A developer's guide to optimizing mobile app performance

【51CTO.com Quick Translation】

Nowadays, with the popularity of smartphones, various applications installed on mobile phones have made people's daily lives and various activities easier. From booking a taxi for your own travel to ordering meals at your favorite restaurant, mobile applications have brought us unprecedented convenience and efficiency. It is difficult for us to imagine whether we can persist in not touching our phones or opening any mobile applications in a day.

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Mobile application optimization is imperative

Since people often need to use various mobile applications and expect them to achieve functions that could not be completed quickly in the past, the overall performance of the application is crucial. Developers in various fields have been continuously focusing on the continuous optimization and improvement of the running performance and response efficiency of various applications.

Imagine a user excitedly picks up his phone, enters a food ordering app, puts "fried chicken + beer" into the shopping cart, but finds that the app takes a long time to complete the payment action, or even fails to place the order. Then, will he use this app next time? Will he keep this app on his phone? It can be seen that the user's experience with mobile applications is directly linked to user retention.

In addition to providing basic functions, easy-to-use navigation bars and coordinated and friendly interfaces can also smoothly connect users with back-end service providers, allowing users to obtain the information and results they need in a timely manner. It can be seen that mobile applications also play a good bridging role.

So, what factors will affect our optimization of mobile applications? In general, there are three aspects that developers should pay close attention to:

1. User expectations

We have always needed to realize that developing mobile applications is not just about showing off technology, but we must fully consider the customers we serve. However, as the saying goes, knowing is easier said than done. Throughout the development process, we do need to consider users as the main factor affecting the development process. For example, when using mobile applications, people often hope that the user interface is not only easy to use, but also stable and has no crashes. This is our "original intention" in developing mobile applications.

2. Adaptability

The essence of mobile applications is to facilitate users to use fragmented time to interact with service providers and obtain corresponding services anytime and anywhere. However, the mobile cellular network where the mobile phone is located is not as reliable as Wi-Fi or wired network after all. The coverage range and frequency bands in different regions are also different. Therefore, as developers, we must ensure that our applications can adapt to different network types and states, especially when the network connection is lost, and can cache user data so that they can continue to use the application to complete various local operations on the mobile terminal.

3. Avoid user churn

As mentioned above, if users are not satisfied with their experience when using your mobile app, they will not become "return customers". Therefore, during development, it is more direct and comprehensive to keep communicating with users and obtain feedback from them in a timely manner through testing and trial, rather than simply getting "one-sided words" from forum communities.

So, how can we optimize the performance of mobile applications to play the role of business platforms and allow users to get the services they need with just a few taps?

1. Focus on the user interface

The quality of the user interface actually has little to do with the display effect of the application on the mobile terminal screen. It mainly depends on the convenience of the user when using it. Earlier, we mentioned communicating with users to understand their expectations for the application to be developed, especially the layout of the navigation bar, menu bar, and buttons for one-handed operation in the interface.

Just think about it: when the user can’t even find a button or function easily, will he still give your design and development a thumbs up? It can be seen that focusing on the user interface and making it easy to use is the top priority of mobile app developers and optimizers.

2. Improve application availability

As mentioned above, most mobile application usage scenarios occur during user actions. Therefore, the availability of mobile networks is often not fully guaranteed. Imagine that a user is using your application in an area with poor network coverage and encounters certain obstacles. At this time, there is an application on his phone that can achieve similar functions (such as another e-commerce platform). Then as long as the offline performance of that application is better than the one you developed, the user will definitely switch to it without hesitation, even though the other party may have a slightly higher service price.

Therefore, as a developer, you not only need to ensure that the mobile applications you develop can run smoothly on 3G, 4G, and 5G networks, but also be able to continue to provide local cache services when the network is poor.

3. Use analytical tools for monitoring

It is very important to keep consistency checks when interacting with users. Due to the differences in brands, systems (such as iOS or Android), and types of mobile devices used by users, the application you developed may have different display effects, or even fail to run or be used normally. At this time, you need to use some appropriate analysis tools to monitor and track the various services and functional failures of the application to discover the deep reasons that directly or indirectly affect the normal display, operation, or even crash of the program. On this basis, the entire team can modify the program in time through code debugging, and then solve such compatibility issues before the application is released.

4. Testing and Trial

For mobile applications that have completed development tasks, we need to conduct functional and performance testing and trials before delivering or distributing them to end users.

Since mobile devices bring more uncertainties, we need to adopt more stringent standards to conduct testing in order to evaluate the availability and controllability of the target application in the most difficult or "worst" environment. Of course, you can also "shift left" such testing to the development iteration stage based on the DevOps concept and continue to conduct blue-green testing.

5. Check the application's operating efficiency

On users' smartphones, different versions of various applications often run at the same time. Therefore, developers need to check the running efficiency to ensure that it is compatible with various other application tools and devices. In addition, we also need to consider whether the mobile device memory used by the application will be released in time when the application runs for a long time, as well as the consumption of the mobile phone battery.

Summarize

The above five suggestions may seem ordinary, but they are often user concerns that we as developers tend to overlook. I hope that you and your team members can always practice the above suggestions when developing complex mobile applications, and develop and optimize software products that are independent of mobile devices and can satisfy users.

A Developer's Guide to Optimizing Mobile App Performance

[Translated by 51CTO. Please indicate the original translator and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]