Steffes Group Scales Online Auction Platform with BlazeMeter’s Dynamic Performance Testing to Meet Critical Launch Deadline

The Challenge

With a burgeoning development team comprised of QA engineers, developers, project managers, and business analysts, Steffes Group was nearing a strict deadline to launch their end-to-end ERP platform with a front-end public website. The online auction platform was expected to see sudden and dramatic bursts of traffic, and they needed to test the platform under heavy simulated load — load that needed to be reflective of dynamic user behavior emblematic of a bidding system.

Steffes Group initially relied on a performance testing partner who offered limited, static load testing. However, this partner's tests could not replicate the real-time, dynamic behavior typical of live auctions, such as fluctuating bid submissions and unpredictable user interactions.

This put Steffes Group in a precarious position. 

As the deadline drew closer, they were left looking for an alternative performance testing solution that could meet their needs in the narrowing timeframe left to them. Otherwise, they faced two consequences: either delay the launch of their website and potentially lose millions of dollars or launch a website that was highly susceptible to crashing under load and ruin their sterling organizational reputation in the auction space.

Luckily, Steffes Group connected with BlazeMeter and a team ready to drop everything to meet their needs and their deadline.

The Solution

BlazeMeter’s testing platform seamlessly integrated with Steffes Group’s existing infrastructure and enabled rapid deployment of custom performance tests without requiring a lengthy onboarding process. After detailed listening sessions where the Steffes developers laid out to BlazeMeter experts what exactly was required for success, we took the baton and created the load testing scenarios and frameworks they needed.

Delivering Dynamic Auction Simulations

Using BlazeMeter’s advanced scripting tools and JMeter integration, we were able to design test scenarios that mimicked the user behavior of the typical bidder. This meant that — throughout a large number of requests in a single instance — the behavior had to be different (e.g. raising a bid in a non-uniform manner). Since Steffes Group’s previous partner could only provide them strictly static data with no real variation, BlazeMeter bridged the gap by providing flexible, dynamic data that simulated unpredictable user actions like bid variations and high-traffic surges.

BlazeMeter was able to successfully simulate how a user would interact with the auction platform by providing thousands of bidders at any given time — all “bidding” in varying quantities. Once that capability was established, it was just a matter of scaling up and scaling out the website’s performance testing.

"With BlazeMeter, we didn’t just solve our performance issues; we were able to gain deeper insights into our platform’s capabilities, optimize our resources, and ensure a seamless launch. We discovered issues we didn’t even know were there. The potential downtime and revenue loss we avoided were invaluable." 
- Sean Todd, IT Director

The Result

For Steffes Group, a failed auction due to system downtime or poor UX could have meant millions of dollars lost. Because they depend on their end-to-end ERP platform and front-end public website to transact millions of dollars a day, one bad sale can make or break not only their profitability — but their entire organizational reputation.

All that risk was mitigated, however, when Steffes Group turned to BlazeMeter “in the bottom of the 9th inning” to fortify their platform before launch. Beyond the matter of avoiding dramatic profit loss, they were also able to achieve desired scalability with their performance testing within the resources available to them — a clear indication of the flexibility BlazeMeter provides.

By implementing BlazeMeter, Steffes Group was able to simulate thousands of  concurrent bidders that ensured their platform could handle large bursts of bids during peak periods without any performance degradation. Now, their testing is flexible, and their processes streamlined after identifying unnecessary services.

Thanks to BlazeMeter’s advanced testing capabilities, Steffes Group major potential auction losses by ensuring their platform handled surges in bidder activity smoothly. In addition, they optimized their resource allocation and reduced operational costs to make their system more efficient and cost-effective.

Steffes Group transformed an urgent crisis into success by partnering with BlazeMeter. They went from struggling with performance testing to launching a flawless auction platform that’s ready for anything. BlazeMeter helped them meet their deadline, ensure scalability, and achieve cost savings in the process.

Experience BlazeMeter in Action

Explore how BlazeMeter can optimize your performance testing and help your organization meet critical deadlines — just as it did for Steffes Group.

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