Why performance of mobile applications is important nowadays?
The Statistics Portal shares the results of researches, that the number of apps available for download in leading app stores is constantly increasing from year to year. Every day a lot of new applications are added to stores and each of them claims to uniqueness. Creators invest money in promotion and make effort to ensure that the application has been popular and useful for a bigger amount of users. In November 2015 there were some 1.8 million apps in Google Play alone, 200 thousand more than in July of the same year. The Apple Store, on the other hand, had gone from 800 apps in July 2008 , the month of its launch, to 1.5 million in June 2015. Apple estimates that, by June 2015, apps from the Apple App Store were downloaded 100 billion times in total. In June 2016 there were 2.2 mln applications for downloading in Google Play, not much more than in Apple Store (2 mln).
Quantity of active users of mobile enterprise applications in 2016 is over 830 million and requirements to quality of mobile application are getting higher from year to year. It is difficult to stay stable in the market and promote bad-quality mobile product in its competitive environment It is difficult to sell application that does not meet user’s expectations, product with bad performance considering quantity of active mobile users who download and open applications every day.
It is not a secret, that it is more difficult to satisfy users expectations of mobile application, than those of web application for several reasons distinguishing these two types of products. What do the users expect from the native mobile app and how much time they spend on their smartphones?!
90% of time people work with native applications and only 10% - with web. In this case we can make a conclusion, that the market of native mobile applications is wide and it will make sense to struggle for a bench on the market, but you should be attentive, because this market has some other problems.
More than 20% of downloaded applications are opened by user just once. Over 25% of users abandon the mobile app after just 3 seconds of delay. Over 48% of users are less likely to use the app again and the goal is to hold a useractive for a long term.
If you want to create a really successful app, be ready to work hard, seriously promotion and pay special attention to testing. Even a minor defect in app can nullify all your effort in development and promotion. Slow loading of pages can reject potential users, when user has installed application and has opened it at first. First impression after installation is the main one, it determines users’ loyalty to this app. In this case the indicators would be the following: speed of uploading pages and content, how fast the user can click application and find out what it offers. But if page opening takes more than 10 sec, the user will uninstall a quicker application. You can invest a lot of money in promotion of your product in stores, but it makes no sense if server responses are too long.
What does application’s performance testing include and what is its goal ?! Performance testing determines what the performance of the system under normal conditions and under the load is . Check app’s behavior in critical conditions and use for long term , check how performance changes if quantity of active users increases, if change the intensity of work, the hardware platform. Performance and loading testing means inspection of free memory space and system resources, it also shows neck application’s weak points that influence app’s work and detects dangerous memory leaks.
Specifics of high-quality performance testing:
- user authorization. It includes database work, in this case loading is approximate to reality;
- high-quality of created test scenarios,amplitudinous researching of user behaviors, several user ways on app’s pages, analysis of attendance at certain hours, etc.;
- create unique users with unique logins, passwords, IDs, it would be better if tags and searching words would be different;
- random pauses pauses time pauses between hits is bringingare approximateis bringing test execution and test result closer closer to reality use of application;
- there must be content on pages (add posts to blog, items in catalog, posts and comments in the forum, downloaded images, etc.), tests execution for app that has no content makes no sense.
In conclusion, we can notice, that great and modern design, good usability, application that is handy and easy-to-use, investments in promotion - these are not the most important things for success. Good experience of application’s work is the key indicator. This means, that performance and time of responses have a key role in creation of a successful product.
