A Hybrid Approach to Performance Testing

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About the Talk

A Hybrid Approach to Performance Testing

The golden rule of web performance states that for most web pages, less than 10–20% of the end-user response time is spent getting the HTML document from the web server to the browser, while 80-90% of the end-user response time is spent on the front end.

When we talk about performance testing, the most common activity that we do is to load-test our backend servers. We come to a realisation that once we have optimised our servers and databases, our application is now performant. However, this should not be the case. Just because our servers have returned the response to a specific request doesn't mean that our users can see the response on the web page. Many factors affect frontend performance as well, and it's equally important to test to ensure that our users have the best user experience.

Historically, we have used separate tools for frontend and backend performance. But what if there is one tool that can do both?

In this talk, I want to introduce you to both frontend and backend performance testing and why a hybrid approach is needed to ensure your website is performant. I'll also give a quick walkthrough of how tools such as k6 can help run both protocol-level (how performance testing is typically run through concurrent interactions at the protocol layer) and browser-level tests (testing with real browsers to provide a more realistic performance test). By the end of this talk, you should be equipped with new knowledge regarding frontend and backend performance testing, which you can apply to your work projects.

Key Takeaways

• Understand the golden rule of web performance
• Know the difference between protocol-level and browser-level tools when it comes to performance testing
• Understand why a hybrid approach of both frontend and backend performance testing is essential to add to your testing strategies
• Learn how you can run both protocol-level and browser-level tests with k6

About the Speaker

Marie Cruz is currently a Developer Advocate at k6.io and Grafana Labs. She is a tech blogger at testingwithmarie.com and an accessibility advocate. She is also an online course instructor at Ministry of Testing and Test Automation University.

The free online Testµ (TestMu) conference by LambdaTest will talk about trends that matter in the testing landscape and will help testers & developers get a glimpse into the future of testing. Over 30+ speakers including community leaders and leading industry experts will join the event to share their thoughts.