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The aftermath of Covid, and turbulence in the market has led to more online work, and an increased sense of unpredictability. Web application testing is one way to keep your applications stable during unpredictable times.
Simultaneously, businesses are becoming increasingly reliant on their online systems.
This means two things:
Regardless of which category your business falls into, one thing is certain: You need to find a way to ensure that your web application performs – especially under sudden user fluctuations and changing buying behavior.
There are three components to this:
One is doing what you can to make sure that the system doesn’t crash under pressure.
The second is to make sure that you are notified as fast as possible if something should break, giving you the chance to fix the issue before it reaches the user.
The third is to set up actions that help you respond to issues as fast as possible, should they occur.
If nothing is done, businesses risk the loss of revenue, as customers cannot use their site as intended and are left with no other choice than to go to the competitor.
Web automation (test automation) is here to ensure the stable performance of your business-critical systems.
Most businesses already have test automation as a part of their CI/CD pipeline, but not everyone is using it to the full extent. Furthermore, when combined with RPA, coverage can be expanded and with it, enhance the security of systems. This gives businesses the confidence that their web applications won’t crash during these otherwise unpredictable times.
We’ve collected a few examples of test automation and RPA use cases that you can easily implement to ensure the stability of your web application.
The point of doing end-to-end tests is to ensure that a web application works from the user’s point of view, and to mitigate the risk of bugs and crashes.
Learn more about end-to-end testing in this blog post.
By doing end-to-end tests, as opposed to testing processes individually, you can thereby ensure that the entire user journey works as intended, based on criteria that you decide.
These criteria could include page loading time. For example, if it takes more than 5 minutes for a user to go from adding items to their basket, checking out, paying, and receiving confirmation, they may have a bad customer experience.
By automating an end-to-end test that checks the loading time of such a page and notifies you if it takes more than 5 minutes in total, you can be sure to catch the issue before too many users are affected.
Besides loading time, another issue that many online vendors experience (not just ones with the purpose of selling products and services, but also those who offer e.g. governmental or educational services) are that too many users are logging on to the systems at once.
Within an automation flow, you can set up a trigger that logs off inactive users to free up crucial resources like RAM and processor usage. This removes unnecessary strain on the system and allows active users to complete their errands on the site more quickly.
The last example is useful for businesses who have set up automation to monitor their systems and notify them in case of changes, but who struggle to respond to those changes in a timely fashion, or whose resources are drained and therefore must do more in less time.
With an AI-enabled automation platform such as Leapwork, you can set up an automation flow that reads the emails in your inbox (assuming this is where you receive the notification) and then, based on defined rules, goes into the system and performs the necessary actions for you.
For example, if the monitor sees a 404 message, it will go to the IIS and reset it. Similarly, if there is a Windows service that isn’t responding, it can restart that service automatically.
Depending on what the purpose of your system is, there are many more things that you can include in your automation flows in order to ensure the best possible user experience. And should it happen that your site crashes due to unforeseen circumstances, a good test automation tool can help ensure that you are notified before your users experience the break themselves.
Choosing the right automation tool is the final step in assuring the quality of your online systems.
A tool that is intuitive to use and that can work with all your existing technologies will enable you to get started quickly and efficiently, and will ensure that the tool pays for itself in no time.
Leapwork’s no-code automation platform offers just that. If you’re interested in learning more about Leapwork, we recommend that you sign up for our upcoming webinar.
