Tax Season is Heating Up. Is Your Financial Site Ready?

On April 16, 2007, a leading tax software company’s e-filing site suffered a meltdown so dramatic that the IRS granted users a 48-hour reprieve to get their returns filed. What will 2008 look like?

The IRS runs a private Web portal for authorized tax preparers and tax software; it does not allow citizens to file taxes directly over an IRS portal. That means that companies such as H&R Block and Intuit must be prepared for the increasingly popular e-filing process.

E-filing Catching on with Business and Personal Tax Filers

In 2007, 57 percent of all returns (nearly 80 million) were e-filed, almost a 3200 percent increase in the two decades since the program began in 1986. Last-minute e-filers in 2007 jumped 35 percent over the tax-filing deadline week in 2006. Business returns came close to doubling in a single year. In the 2006 tax year, there were 932,000 business returns coming through the registered user portal; by the end of March 2007, more than 1.5 million had been filed

If the 2007 holiday retail season is any indicator, this should be another banner year for e-filing as the number of people routinely using the Web as the medium of choice for personal and financial transactions continues to rise.

Financial Sites Also Expected to See Increased Demand

Along with the registered e-tax filing sites and the IRS.gov site, financial sites that support IRA, 401K, and other tax-advantaged retirement accounts can also expect increased activity as tax payers and their advisors make last-minute adjustments to their investments.

Plan Ahead to Handle Tax Spikes

Managing your financial site to handle this annual spike requires both advance planning and constant vigilance. In a Network World article in April of 2007, Carolyn Duffy Marsan reported that the IRS spends nine months gearing up its Web site for tax season, and that’s about right. Keynote Senior Product Manager Paul Kohler notes that there is typically a 5-7 month cycle for evaluating and implementing load testing on retail sites prior to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and that doesn’t take into account the decisions made on servers, software and carriers that come earlier in the design or upgrade of Web sites.

IRS.gov is one of the most heavily used Web sites during tax season as citizens and corporations visit the site for up-to-date tax information. The agency has a multi-year contract with Accenture to keep the site performing at adequate levels during the annual onslaught. The URL below will enable you to keep up with the site’s performance as hits increase between now and the middle of April: www.keynote.com/keynote_competitive_research/performance_indices/government_index/government_top40.html

Real-world load testing is a critical component of preparing any site for anticipated growth or spikes. It is all the more important when users are relying on a Web site for time-critical financial transactions. It is impossible to do inside-the-firewall testing that can duplicate conditions on the vast combinations of services and hardware that users will use to access the site.

The other component of optimizing your Web site performance and the user experience is to conduct regular performance monitoring over a statistically significant range of locations, service types, browsers, and hardware. Particularly during peak loads, you want to know when response times are slowing down or there are service outages so that you can take timely action to resolve the problems. In the best of all possible worlds, you want to know early enough to minimize negative user experiences.

How will tax filing and financial sites fare in 2008? Only time will tell. Keep an eye out for a Keynote update on this year’s financial sites in the May newsletter.

Is the New, Free Keynote Internet Testing Environment (KITE) Right for Your Company?

Find out how KITE slashes development and functional testing time, streamlines the transition from development to production and bridges the gap between development and production through a common language for identifying, diagnosing and correcting problems.

Internet Services Win Fans for Their Reliability

According to Andrew Rattner of the Baltimore Sun, the Internet now commands the same consumer confidence level for reliability as the old “Ma Bell”. Read Rattner’s take on how the Internet continues to grow in influence in how we shop, play and communicate.

Are You Optimized for Different Browsers?

Keynote’s blogging section includes a timely posting on the whys and wherefores of optimizing for a variety of browsers. See what Rajeev Kutty has to say and provide your own comments.

New Study Released on Quality of Retail Sites Over the Course of the 2007 Holiday Season

Keynote Competitive Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote Systems has released the final results from its U.S. Holiday Impact Study, a Web site performance monitoring study that examines the technical performance and service levels of leading retail Web sites over the course of the 2007 holiday season. This study includes over 3,000 data points, enabling insight into the root causes of performance troubles that plagued many sites’ search and check-out processes during this critical sales period.

Informative Trade Shows – Where to Go See What’s New in Web Performance

Web and mobile computing are moving at a tremendous pace. These upcoming trade shows can help you stay on top of new developments.

CTIA Wireless
April 1-3, 2008 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

If you are considering expanding into the mobile market, this is the show to see. Whether in broadband convergence, enterprise, advertising, social networking or entertainment, CTIA Wireless will have something for you. See Keynote in booth 5275. To get a free exhibit pass ($150 value), please complete registration by March 14th (promo code: WIRE08).

> More on CTIA Wireless

Web 2.0 Expo
April 23-25, 2008 at Moscone Convention Center, West Building, San Francisco.

Web 2.0 Expo is specifically designed to help teach Web 2.0 techniques and best practices to people directly involved in the design, development, engineering, marketing, and business of second-generation Internet technology. Web 2.0 Expo features in-depth profiles of the business models, development frameworks, Web operations infrastructure, design strategies, and Internet marketing that are changing the world as we know it. See Keynote in booth 300.