The document outlines strategies for businesses to prepare for peak periods by defining acceptable performance metrics, optimizing responses, and conducting thorough load testing. It emphasizes managing traffic, utilizing online queuing systems to maintain customer interest during downtime, and the importance of post-event reviews to maximize future value. Additionally, it highlights the significance of real-time monitoring and effective communication during critical moments.

1. PREPARING FOR PEAK
JUNE 2019

2. PREPARING FOR PEAK
JUNE 2019

3. DEFINE “ACCEPTABLE”
#1

4. YOUR SHARED OBJECTIVE DICTATES ACCEPTABLE
Improve a business metric
Retail, Public Sector, Agnostic
Business as usual
Avoid a social scolding
The envelope or permissible performance
Survive the storm
Accept failure and manage disappointment

5. CHOOSE YOUR PATH TO ACCEPTABLE
#2

6. YOUR BUSINESS RESPONSE TO ACCEPTABLE
Scope, Expectations, Time
Cheapest ?
minimal Viable Product
A Legacy ROI ?
exploit the opportunity to improve
Do nothing !
elect not to participate
reflected confidence
not free

7. GETTING TO ACCEPTABLE
#3

8. OPTIMIZE FOR PEAK
Harvest last year’s lessons
Manage your traffic
exploit Search Engines and Social Media
platforms
control how the event unfolds
Change the site
shorten the path to purchase
Improve what you’ve got
protect your platform and network through
low hanging performance fruit
Review & rehearse your playbook

9. PROVING ACCEPTABLE
#4

10. THE JOY OF LOAD TESTING
A good load…
What to test
simulate the patterns of usage on representative devices
common flows
business flows
architectural pinch points
Types of test
seven classics
performance under varying levels of load
spot degradation and the point of unacceptable
How high ?
establish the target throughput per minute
Choose your KPI’s
acceptable errors, acceptable response times
What tools ?

11. THE JOY OF LOAD TESTING
And the Gotacha’s…
Environment Stability
Timescales
Scope Too Big
Scope Too Small
Testing in a live environment
Testing in a test environment
Test Data Volumes Accounts
Shopping Baskets
Untested Application
New Architecture
Customer Availability
Data Privacy
Third Parties
Non-Exclusive Environment Use
incl. Pen. Testing Like-live or not?
Emails
Functional Testing Mind-set
Server Caching
Site Access – IP Whitelisting
Changing URLs
CDNs
Server Logging Level
No Objectives
Unrealistic Expectations
Performance Tuning
Errors
No Code/Application Freeze
Shared-Infrastructure
Out-of-Hours testing
Virtual Environments
Database Restores
Data Generation
Long Think Times
User Abandonment (Drop-offs)
Cache Warm-ups
Payment Gateways
Postcode Lookups
Assumptions
Customer Engagement
Randomness
Terminology
Test Window
Duration
Connection Speed
Synthetic Agent
Security
Use-once Datasets
Load Balancing
Algorithm

12. ACHIEVING ACCEPTABLE
#5

13. TO REMEDIATE, OR NOT TO REMEDIATE
What do the results tell us?
establish where the threshold was reached
compare errors and response to KPI’s
Do we/can we remediate?
cost as a factor
time as a factor
reframe the original objective

14. MANAGING ACCEPTABLE
JUNE 2019

15. QUEUING SYSTEMS – YOUR SAFETY NET
My website crashed. Now what?
Your website or app is only as good as your
weakest link
”If my site crashes I can quickly bring
my site back online.”
Even if your architecture can cope, your website
has several other integrations that might not be
able to (e.g. payment processors).

16. QUEUING SYSTEMS – YOUR SAFETY NET
An online queue is the solution
Online queuing myth:
”Online queuing will decrease my conversion
rate”
Online queuing increases conversions
• If people are interested in the products then the ones
that stay are closer to buying
What is your alternative?
• Losing revenue & being down or staying online & using
social proof to show that lots of people are interested in the
product you are selling
If your website is down, customers will go to your
competitor
• This also has an impact on losing future revenue and
customers
24/7 protection for app and
website traffic spikes

17. ACCEPTABLE ON THE DAY
JUNE 2019

18. THE BIG DAY
Monitor, manage and react
Your War Room
disciplines and decision makers
Listening Systems
Message Management
increases with the scale of impact
drive a consistent narrative across channels

19. THE FUTURE ACCEPTABLE
#8

20. THE MORNING AFTER
The review
opportunity to maximise organisational value.
a new normal ?
capture relationship equity
Start planning for next year
preserve the data picture
big changes, early

21. PREPARING FOR PEAK
Q&A TIME