As technology becomes the mainstay of business success in current times, most organizations rely on web applications for generating revenues and delivering value to their customers. But you need to think beyond ensuring your website remains up and running at all times in a competitive digital environment. You must also go the extra mile to optimize your web pages to deliver a better user experience at all times. Factors like slow-loading pages, lack of mobile optimization, and other glitches can cause a high bounce rate and low search engine rankings.
It is vital to monitor your web applications regularly instead of taking a set-and-forget approach to stay ahead of these performance parameters. But most business owners miss out on it and end up getting complacent about user experience. You cannot afford it because users expect web applications to be available around the clock, highly responsive, and accessible from anywhere. Here is a comprehensive guide to web application performance monitoring to stay ahead of these factors.
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Knowing the basics
Web performance monitoring entails monitoring them using various metrics affecting the user experience and page load speeds. You can rely on tools and testers to dig deep into these factors. Further, you must implement an apt strategy to facilitate monitoring efficiency as it enables you to find root causes and remediate issues sooner than later. The process helps a business in more than one way, from understanding the end-user experience to checking critical metrics, gaining visibility into overall performance, and improving the end-user experience. Testers can also tap into root cause summaries to limit the risks of issues recurring in the future. With regular monitoring, you can pinpoint hidden, lingering, and cyclical issues to deal with potential problems in the long run.
9 KPIs for web app performance monitoring
App performance metrics enable you to determine how far the application goes to help your business and the potential improvements you can make. Tracking the right KPIs is the key to the success of the monitoring initiative. The right ones provide a comprehensive report and actionable insights to improve your application. Here is a list of KPIs you must monitor:
1. Load Speed
Load speed measures the time your app takes to get ready to interact with the user. Low load speeds are problematic because they lead to an increase in bounce rates.
2. CPU Usage
CPU usage affects an app's responsiveness, with high spikes indicating a performance bug that degrades its responsiveness.
3. Memory Usage
High memory usage translates into high resource consumption in the server. If the application has inadequate virtual memory, it tends to spend more time on thrashing.
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4. Latency
Latency is the time lag between a user's action and the application's response to that action.
5. Requests per minute and bytes per request
These metrics enable you to determine server performance under different loads and the amount of data handled during every request.
6. DNS Lookup Time
This KPI measures the time an app requires for a domain lookup while the browser loads the page. Peak response time- It lets you measure the longest response time for requests traveling across the server.
7. Error Rate
The error rate checks the percentage of request issues users encounter with respect to the overall number of requests.
8. Security Exposure
Ensuring the safety of your application and data is critical, so you must determine the extent of the app covered by security techniques and the part exposed and insecure.
9. User Satisfaction
The KPI is measured as Apdex Scores, which uses a mathematical formula to determine user satisfaction for your web app.
Other KPIs you can dig into include request rates, garbage collection, session lengths, stickiness ratios, churn rate, retention rate, and conversion rate. Measuring these KPIs seem like a lot of work, and you may need several resources to handle the process. Conversely, you can engage software testing services latam instead of hiring an in-house team. The LATAM region has excellent tech talent and offers it on a budget, making outsourcing a smart decision for business owners looking to monitor the performance of their web apps consistently
Tips to maximize web app performance
While web app performance monitoring keeps you a step ahead of the potential issues, it is only half the work done. The other half entails taking relevant measures to improve and optimize it for better performance. Here are some steps that can help.
Front-end optimization
A web app's front end is perhaps more critical because an average user interacts with it. Poorly optimized frontends can affect the user experience and send them off for good. Most often, it happens due to problems with data loading and image optimization. Here are some steps to optimize your app's front end for better performance.
- Minify resources
- Compress files
- Optimize the images
- Remove unnecessary custom fonts
- Reduce the number of server calls
- Apply lazy loading
- Enable caching
- Use a content delivery network
Back-end optimization
Backend optimization is an equally critical aspect of improving your web app's performance. But it can be more complex and technical, so it requires immense expertise. Here are some steps to help with backend optimization-
- Database Optimization
- Mitigating the N+1 Query Problem
- Web Hosting Solutions
- Optimize your security layer
- Stay up to date
- Reduce the back and forth between servers and clients
- Testing under real conditions
Web app performance monitoring puts you a step ahead of the potential issues and flaws. You can act quickly to address them and resolve problems, even before they happen. The best part is that you need not worry about user experience. They will likely stay and stick when they are happy with your web app's performance. You only need to stay on top of these KPIs to understand the problems and mitigate them before they damage the UX and affect the reputation of your business. Although monitoring them sounds like a lot of work, consider it a small effort to safeguard your web app for the long haul. Also, stay consistent with regular monitoring by collaborating with a testing partner that covers you with reliable services.
AUTHOR BIO
Steve Miller is a technical content writer at Outreach Monks. Due to 7 years of technical writing experience, he has a vast knowledge of technology and its related applications. His informative writing offers support to all future entrepreneurs and tech geeks.