About
Founded in 1999, Web Performance Inc is based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. It was founded by web technology experts who saw a growing demand for easy to use web testing software that was appropriate to use on projects of all sizes, especially during the early development stages. Web Performance Inc has been profitable since early 2000, and is not dependent on venture capital.
The catalyst for the founders came after consulting on a web-based product for a huge multinational company. Although the product was weeks away from launch, no performance testing had been done, and preliminary informal feedback from the pre-release was that the product was very slow. A survey of the existing products turned up no software that could be purchased quick enough to meet the roll-out deadline. The complexity of the software meant that the testing personnel would have to attend classes to learn how to use it, and the high cost meant that the purchase would have to be approved at the highest levels of management, all of which would take time, and would significantly delay the product launch.
The solution was to create a new type of web testing software that allows for complete and thorough testing of the performance of a web site without having to spend weeks or months developing scripts. Unfortunately for this client, the tests showed that the bottleneck was in the database API – it was single threaded, meaning only one user could access the web site at a time! In the end the entire database layer had to be rewritten, taking months and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. This situation could have been avoided if even simple performance tests had been done at the earliest stages of the product.
Web Performance Trainer™ (A Personal Trainer For Your Website) was formed out of this experience, designed to help web site development teams test performance from the minute the project is started, to after it has been deployed in the field. It was designed to require no lengthy training period, and to be available immediately with a simple download.
We are guided by the following principles:
Office software should be a pleasure to use
We believe the tools one uses every day should be a pleasure to use, and this definitely includes software. This goes beyond the usual standard of “quality,” which usually means the software doesn’t crash too often, and embraces the idea of transparency and depth. Transparency means once you get used to the software, it should be so intuitive the user doesn’t have to think about using it. Depth means that software should be easy to use, even if you don’t know much about what it does, and as you learn more about the subject, you discover more features of the program.
Developers should interact with customers
Most companies place a wall between the people who create software and the people who use the software. At WPI software developers talk directly with customers, both in the pre and post sales process, which not only benefits the customer, but greatly helps the product as well. For example, with most products when customers have the same question over and over again it gets placed in a FAQ, and anyone asking the question gets a canned response from a technical support person with no real power to make improvements.
Information should be shared
Many companies selling software operate by hiding information, giving access only to their customers. What type of information is hidden? Tutorials, feature lists, bug lists, price lists, all are handed out only to those who can pass the screening test of the sales office. We believe the web itself is proof of the benefits of open access to information, and have built this web site accordingly.
