In today’s competitive mobile marketplace, application performance can make or break an app. If your app doesn’t perform well, customers will simply leave it behind in favor of competing apps that do perform well, leading to poor reviews and fewer downloads overall.
So if you want to improve the performance of your mobile app, consider trying some of these six ways to instantly improve your mobile app’s performance.
1) Reduce your app’s download size
Reducing your app’s download size is probably one of the easiest ways to improve application performance and at scale, a few megabytes here and there can make a big difference.
This is usually accomplished by reducing codebase size or reducing asset sizes. Codebase size reduction is easily done by either removing unused code or using better compression algorithms on existing code (also look into tree shaking).
Reduce assets, especially images, through compression algorithms like JPEG 2000. Make sure that you account for dynamic content when optimizing image sizes as these will increase on every update without fail.
2) Shorten load times for all platforms
For many users, speed is paramount. If your mobile app takes too long to load, there’s a good chance that they’ll just click away before it even finishes loading. Shortening load times on both iOS and Android can dramatically improve your app’s performance – but it doesn’t have to be difficult.
You can reduce your overall load time by optimizing images and other resources so that they load quicker across different platforms; caching parts of your site so that users don’t have to reload them every time they visit; and optimizing network calls, among other solutions.
A short app generally loads faster than a long one (it just makes sense), but don’t sacrifice features or add in unnecessary clutter just for a few more seconds saved.
3) Update, update, update
Make sure your app is updated. When you push a new update to your app, you have an opportunity to optimize performance and quality of service for your users—go ahead and take advantage of it.
There’s no time like now for regular updates: there’s a lot that can be done behind-the-scenes, from bug fixes and security enhancements to quick product improvements.
In some cases, what might seem like simple changes can actually help enhance application performance significantly—for example, by updating your database schema or using more secure connection strings in software code.
4) Watch battery usage and resource consumption
When developing a mobile app, especially when writing a new application from scratch, you should pay careful attention to resources used by your app.
If your app drains battery life quickly or uses up more resources than it should, you could be in danger of getting bad reviews from your users and even de-ranking on Google Play or Apple’s App Store.
Luckily, there are some fairly simple things that developers can do to help ensure their apps are as energy efficient as possible. Here are a few tips: Keep an eye on power consumption , especially if you’re building an app that runs constantly.
5) Consider a progressive web app
While you may know that it’s essential for your app to have a snappy user experience, did you know there’s an alternative to native apps?
A progressive web app is simply a website that feels and performs like an app. Google measures it in terms of app install banner density, load time, interactivity and performance on feature phones.
And unlike native mobile apps, PWAs have lower bounce rates and longer average visit duration because they can take advantage of technologies like push notifications without having to go through app stores.
To use these standards effectively requires testing and measuring — a perfect example of how application performance influences success.
6) Add offline capabilities
Users want applications that work whether or not they’re connected to a network. Add mobile application performance and offline capabilities using Parse.
With its cloud database platform, you can use a REST API or SDKs for iOS, Android, and Unity 3D games to store user data on your server instead of storing it directly on each device.
Because there’s no need for an Internet connection to access it, stored data will be available wherever users are — even when they are offline. This is especially important if you plan to provide location-based services such as GPS navigation, check-in services or in-store information such as a restaurant menu.
In fact, some industries require their applications to be always-on in order to comply with government regulations (such as healthcare). If users won’t get frustrated with sluggish performance while they wait for new content to load while disconnected from a network — and if your application isn’t required by law to operate 24/7/365.
consider going offline by adding mobile application performance and offline capabilities using Parse. This will also reduce strain on your servers since all data is being cached locally rather than sent over an internet connection.