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Ronak Patel for Aglowid IT Solutions

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Top Handy Tips & Tools To Boost Mobile App Performance

Business and technology development run parallel to each other. As technology advances, businesses and entrepreneurs need to adopt the latest technological development. More than that, the mobile application is an increasing trend for industry and having a productive and scalable application is the need of time.

Tips to Improve Mobile App Performance

The study shows that mobile apps account for nearly half of the internet traffic across the world.

According to recent data, 89% of Smartphone users spend their most of time using applications while application delivers 54% of all transactions on mobile.

Having just an ordinary business application cannot solve issues and add growth to your business. Your application should have the following features and functionalities;

  • High-performance mobile app
  • Excellent user experience
  • Loaded with exciting and easy-to-use features
  • Optimization for personalized user experience

Remember: Readers never waste their smartphones’ RAM and ROM for your application if you are not providing anything interesting enough content to have.

Poor Mobile App Performance Causes Heavy Loss

One minor error in your mobile app can cause some serious trouble for your company or enterprise. As per my personal experience, I often book flight tickets, order food and even buy cinema tickets through my mobile phone. Once, I was ordering food from nearby restaurants using the application. It went well with two steps, but after that, it took me 5 minutes to get the next, and when I pushed on final check out button, it ate away almost all my time. In fact, the amount from wallet deducted but I end up with failed order. Everything happened due to the sluggishness of the app.

Rest you know what I could have done with the application. Yes, I talked to customer care, got my money refunded and uninstalled the app soon after. There are many like me who do the same thing if they face similar or any sluggish situation. In such a case, it can cause severe damage to your business or end a relationship with potential customers.

Reasons Company Focuses on Mobile App Performance

Even though 35% of businesses still don’t use applications, around 96% business that uses application says that the performance of the mobile application is significant. Even users want to install the apps that are fast and give seamless user-experience.

Users Demand High-Speed Application:

Time has changed and we are going through a high-speed internet era, and people are accustomed to fast internet surfing. So, if your application does not load content fast, then it will create noise, or you can say that it may irritate your users. According to some studies, most customers (around 47%) want to get content uploaded within two seconds while many among them who say that it should load instantly.

Users Swing Fast:

Users are, and they check everything before they install the application. According to some developers, the rating of an application is very important. They said that a 0.1% decline in rating reduced 5% downloads while a 0.3% decline in rating dropped 60% downloads. That’s a huge gap.

Performance is Driving Factor:

Performance drives sales and sales earn you more profit. The bottom line is that the high-performance application goes well in terms of attracting customer and provides them with the excellent user experience. You cannot win the business battle unless your medium is faultless. The more smooth services it offers to your users, the best it is for your business to achieve goals.

Mobile App Performance at Glance

Performance of mobile applications is the first thing that impresses the users by providing the best user experience. Your services and products come at the end of everything. First, it is the performance of the app that matters. That means the quality of the application is defined as the way it behaves -how much time it takes to load the content. If it is slow and takes time load content or crashes time and time again, you are not doing any justice with your business.

Besides, there are some other factors such as;

  • Device (users use the app in)
  • Network
  • The server
  • App types (whether the app is native or hybrid)

Device:

When it comes to app performance, device, in which the app is installed, matters. For example, if you are using PUBG in the low graded phone, then you cannot expect any performance of the application. Besides, there are so many things such as Device type, Memory, Processor, Battery, app types

Network:

Network is the most important thing that a developer needs to keep in mind while developing an application. For example,

Jitter:

If there is a connectionless network, then it creates jitter, and the mobile app has to be capable enough to handle this.

Pocket Loss:

If the network is not smooth, the requested data may not load properly, and it will create the noise. It would be better if you display the message correctly and prompt users to “Try again”.

Network Speed:

The app must comply with network speed. Developers need to check the speed of the applications on various networks such as 2G, 3G, and 4G.

Note: Device and Network are much related to end users. But, as developers, you need to ensure that the application runs smoothly across all devices and networks.

Server/Programming:

Server and app development is the two core thing that a developer has to be focused upon. Application performance entirely depends on its overall development style. Here are some of the top things that decide the performance of your application.

