Atentus, a quality management company for digital channels, carried out a study on the performance of the websites of some of the main companies participating in the Hot Sale, such as: Mercado Libre, Frávega, Garbarino, Movistar, Musimundo, Farmacity, Tienda Naranja, Farmaonline; organized from May 10 to 13, by the Argentine Chamber of Electronic Commerce (CACE).

The study was based on monitoring the user experience through a unique methodology in which Bots simulated being a real user, carrying out a purchase flow and measuring through periodic navigations under the Web platforms, with an interval of 15 minutes during the 24 hours uninterruptedly during the 3 days of the event.

The company explains that there are three fundamental points to measure performance: availability, response times, and the capacity of the platform. In addition, they state that response times should not exceed 3 seconds for the total download of the page, and that, if a site responds in times between 5 and 10 seconds for the total load, we should be concerned.

Some of the data is that in the three days that the event lasted, 11,418 bots or “incognito users” browsed every 15 minutes, and identified 217 problems on the sites. The average response times were above the average of 3 seconds normally expected by users. This type of behavior brings with it a high abandonment rate from websites due to long waits.

"One of the main defects that the sites have is that they are poorly prepared for high concurrency, when several hundred users connect at the same time the sites degrade or directly go down. In our experience the bottlenecks are mainly in the software design. Another important factor is that the technology sector is not able to dimension, together with the business area, the high demand that they will have," comments Florencia Tcholakian, Country Manager of Argentina & Uruguay at Atentus.

In order to carry out these evaluations, Atentus carefully analyzed the delivery of alerts and measurements in real time, in a timely and precise manner, on the quality, availability, functionality and performance of the monitored objective with an end-to-end scope, guaranteeing constant management to address any incident that may impact the end-user experience, thus avoiding distortions generated in the measurements from the observation points in the last mile. For this exercise, the companies were not informed of their incidents, but rather it was purely an observation of behavior.

Meanwhile, it should be noted that on the first day of the event both availability and response times were the lowest, and increased as the days passed. This is because the vast majority of concurrent users found themselves purchasing and visiting the websites at the beginning of the event due to the greater availability of products and offers.

"The page crashes for any retail during this type of event mean a significant loss of money since there are thousands of users unable to enter to transact. Also the high response times imply great frustration and abandonment rate on the part of the users. That is why it is important to prepare before, during and after these types of events. In general terms in Argentina the Hot Sale had decent results, compared to other years and even with other Latin American countries, a significant improvement is observed in the platforms but there are still aspects to be addressed. improve,” concludes Tcholakian.