Budapest Stock Exchange Ltd. (BSE) invited Sense/Net to prepare a communication, ergonomy and technical expert analysis on the BSE web page. We were also requested to perform load tests on the home page developed by a third party.
The task of Sense/Net professionals was to examine how much the Budapest Stock Exchange corporate portal complies with the company’s communications strategy and technical requirements. We conducted the analysis using the methods of consulting and online research, and made proposals on the further development of the homepage. Then we examined the technical aspects of the homepage in test operation.
The main points of the marketing communications and web ergonomy analysis were:
- Brand analysis
- Target group analysis
- Audience analysis
- Defining the user profile
- Analysis of the corporate message
- Analysis of the competitors and related portals
- Ergonomy analysis
- Technical analysis
- Analysis of search engine marketing support
- Best practices summary
The main objectives of the test operation included tests of portal stability and the correction of the errors detected. We conducted functional tests and audits such as the validation of the source code of the generated pages (css, html etc), or portal load testing.
The load test (stress test) was performed twice with Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2008 built-in testing tool. The two tests used the same basic methodology, although we made modifications between them to see how they affect portal response time. The main parameters of the test were:
- Maximum User Load
- Requests/Second
- Requests Failed
- Average Response Time (second)
- Average Page Time (second)
The proposals of our expert report and the results of our tests were used in the further operation and development of the Budapest Stock Exchange portal.
The Budapest Stock Exchange was founded almost 150 years ago. Its four main activities are listing services, trading services, dissemination of market information, and product development. The institution also aims to provide the public with comprehensible information on the stock market. BSE’S yearly revenues from stock exchange activities was 3 916 250 000 HUF (appr. 15 000 000 EUR) in the year 2007.
