6 Performance Optimisation Techniques for Mobile Apps

There’s a vast range of apps in smartphone app markets meant to serve a specific purpose, whether for entertainment or improved quality of life. 

If you’re in the app development space, you’re likely attuned to how cutthroat the competition can be. Delivering an application that falls short of a customer’s expectations can quickly result in app abandonment. 

Having said that, there are many reasons why a user may abandon an app. One common reason is app inefficiencies. If an app loads too slowly, drains the phone battery too quickly or freezes a lot, this can be a frustrating experience for the users.

It’s in your best interest, as an app creator, to continuously roll out updates to optimise your mobile app’s efficiency. The right optimisation techniques can make your app smoother and faster—which can make for a more satisfying experience for your users.

If you’re currently wrangling with how to optimise your app’s performance, take a look at six of these optimisation strategies to make your app smoother and better over time.

Let’s jump right into it!

Establish App KPIs and Stick to Them

As an app developer, you need to create a systematic process that you and your team can follow through to ensure optimal app performance. 

Running a successful app is essentially the equivalent of running a successful business. You need to understand every aspect of the app and be closely in touch with the customer’s experience. An effective way to quantify that is by laying out key performance indicators—or KPIs for short.

These KPIs are analytics tools that help monitor various processes in your app, such as load time, crash rate, battery consumption over time, and API response time. They can also detect user behaviour like retention rate, app abandonment, and daily active users.

Before launching your app, you should ideally have created quantifiable milestones and goals you intend to reach by a specific timeline. This helps you manage your app’s growth more sustainably and reliably and also provides structure to your app’s development goals.

When your app has a user base, track important KPIs using dedicated app analytics tools like Google Analytics for Apps or Firebase Analytics. These tools can reveal whether your app is falling behind in certain departments or meeting company expectations.

If certain KPIs, like a low daily active user rate, indicate a need for improvement, you can focus on that metric and develop specific strategies to boost performance in that area. 

By approaching app improvement and optimisation in this manner, you can make resource allocation more efficient and increase your chances of targeting problems specifically and addressing them optimally.

Compress App Size

If your app’s size takes up a large amount of storage space, this can reduce the likelihood of you attracting a loyal user base for your product. 

Users who are low on storage space may initiate a phone cleanup and delete unnecessary apps—and if yours is anything less than useful for their lives—they’d be quick to abandon your app and uninstall it to make room.

On top of that, an app with a large size also tends to be unoptimised and inefficient. They take longer to load, crash often and have sluggish performance. They could also drain the phone’s battery more quickly and overheat. This can make it frustrating to use for the average user.

An effective fix for this is by implementing a plan to reduce the app’s size—and you can employ various strategies to achieve this. 

For instance, you can compress assets using formats like HEVC and WebP, or by making scalable vector images for UI elements. You can look into your code and remove unnecessary parts of it. You can also make your app load assets as needed, a term known as lazy loading.

Leveraging cloud services can also help remove the need for your app to store a lot of data locally. In any case, having a lean app can make it faster, more efficient, and more enjoyable for your users. In turn, this can make the user experience more enjoyable.

Implement Caching

Another way to optimise your app’s performance is by locally storing data—or caching in short. While this may seem counterintuitive to the previous point, this method can be effective for quickly retrieving files instead of inputting them manually or accessing them online.

There are different caching strategies developers can consider to improve their app’s performance. Memory caching stores data in the phone’s RAM; disk caching saves persistent data like JSON files and images; network response caching reduces bandwidth by storing API results offline. If you are in US and if you lack the technical skills to implement these features on your own, you can consult with experts in app development with PixelForce. In Australia, you can always contact app development with EB Pearls. 

App developers can use caching libraries like Glide to efficiently manage their resources and make their apps perform more efficiently. Room for Android or Core Data for iOS also helps a tonne by providing efficient local database management frameworks. 

By implementing smart caching techniques, developers can make their apps better by slowing down battery consumption and optimising resource consumption—making the app run better across most smartphone devices.

Optimise Resource Consumption Usage

A common denominator among unoptimised apps is excessive background processes and resource consumption. 

Unoptimised applications can become incredibly slow or consume too many system resources to the point that it makes the app borderline unusable. It can even create problems even after you’re done using the app and if your home screen or on another application. If your app suffers the same problem, then optimisation work needs to be done to make it run better.

The first thing to do is to minimise your app’s background usage. Look at the background activity that your app does and reduce any unnecessary activities. Consider implementing push-based updates instead of continuous background rolling to ensure that your app is not constantly operating and slowing down your user’s device.

Then look at how your app consumes resources while active. If it’s excessive, batch API requests to prevent having too many ongoing ones at once. Render UI only when necessary, and use lightweight data structures wherever possible.

By streamlining resource consumption, your app can run more quickly while preserving a decent battery life. This can keep users happy and willing to continue using your app for the long haul.

Diagnose and Minimise App Crashes

App crashes can be a frustrating experience for users, leading them to review your app negatively or uninstalling it if happens frequently enough. If your app constantly crashes during testing or according to customer reviews, prioritise identifying root causes and implementing proactive fixes.

The aforementioned Firebase analytics tool has a crash-based analytics feature that can help you track crashes in real time. Use it to identify crashes and the likely reason behind them. This can make it easier for you to diagnose the problem and create a tailor-made solution to resolve it.

Besides relying on crash reports, you should also rigorously test your app across different devices and versions to ensure that it’s smooth and operational. Find edge cases and patch them before a user does.

Typically, common causes for crashes include failed API calls or memory leaks. Ensure that you have a solution in place for these problems (retry logic, using weak references, API batching, etc.) to ensure that your app is stable and performs optimally for users. 

Gather and Analyse User Feedback

Refining an app is tough work, and many app performance issues likely slip under the radar for you and your team. To ensure that you’re always on top of internal app problems, create a feedback form for users to lay out their honest thoughts about the app.

In-app surveys are common ways to gather and collect user feedback about the app. You can push these surveys when there’s a “break” in the app or after a certain amount of time—your choice. You can also look into the reviews in app stores and review websites and note down any trends or feature requests listed there.

Once feedback is collected, you should note the common concerns and focus on implementing them whenever you find it optimal for your team. By getting crucial feedback from your customers, you can build a user base that will engage with you and remain loyal to your app.

All the best in optimising your app’s performance!