8 things you should know about Client-Side Performance Testing

Performance Testing is crucial to the development of the mobile application. It helps to test the app’s speed, response time, stability, and resource usage under a particular workload. Planning an effective performance test strategy is complex as the tester needs to cover specialized test types that should be applied in specific ways.

There are different performance testing types, namely, load testing, spike testing, stress testing, endurance testing, volume testing, and scalability testing. Client-side performance testing metrics demand that the QA behave like the users to identify the application’s bottlenecks. If an application takes longer to load and the interface is not intuitive, customers will likely abandon it after first use. 80-90% of applications fail to impact the users.

Client-side performance testing involves strategies that will help you make your app’s end-users stay. It will enable you to develop an app that can deliver a strong customer experience (CX). Such performance testing helps to configure and optimize the application server and is the key to improved CX.

Eight things about Client-side performance testing

Perform And Behave Like Users

To conduct client-side performance testing, the tester must perform and behave like the end-users to test if the application performs as expected in the real-world scenario. Duress testing is essential to see if the app can deliver consistent performance under a particular workload. When the traffic on an application increases, it takes longer to load. The response time of the server is an essential factor, if it takes longer to load, customers, are likely to refrain from using it.

Client-Side– Front-End Performance Testing Challenges

As mentioned above, server overload is an essential factor that can hamper the browser app’s performance. Some other features you need to test are the comprehensibility of the visible texts, graphics, formatting, layout (CSS), and functional elements such as buttons, links, and forms. You need to test the available elements’ responsiveness to user actions and how quickly they can fulfil the user’s requests. Ensure you match the real-world environment with actual content and new code. Also, you need to identify your page’s essential elements and find their load time.

Client-Side Test Types

Client-side performance test types can be classified into three categories.

• Desktop tests: Client-side tests are performed on a desktop browser.
• Mobile tests: Client-side tests are performed on mobile devices.
• Limited resources test: Client-side tests are performed with limited CPU, memory, network, localization, and other resources.

When Should You Execute Client-Side Performance Test?

Client-side performance Testing is part of non-functional testing. You can perform it before or during the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase. In UAT methodology, clients/end users test the product to validate it against their expectations. However, performing a Client-Side Performance Test is advisable when an application or even a single page is ready.

Scope Of Client-Side Performance Testing

Client-side performance Testing helps you to deliver high-quality apps. It would be best to define the scope of performing such a testing methodology. The scope may include:

• Client-side analysis of performance metrics.
• Finding bottlenecks.
• System optimization.
• We are identifying risks related to client-side performance.

Client-Side Performance Priorities

• Introductory text and layout: The page’s visible elements should load in minimal time, and the critical text elements should be placed correctly.
• Functional elements: The functional elements should instantly be visible, responsive, and fully functional on the page.
• Formatting and images: pages on which the graphics are not very important, CSS and graphics can load after the functional elements.

How To Enhance Client-Side Performance

Some of the most common client-side performance pitfalls are unused CSS, resource blocking, compression, and incorrect image formatting. Server response time is one of the most critical factors. To counter these problems, you can perform server application logic optimization. You can also migrate to a faster database and upgrade server hardware to have more memory and CPU.

Test Environments And Results

Some of the primary metrics you need to consider are Speed Index and Time to Interactive. Time to interact is a metric that determines the page’s interactivity by the network and JS activity. The speed Index metric is the average time the page requires to display its visible parts. Perform the test in these environments and evaluate the results to develop competitive web applications.

To Conclude:

Client-side testing helps counter several performance issues in your application. It can also significantly help you identify front-end performance bottlenecks. This testing methodology is key to a smooth customer experience (CX).