Request Metrics and Perforator - Combining RUM and Load Testing

Your website’s performance can make or break your business. Slow load times, crashes under pressure, and a poor user experience can cost you customers, reduce your search engine rankings, and hurt your bottom line. That’s why monitoring and testing your site’s performance is critical—but not all performance monitoring is the same.

At Request Metrics, we focus on Real User Monitoring (RUM), which shows you how real users are experiencing your website in real-time. Our newest partner, Perforator, specializes in load testing, which simulates how your site performs under heavy traffic. Together, these two tools give you the complete picture of web performance.

What is Real User Monitoring (RUM)?

Real User Monitoring is like having a 24/7 performance inspector on your website. RUM measures how fast pages load, how users interact with your content, and where they experience issues. Unlike synthetic tests that simulate user interactions, RUM collects data from actual users—so you’re seeing the real-world performance of your site, in real time.

At Request Metrics, we make RUM data easy to understand, highlighting important metrics like:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long it takes for the largest visible element on your page to load.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): The degree to which elements on your page move around as it loads.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How responsive your website feels to user interactions.

These Core Web Vitals (and more) directly impact your SEO, user experience, and conversion rates. If users are waiting too long or dealing with a janky experience, they’re likely to leave, which directly affects your bottom line.

But RUM only tells you part of the story. It tells you how your site performs with current traffic, but what happens when traffic spikes? That’s where Perforator’s load testing comes into play.

What is Load Testing?

Load testing simulates high volumes of traffic to see how your website performs under stress. While RUM gives you a snapshot of what’s happening right now with real users, load testing shows you what could happen when your site is under heavy load.

Perforator specializes in this, creating tests that simulate thousands (or even millions) of users all interacting with your website simultaneously. By doing so, they reveal:

• Bottlenecks: Where your site or server gets bogged down.
• Scalability: Whether your infrastructure can handle big surges in traffic.
• Failure points: Where things crash or break when pushed to the limit.

This is critical for planning high-traffic events like product launches, Black Friday sales, or viral marketing campaigns. Without load testing, you’re rolling the dice every time your traffic spikes.

RUM and Load Testing are the Perfect Pair

Think of web performance like a car. Real User Monitoring tells you how it drives in regular conditions—on the highway, in the city, or when you’re cruising around town. Load testing, on the other hand, is like putting your car on a racetrack or pushing it through extreme conditions to see how it holds up.

One without the other leaves gaps. If you’re only using RUM, you’re blind to what happens when traffic surges. If you’re only using load testing, you won’t know what real users experience daily.

By combining Request Metrics’ Real User Monitoring with Perforator’s load testing, you get the full picture:

• Day-to-day monitoring: RUM tells you how your site performs in real time with actual users. You can catch and fix slow load times, layout shifts, and responsiveness issues as they happen.
• Extreme stress testing: Load testing simulates heavy traffic, so you can see how your site holds up when the pressure is on. Avoid the embarrassment of crashes or slowdowns during important events.
• Better insights: Together, RUM and load testing give you a complete view of performance. You can optimize for both everyday users and prepare for those critical traffic surges.

Real-Time Data Meets Stress Testing: The Key to Confident Web Performance

Imagine you’re running an e-commerce site. During normal days, RUM might show you that users experience fast load times and smooth interactions. Great! But what happens on Black Friday, when traffic increases tenfold?

That’s where Perforator’s load testing comes in. By running load tests in advance, you’ll see if your server infrastructure can handle the spike. Maybe the load test reveals that your site slows to a crawl with 5,000 concurrent users, or worse, your database crashes after 10,000.

With these insights, you can scale up your infrastructure, optimize bottlenecks, and be confident that your site will perform just as well under pressure as it does in regular conditions. The result? Happier users, more sales, and a stress-free event.

Improving SEO and Conversion Rates Together

Performance isn’t just about surviving big traffic events. Google uses page speed and Core Web Vitals as ranking factors in search engine results. A slow website means worse SEO, which means less traffic, fewer leads, and ultimately, fewer conversions.

Real User Monitoring from Request Metrics helps you stay on top of those SEO-critical metrics by giving you a real-time view of Core Web Vitals. But load testing can also help improve your SEO indirectly.

How? Imagine your website performs well for 99% of the time, but during high-traffic events, it crashes or becomes unbearably slow. Google sees this, and it impacts your rankings. By load testing with Perforator, you can fix these issues before they affect your SEO, ensuring consistent performance and protecting your rankings.

Actionable Insights for Developers, Marketers, and Business Owners

Combining Request Metrics and Perforator’s tools isn’t just for developers. Marketers and business owners benefit from the combined insights, too.

• For developers, this partnership gives you the technical data you need to fix performance issues before they affect users.
• For marketers, it means your SEO and advertising campaigns are supported by a fast, reliable website that won’t lose customers due to poor performance.
• For business owners, this means peace of mind, knowing that your site is prepared for both everyday traffic and massive surges.

The Future of Web Performance: RUM + Load Testing

The days of just using one performance tool are over. With the increasing importance of web performance on SEO, user experience, and conversion rates, having both real-time monitoring and stress testing is essential.

At Request Metrics, we’re thrilled to partner with Perforator to offer this comprehensive solution. Whether you’re preparing for a major sales event, optimizing for search engines, or simply trying to provide a smoother user experience, combining RUM and load testing gives you the data you need to make smart, impactful decisions.