How significant is performance testing?
I had a weird experience today in using a app where I tried to scroll through the site looking for some info. The site was terribly slow and the overall experience was poor because of the page speed.
Interestingly the functionalities, feature placements, UI and everything on the site looked good and I felt it was a well designed product. So here comes the problem, "A great product with poor performance". How does this stand out to a user?
A study reveals that "People perceive load times as being 15% slower than they actually" and most of the users normally avoid returning to a slow site. It now really boils down to the question
1. How significant is performance testing?
2. When performance testing should be conducted?
There are cases when products are rolled out with poor performance and then as part of enhancements, the fixes are done. Does it really help the user and the business? Just imagine the loss that it could result in terms of user attrition, revenue and conversion
What do you think?
P.S :
Some interesting facts
1. For every 1 second of improvement Walmart does to its load time, the site experienced up to a 2% improvement in conversion rate
2. Obama's fundraising platform in 2011 increased page speed by 60% and raised an additional $34 million for his campaign
Yes even core web vitals are important to consider too