Mastering App Speed: Developer Strategies For Success
Did you know that about 53% of people will leave a website if it does not load for three seconds? That three seconds mean a lot for web and app developers, as losing visitors means losing potential customers, engagements, and revenues.
In applications, first impressions do last. You don’t want to let users wait for an image to load or for a navigation button to function.
As a developer, tools for mobile app performance testing might do you some good, but mastering the strategies for your app to reach the necessary speed to maintain and retain visitors and users is an integral factor for your app to succeed.
But app speed is more than its loading time, to help you achieve the goal of mastering app speed, here are some strategies you can follow that will ensure success:
Performance Profiling and Monitoring
First things first, you have to identify the bottlenecks and areas your app needs to improve in order to master the app speed. This is called performance profiling and monitoring through various performance testing tools and techniques.
By gaining some insights into your app’s performance, you can make informed decisions on optimizing speed efforts.
- Maximizing profiling tools. Profiling tools, such as Android Profiler, Xcode Instruments, or web browser developer tools, can help you analyze the app’s CPU and memory usage, network requests, and more. These tools can definitely help you identify performance issues.
- Real-time monitoring. As the app developer, you can implement real-time performance monitoring to track vital speed metrics, such as response times, error rates, and resource utilization. New Relic, Datadog, and custom telemetry systems are some tools you can maximize to gather and visualize performance data.
- User experience monitoring. Aside from real-time performance, you should also monitor user experience data, such as page load times, transaction durations, and interaction responsiveness. These parameters can provide valuable insights into how users perceive your app’s speed.
Code and Assets Optimization
Code optimization is one of the keys to improving the speed and efficiency of your app. In optimizing code, you should prevent redundant codes, such as loops, calculations, and requests, that can consume more memory and slow down your app.
Moreover, using tools like magnifiers, compressors, or resizers can help reduce the file size and quality of your app’s assets, which include images, fonts, and sounds, without compromising their appearance and functionality.
Efficient Management of Network Communication
Network requests are usually one of the obstructions in app performance. Thus, as an app developer, you must efficiently manage network communication to enhance app speed. Here are three ways to manage network communication efficiently:
- Combine multiple requests into one through the use of resource bundling or leverage HTTP/2 multiplexing.
- Maximize Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to serve static assets from edge servers geographically closer to users, reducing latency.
- Whenever possible, load resources asynchronously to prevent blocking the main thread and provide a more responsive user interface.
Data Handling
Your app handles data, which can significantly impact its speed. It should handle the data both on the client side and server side efficiently through these strategies:
- Data Compression. Before transmissions, you can compress data to reduce bandwidth usage and improve response time. Formats like JSON or Protocol Buffers ensure efficient data serialization.
- Lazy Loading. This refers to only loading the required assets of a page while deferring the loading of the non-essential assets until they are needed. It can speed up initial page loading and conserve resources.
- Caching. It refers to the process of storing data in a cache, which is a temporary storage area that allows faster access to data. This technique generally improves app and system performance.
Final Thoughts
The vital three seconds of your app’s life rely on how you can optimize your app’s speed efforts. Lost users mean lost opportunities.
To master the app speed, you should conduct performance profiling and monitoring, optimize code and assets, manage networks efficiently, and handle data effectively. These are just some strategies you can learn and apply to ensure your app’s success in terms of speed.
With a competitive market in front of you, mastering app speed is not an option but a necessity.