App Development:

App development does matter performance. For example, the framework you choose ensures the performance. There are some highly preferable frameworks such React Native, Ionic, Flutter, etc. for a cross-platform that give quality user experience.

Code Quality:

The quality of code refers to the coding technique that a developer applies while developing an application. We have explained about this segment in details in the following paragraphs.

Testing:

Developers need to run testing to check performance, quality of the application, limit, capability, scalability, and compatibility.

App Type:

App type refers to whether the application is native or hybrid. They are also responsible for the performance of the application. We explained everything in the following paragraphs. We hope you would find them useful.

Tips to Enhance Mobile App Performance

Well, we have talked about all aspects of mobile applications and we you would have a clear understanding of how important it is to have a high-quality app. In the following paragraphs, we’ll discuss that as a developer or entrepreneur what the ways to enhance the performance of applications are. The quality application is worthwhile for your business.

Following are the tips to enhance the mobile app performance;

  1. Cache Images
  2. Resize Images
  3. Re-use Templates, Reduce HTTP Requests
  4. Use Loading Validations
  5. Lazy Loading
  6. Offline Mode
  7. Consider APM in Place
  8. Clean and Crisp Coding
  9. Test Application
  10. Selection of Tools for Performance Tuning
Mobile App performance Tips

Cache Images:

Computer, generally, stores temporary files or recently used information in memory. It can be anything such as images, web pages, temp files, etc. They are useful to some extent as you get rapid access to the page. You can access file flawlessly. For the internet, downloading additional information, data and image will take time while in case of a cached image, it will load instantly. So, cache your image and get the best performance of your application.

Resize Images:

Minimizing images size in bytes can significantly enhance the speed and performance of applications. But, when I call it minimizing size, it does not mean that minimizing the quality of applications. You can use online compressor tool that minimizes the size of the image without degrading its quality.

Besides, you can resize the image using Adobe Photoshop. At the same time, there are some top tools to reduce the image size without affecting the quality of image. You can pick any that you like using the most. However, we preferably use…….

Re-use Templates, Reduce HTTP Requests:

Reusing templates can slow down your applications. The solution is straightforward and that is to reuse the templates and use fewer templates as much as possible. At the same time, the less HTTP request required, the higher the performance of the apps. The HTTP request is used to fetch the resources from each page and the step is done to simplify things for your app.

The bottom line is you need to ensure that your application is reusing already loaded templates to provide greater user-experience.

Use Loading Validations:

Content of the app should load faster and it should be such a way that users would perceive it more quickly. Generally, if your app loads content in 5 seconds, then users will perceive it as 20 seconds. So, make sure that your app gives good perception. App loading time does matter and when you are capable of providing your users’ enhanced performance, then you should try every possible means to do it. Here’re some of the top tips to boost performance using loading validations.

  • Use loading validations to minimize loading data
  • Save time by preventing unnecessary data to get loaded
  • Reduces pre-load content

More than that, performance optimization such as ensuring that your application is programmed with lazy loading, pre-load image in JS and CSS that help in reducing overall loading time.

Lazy Loading:

It is something to help the user see the data or content instantly. It loads only the live page content. You can also do it manually. If your app needs a large size data, then you should not let the user wait while it loads the entire content altogether. Directly, load only the required material or material, and this will be possible through “splitting up the assemblies”.

More Views, More Drawing: When you open an app and if it starts loading all contents together that means it is going to make CPU and memory overhead. Lazy loading, on the other hand, enables UITableView and UICollectionView that allows the application to create the views that needed.

When you scroll the view, then it starts loading the rest content. That helps you devise work spending less CUP power and also enhances mobile performance.

Offline Mode:

PWA (Progressive Web Application) is in trend now that gives users seamless performance. Users can use PWA application even offline. Besides, sometimes connection lost when the users are in the middle of completing the action (it could be anything such checkout process, selecting goods, filing online form, booking tickets, or ordering food from a restaurant). There has to be an option that would provide or facilitate users to save the data for later use. Let’s explore the offline mode benefits through points;

  • Offline mode is essential if users occur with a network error
  • Offline mode allows users to store data if the connection is lost in between
  • They can continue when the connection is restored

Consider APM in Place:

APM refers to Application Performance Monitoring, and it helps to manage applications by detecting the deep level performance issues. You can also diagnose the app using APM. It works two ways: first, it monitors the average load times of data for users and second it measures computational resources that app uses to load. Let’s elaborate more here in points.

