that, it helps you test the impact of your customizations. With such tests, you can check how your website will operate under load. From speed testing to scalability and the stability of your website, such software can help you improve your site’s experience.
What Is The Process Of Testing Performance?
What you must know here is that performance testing is a little complex and you need some thorough preparation here. Most importantly, you can’t perform the test without the cooperation of your entire team. Testing includes, automating the process with the help of software development professionals and some preparation of the client questionnaire.
Step1: In order to set the best possible and the most fitting environment, you first have to work on the preparation of client questionnaires. This basically is general information and data that you have to gather to know what your client does on your website.
Step2: Now in order to assess the test results, you need to prepare KPIs. KPIs are basically performance acceptance criteria and here you have to note everything from end user response time to the maximum number of concurrent users. Moreover, it’s recommended that you set up business metrics before time in order to monitor the development of your business and to reach your goals.
Step3: Now comes the point where you have to generate the user journey and decide which tools you’ll be using for the performance test. The user journey can be anything from a landing page to adding the product to the shopping cart, searching for the product and then going through the checkout process. What you need to keep in mind is that you have to stick to the most general and common scenarios no matter what.
Step4: Now you have to clone the Magento 2 database and ensure that everything’s working properly. Once done, you then have to switch to the clone and run a performance test with the decided testing tool.
Step5: After the performance test, you need to analyze the results and create reports accordingly. The reports will then help you analyze and check whether or not the data matches the performance acceptance criteria. If the data matches with the criteria then it’s great but if it doesn’t then you’ll at least know where to make the chances in your business goals.
The Best Magento 2 Performance Testing Tools
It’s true that performance testing is quite complex and you need some professional help here like that of Devrims to ensure a smooth and seamless test. However, if you wish to perform the test yourself then you need to know about some Magento 2 testing tools that’ll help you estimate the stress-load statistics of your website along with the weight of the page.
1-SIEGE
SIEGE is a one easy-to-use tool that’ll help you check the resource consumption of the written codes. All that functional environment emulated by the tool is quite real. So if you are looking for an easy to use and simple tool then there’s nothing as good as Siege.
2-Apache Jmeter
Apache Jmeter is one of the most common and popular testing tools that helps the user test both the load and the stress of Magento 2. What’s best about this tool is that it allows you to record your actions in the browser and then emulate all the traffic towards that page with thousands of users. This tool is best if you want to test how your website will react and deal with increased traffic. Moreover, as this tool comes with an API, it’ll also be useful to emulate the entire testing process.
3-Loadrunner
Loadrunner is almost the same as Jmeter and its main function is to reproduce the behavior of several virtual users performing different actions. Not just this but the best part about this tool is that it can tell you how active your user was on your website.
4-Google Analytics
If you are looking for one of the most popular testing tools then there’s nothing better than Google Analytics. It has all the necessary tools that can help you analyze how fast your web page loads and how fast it responds to the actions of the user. From Woopra to Piwik and Kissmetrics, it has everything that can come in handy to you. What’s best is that all of them come with special report tabs that can help you understand how quickly the site responds to your uses.
Conclusion
Performance tests are of utmost importance as they help you improve the way your website works. Especially when you know about the weakest points of your site, it just gets easier to optimize it and improve its overall user experience. You have to ensure that your site’s speed is in accordance with what your users want and that it has the ability to deal with increased traffic and load. Use the above-mentioned performance testing tools for your Magento 2 website and you sure will get great results.