Load Testing Services Help Mammoth Mountain Ski Area Gear Up for 2009/2010 Pass Sales
High Anticipated Demand is Met with Aplomb
MAMMOTH LAKES, CA – For the first time in several years, Mammoth Mountain opened up sales of their popular Mammoth Value Pass (MVP) to new purchasers. Given that there were only 38,000 passes available, and those passes were only being sold for one month, Mammoth Mountain’s web site had to be up to speed and capable of handling the load or, as Brahm Goodis, Web Developer for Mammoth Mountain, said, “it was crucial to make sure our site could handle the potential load.” Mammoth Mountain had used the load testing services of Web Performance, Inc. (WPI) out of Durham, North Carolina in the past and had a good experience, so they decided to call them again.
Prior to the mad rush of pass purchasers and renewers, WPI and Mammoth Mountain were able to work together to make sure the web site could handle the high volumes of traffic that were anticipated when the passes went on sale. The two biggest benefits that Mammoth Mountain received from hiring WPI to assist them in their load testing were expertise in using the load testing tool and large-scale Internet-based load testing infrastructure.
WPI developed two test cases to test the Mammoth Mountain site: one for renewals, and one for new purchases. Both test cases stepped through the renewal or purchase process and ended with submitting test credit card information and “completing” the sale. WPI used the beta version of their Web Performance Load Tester™ 3.6 software to do the load testing.
A few errors turned up in the first phase of load testing, particularly near the end of the testing when the load was the highest. Also, the original version of the site also did not meet the client’s criteria for timely performance of 10 seconds per page load. Fortunately, Mammoth Mountain’s team was prepared and already had an updated version of the site that enabled them to make a number of performance enhancements. They put that version of the site into production, and WPI tested again against the new version of the site. The updated version performed much better, easily meeting Mammoth Mountain’s performance goals.
WPI didn’t fix Mammoth Mountain’s problems – what they did was much more valuable. WPI provided load testing services that helped Mammoth Mountain pinpoint where their problems were, and provided them with a much greater assurance than they would have otherwise had that their website could actually handle the anticipated load without letting them down. In fact, Mr. Goodis said, “WPI exceeded our expectations and we look forward to working with them again.” That type of peace of mind can make all the difference in a company’s ability to provide a service.
# # #