  • APM looks after delivery of application apart from maintenance
  • APM quickly spots if anything hampering the performance of the app
  • It ensures that the app’s load time is smooth
  • APM perform an overall task to manage and monitor the app

Clean and Crisp Coding:

Coding of an application is very integral as it decides how your app will perform when implemented. So, you need to plan how you code and which framework you choose. Clean coding is significant as it eliminates redundant hierarchical elements and that results in the high performance of the applications. You have plenty of benefits of clean coding. One of the most significant benefits of clean coding is that any developers can redevelop it in the future. Besides, it removes the dependency. Let’s check out benefits in points.

Clean and crisp coding make-

  • App faster
  • Only required data caching
  • Minimal memory footprints
  • Application launch faster while establishing asynchronous calls for network
  • Application performance more quickly by cutting down excessive resources consumption by CPU/Network
  • Optimization for security requirements and managing app permissions

Test Application:

Before you release the application online for users, make sure that you have tested the app and undergone all sorts of examinations. Don’t wait to complete the development process to begin testing of the application. You can apply test-as-you-go procedure if bugs and performance issues are not complicated or more comfortable to fix.

Testing of an application is significant as the testing will define all efforts that you have put in the development of the application. Here’re some useful guides for testing of the app.

Testing isn’t easy at all. You are supposed to go through many procedures to execute successful testing. Here’s the detail;

The key challenges faced by developers during Performance Testing

  • Organizing a good testing environment
  • Having all tools, mobile platforms, and their operating systems
  • Creating Network connectivity and testing on different devices constraints
  • Judging device compliance

Selection of Mobile App Tools for Performance Tuning:

You can find plenty of tools to execute mobile app performance. However, select the tool that offers ease testing applications. The tool must be capable enough to test app performance including security vulnerabilities, features, and functionalities.

Top Mobile App Performance Testing Tools

No doubt, you can find plenty of mobile app testing tools, but they vary depending on the mobile app platforms or Mobile OS.

How to Increase Android App Performance?

For Android testing, you can use the following testing tools.

Robotium:

It is very similar to Selenium that commonly every developer is using for web app testing. It allows developers to test applications using various steps that are needed for complete testing.

Monkey Runner:

If you want to test on real devices, then Monkey Runner is the best option as it can run a test on the devices connected to a PC, emulators. The tool is equipped with an API that enables the tool to have control devices outside of Android code.

How to Increase iOS App Performance?

Following are the tools for iOS platforms/

Automator (Mac):

Developed by Apple for OS X, the Automator simplifies testing and saves time and efforts that developers do manually. It automates repetitive tasks in batches and runs testing flawlessly.

Instrument:

Instruments is an inbuilt tools comes with Xcode IDE which provides a good development and testing ambiance to enhance the profiling and performance of the applications

Set up Mobile App Performance Test Environment

Once the mobile app development is over, you need to set up a testing environment that also involves plenty of things. For example;

To set up mobile app performance testing environment, you need to-

  • Creating a test setup including emulators or simulators
  • Understanding app
  • Identifying various OS

Mobile App Performance Testing Checklist

When it comes to performance testing, there are many things that you need to keep in mind. Here’s the checklist;

  • How much time it consumes to response to different networks
  • How much space the app consume of the RAM
  • Ensure it runs smoothly on various network conditions (2G, 3G, and 4G)
  • The application should not get crashed
  • Ensure that the app performs well when connected to Wi-Fi or uses data
  • Check load time and make sure that it loads content fast
  • Ensure scalability of application and its limit

Conclusion

When it comes to business success, nobody can tell you the magic number to gain. It is you and only your business ideas that can lead to business growth. How well you understand your users’ behavior matters the most. Most importantly, you must examine all the resources and communication channel if they smooth or creating any noise. Your business application is one of the most effective channels.

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