How Mobile App Performance can Enhance your User Experience?

Posted by Sphinx Solution on March 22nd, 2023

A fast mobile experience can attract customers or users and keep them glued to mobile apps. Given the perceived effort and cost behind building it, a lot of businesses ask how to measure the app performance and how to grow it. This blog revolves around those queries.

As a business, we know you are always looking for ways to increase your customer base. Your business mobile app/ enterprise mobile app can help you to grow. Mobile apps have become an effective marketing and operation tool which can streamline online purchase to easy-to-access information.

By 2022, annual mobile app downloads are projected to reach 258 billion. It’s a 45% increase from 178 billion downloads in 2017.

Mobile apps are for everyone, be it enterprises or small & mid-size businesses. As business app downloads are predicted to grow at 16% in the coming five years, it’s high time that you strategize the app performance. Businesses to redefine its plan, target & performance metric to achieve the best results.

It is seen that a certain percentage of mobile applications are usually uninstalled within a week. According to a survey from Jan-July 2018, the average mobile app uninstalled rate is 5.8 days considering different sectors.

There are several reasons for app abandon like the user phone’s storage is too full, buggy app, or it consumes too much phone battery. Also, some apps can lose their importance because of redundant features.

Thus, measuring mobile app performance measures will help you to understand the app usage trend, how much the app consumes phone memory, battery and in case of any animation or game, how smooth it runs.

1. User Satisfaction or Apdex Score

Apdex is an industry-standard to measure user’s satisfaction with the response time of web applications and services. It works with a specific goal for how long a particular web request or transaction is completed. It helps to understand the user experience that can be interpreted on a scale ranging from excellent to unacceptable. Apdex score is usually used to rate everything from application response time to time required to repair any process.

However, nowadays, there are some tools that automatically track satisfaction for your application and web requests.

2. Average Response Time

It refers to the time Application Server takes to return the results of a request to the user. Average response time is still one of the preferred ways to track the overall performance of the app. Along with the Apdex scores, you have to keep track of the response time.

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3. Error rates

Any error is terrible, it undermines the app reputation. It’s the last thing any business can show to their audience. So, controlling and continuously monitoring the error rate is vital for any mobile app or web application.

Implementing error tracking from the start of the development cycle will save time and effort. It is for both frontend and backend error tracking. You can use automated testing tools or get help from a manual testing team.

4. Application instances

When your app scales up and down in the cloud, it is crucial to be aware of how many server instances are running. Often auto-scaling ensure your app scales to meet demand on heavy traffic hour and saves the expenses. To save your hosting bill, you must keep an eye during the peak time.

5. Request rate

An increase and decrease in traffic affect all other application performance metrics. Hence, the request rate can be tied up to other app performance metrics to understand the importance of how your application scales.

Monitoring the request rate will let you understand the motion of the traffic. For example, a busy API, suddenly stop receiving traffic is a matter of concern.

6. Server CPU usage

Checking the CPU usage of your server and applications is a critical thing. In case the CPU usage is extremely high, it can have application performance problems. All server and application monitoring tools can track CPU usage and offer monitoring alerts. Tracking both per server wise and also aggregate across all independently deployed instances of your app is vital.

7. Application availability

Checking and measuring the online availability of your app is one of the key metrics. Most companies use this to measure the operation for service level agreements. A simple schedule HTTP check will help you to monitor application availability. There are tools that can help you to monitor response time and other related stuff.

8. Garbage collection

When your application is written in .NET, C#, or other programming languages, it uses garbage collection. During this garbage collection, processes are suspended and it can use a lot of CPU. Though it’s not one of the major things to check, you should be aware of its hidden performance problem. Also, there are tools that can help you to keep an eye on it.

Must Read: How to Maximize UX of your Mobile App?

Top 6 KPIs to consider for your mobile app

There are several metrics under the above listed three categories; however, here we are discussing the most needed few for your mobile app.

There are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring your app performance for almost everything. However, some are important for your app forever. Here is the list of KPIs to the lookout-

Download

Downloads are often starting metrics for most developers. As everything begins with app downloads, you have to pay special attention to it. With new downloads, you can track new sign-ups and accordingly analyze the user category. It is the foundation for other KPIs. However, if your app downloads are low, you need to work on icons, descriptions, screenshots and optimize according to app store norms.

Loading Time

The recommended loading time is under three seconds. If any business can’t optimize the mobile app to 3 seconds of loading time, they need to control the time within 7-8 seconds, at least. Mobile users usually seek fast loading and fast information gaining. If they are not happy with the app, they’ll either abandon it or uninstall it.

Customer Life Value

The lifetime value is an estimate of the average revenue that a customer can generate throughout their lifespan as a user. The worth of the users helps to determine economic decisions for businesses, which includes marketing, budget, resources, and profitability & forecasting. It is both an everyday tool and a pillar for any long-term growth strategy.

For example, for an average user spends Rs 500 on your mobile platform. And if the average user makes three purchases in a year and retains, on average, for two years with the business. The CLTV of the consumer will be Rs 3000. 

Any old and long-time customer always tend to spend more than any other users. Such users with good LTV must be your priority.

User Growth Rate

By 2022, annual mobile downloads are expected to reach 258 billion.

The user growth rate is one of the vital KPIs to consider. It indicates how much people are aware of your mobile app. The user growth rate also depends on how well you advertised and ran a campaign to grab the attention of new downloads.

App Open Rate

The number of times that a user opens up your mobile app is a vital indicator of its usefulness. The more the user open the apps, it creates more session. The business needs to keep the app session intervals shorter. Session is one of the necessary measurements for app engagement. The more the sessions, the more sticky user you get for your app.

App Retention Rate

Retention rate is the ratio of app users that return to your app within 30 days. This metric helps to understand your app’s real value to the users and how well it is performing over time. Due to an increase in competition, retaining users is a challenge. However, you can calculate the retention rate for your mobile app on a timely basis. To make your app pull crowd, always consider ways to tailor your UX. Customize messages and prioritize customer lifetime value to make fruitful strategies.

How to be one step ahead of your competitors?

Performance depends upon multiple factors; however, here are some changes which you need to make your user experience better.

Optimizing images

Resizing and compressing images for your mobile app will help to avoid the unnecessary amount of bandwidth and make the app or websites feel lighter. There are several sites and tools to make the images a good fit for your app. You need to reduce the size of the images without affecting the image quality. This will have a positive impact on the page load speeds and user experience of the visitors.

“According to HTTP Archive, on an average, around 64% of a website’s weight is comprised of images.”

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Native experience

Native apps are robust than any other software program. It is specially designed for the OS of iOS & Android and is installed locally. For example, developers use Objective-C or Swift for iOS applications, while they write Android-native apps in Java. Hence, native apps are faster, intuitive for users and can be installed locally.

Cut down some features

Some business thinks that offering users with lots of features can attract them, but it can make them confused. Too many features can make your app clutter and hence it can slow down the speed. You need to find the most necessary features that are vital for your users and focus on those first.  

Front and backend data

Front-end performance metrics like application response time, screen rendering, app crashes are some of the most vital things to check. However, measuring frontend performance is not all to make your app stand out. You need to offer the same attention to backend data performance as well. Performance metrics like server response time, HTTP calls, connection times and other related factors help to understand the backend performance.

Developing a mobile strategy has never been such vital to companies than today. The need to go to mobile solutions is greater than ever. Taking everything into account, you need to act on the insights and analytics you get from KPIs. Mobile app metrics are crucial for any business application. Do a great job of branding your business and try to create an engaged community of loyal users.