Although application developers used to term success by the number of people who downloaded their apps, this was not the perfect metrics to determine the success rate of their mobile apps. 25% of mobile app users tend to discard mobile applications after one use, especially if the application is filled with bugs, according to Techcrunch. This led to developers switching to app retention rates as the better metric for determining the success of their launched application.
The standard period for measuring app retention is one quarter or in a 90 day period. As long as you can urge enough people to retain your mobile applications for longer than the standard quarter period using superior application performance, then you are on the winning side. Since app retention rates greatly depend on the performance of your application, it only makes sense to focus on application performance monitoring.
Here are a few aspects to focus on for successful application performance management:
Runtime Application Architecture Discovery
Runtime application architecture discovery helps in monitoring the hardware and software parts of your application that assist in executing it. In case there are any performance issues with parts of the architecture, your APM tool will help to point it out in good time. Considering the complexity of today’s application infrastructure, it might be tough to look into all aspects that contribute to the performance of your application.
As a result, the trick is to look for a tool that provides real-time insights into how well your application infrastructure is running. It will be an extra advantage in case the tool could visualize the application architecture in a console for IT pros to understand performance issues better. This will also allow the IT teams to react and interact with issues quickly and more efficiently.
End-User Experience Monitoring
The end user is king in the app development industry, and as long as they are happy, you win. As such, it makes sense to monitor how gratified they are with the performance of your application. A real user monitoring tool helps to observe the interactions between the users and the app as well as determine the problematic areas.
Since end user experience will be affected by multiple factors, it is wise to use a tool that delves into different application environments. For instance, your tools should monitor both on-premise and hosted applications. Additionally, it should make it easy to apply instant changes on network links or even your external servers, especially in situations where they are crippling your end user experience.
User-Defined Transaction Profiling
It is equally as important to comprehend user-defined transactions as it is to have a grasp of the communication paths, hardware and software the application uses. The trick is to ensure that IT professionals can trace the individual transactions as they go through the system. This will help determine the efficiency of the occurring events as well as determine when and where such events are taking place. Such visibility can provide IT professionals with valuable insight to improve the performance of their app.
Analytics Management
It is one thing to have data on your application performance and another to understand the data. This is where data analytics comes in. Through data analytics, IT teams can determine the baseline performance of your application and easily identify anomalies.
Additionally, it becomes easier to predict issues that are likely to affect your application in the future by observing past patterns. As such, you should use an analytics tool that will help you excel in application monitoring with regard to the analysis context that your organization requires.
Conclusion
Superior application performance management strategies all depend on the tools that you opt to use. When choosing monitoring tools, ensure that they are the best for your environment and monitoring context. Focus on the above metrics while using the right tools to improve your app retention rates.
