Tingyun: Defining application performance standards helps entrepreneurs get higher angel investment

"When it comes to a team's R&D capabilities, performance is the key, and there are not many teams that meet the standards," said Wu Shichun, an angel investor who has invested in well-known domestic projects such as Changba, Shishen Yaoyao, and Wanxie Technology. "Recognition of the team's R&D capabilities is the biggest hurdle to obtaining high-value angel investment."

Solid technology and a reliable team are the foundation

If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools.

As a globally recognized industry-leading search technology company and information centralizer, Google has been able to maintain a steady and rapid development trend. In addition to its business philosophy, it is also closely related to its internal human-oriented management and strong technological innovation capabilities. With the concept of "deciphering the user's intentions and meeting the user's needs", it realizes "providing higher standards of service to all information seekers". Google has been tirelessly pursuing the pinnacle of technology, breaking through the limitations of existing technology, and providing people with fast, accurate, and easy-to-use search services anytime, anywhere. But at the same time, behind the pursuit of technology, Google still does not forget the foundation of high-quality products - performance guarantee.

The prosperity of mobile Internet has given rise to the mobile application business. In the past year, more than 600,000 apps have been launched, which means that more than 800 apps are launched every day. In such fierce competition, most apps die on the road, but there are also some that stand out. In addition to the functions and creative interactions of the product itself, its performance has become the key to survival.

It is reported that there are 107 million types of mobile application performance issues, and the reasons for their occurrence are also varied. However, the performance of an APP can be measured through five indicators: crash rate, error rate, network request response time, interactive performance, and operator network response time. This also directly reflects the R&D strength of the entrepreneurial team.

Five indicators determine whether the performance is good or not

According to the 2014 China Mobile Application Performance Management White Paper released by Tingyun, an application performance management service provider:

Mobile application crash rate standards proposed by Tingyun

1. Crash rate

Crashes are a major killer of application performance issues. They often lead to a decrease in user retention and an increase in the cost of acquiring each user, which ultimately affects the life cycle value of the product. Imagine if the life cycle value of an app is reduced due to crashes, the return on investment can be imagined. When the crash rate of iOS exceeds 8‰ and the crash rate of Android exceeds 4‰, there is a significant decline in active users, and the average crash rate throughout the year exceeds the standard value, indicating that there are generally minor hidden dangers. Only by eliminating minor hidden dangers can the performance smile standard be achieved.

Mobile application error rate standards proposed by Tingyun

2. Error rate

Mobile application errors, as the name implies, are a summary of network errors and HTTP (HTTP status codes) that occur in the production environment. Mobile application errors can cause the application page to fail to display, affecting the user experience. According to statistics, connection timeout, connection failure, illegal host and illegal URL occupy the top positions in the error breakdown ranking. Among HTTP errors, "500" ranks first with a share of 46%.

Mobile application request response time standards proposed by Tingyun

3. Application request response time

User retention rate is one of the most important key business indicators for both mobile Internet and the Internet. It directly reflects the quality of the application and its ability to retain users. When the application request response time is at different values, the application response status will be different. Monitoring the host request response time of more than 50,000 mobile applications found that when the request response time exceeds 2000ms, users begin to churn.

4. Application Interaction Performance

Slow interactive performance will directly cause users to lose patience with the application. Interface layout, view loading, stored procedures, database query, program operations, etc. are all possible causes of slow interactive performance, but they will all result in lag. According to statistics, when the interactive execution performance time of an application reaches 400ms, the application enters the stage of slight performance risk.

5. Operator network performance

With the development of 2G to 4G networks, users have put forward higher and higher requirements on the network performance of operators. When the response time of 2G network reaches 4600ms, the network is judged to have a minor hidden danger. However, when the 3G and 4G network performance of the same operator enters the state of minor hidden danger, the corresponding network response time is shortened to 1200ms and 600ms.

Products that fail to meet the smile standard are difficult to sustain

Application performance is a key factor in determining the life cycle value of a product. It can be the basis for investors to evaluate the invested team. Only products with good performance will have a good user retention rate and possible future transaction success rate.

On April 10, Apple Watch officially accepted pre-orders in nine places including the United Kingdom, the United States, mainland China, and Hong Kong. Just 10 minutes before the official pre-order started at 15:01 in the afternoon, the Apple official website App had already prompted "We will be back", which is a typical performance problem. One user joked that "Apple has become Gray Wolf as the pre-order is about to start". Apple has never lacked people to pay for it, but imagine if a small and micro start-up product cannot meet the smile standard, or even has performance problems before competing with competitors, then the limited promotion resources will be greatly wasted. The future is imaginable. Tingyun found that, especially for new products, the performance experience determines the user's acceptance. Data shows that 70% of new apps in mobile Internet do not meet the standard performance, and the current situation is very worrying.

Whether you are the CEO of a startup team or a core R&D staff, as long as you are a mobile practitioner, you need to pay more attention to product performance issues and use third-party tools to solve problems. Because only in this way can a good product stand out in the fierce competition, take the path of sustainable development, get the expected venture capital, and even go public smoothly.