Entrepreneurs often worry about ensuring their apps perform well to meet user expectations and support business goals. Poor performance can frustrate users, lower app store rankings, and lead to revenue loss. In this article, we explain the basics of app performance, how it affects business success, and when it's crucial to evaluate your app's performance. As a software development company, we share our approach, as well as tips and tools for application optimization.

What is app performance optimization?

Application performance refers to how well an app functions, including its speed, responsiveness, and reliability. It can be low due to many reasons like poor coding practices, excessive use of heavy graphics or large files, bugs, limited server capacity, etc. If an app doesn't perform well, it can frustrate users and drive them away.

Application performance optimization helps make an app run faster and more efficiently. In this process, developers can make the code cleaner, get rid of unnecessary data, make navigation easier, and reduce app crashes.

How software performance optimization impacts businesses in 2025

Recent data shows that 4 out of 5 users will leave an app if it doesn't load the first time. Additionally, 53% of users will stop using an app if it takes more than three seconds to load. When it comes to revenue, apps that load in 5 seconds get 2 times more than the slower ones.

Apps that perform well also have an advantage in app stores like Google Play and the App Store. These platforms rank apps based on their performance. If an app is slow, it might not appear as high in search results, leading to fewer downloads and less potential income.

Optimizing application performance also helps reduce costs. Efficient apps use fewer resources, which means they need less infrastructure and maintenance. This saves money and makes the app easier to scale and manage over time.

When to monitor application performance?

If an app performs well now, it doesn't mean it's going to be like that forever. There are situations when certain updates or events can slow an app down. Here's how to find out that it's time to check your app's performance.

After updates

After releasing new features, fixing bugs, or updating the app, it's important to check for any performance problems to ensure these updates don't affect users negatively. Updates may slow down the app or cause unexpected behavior.

Post-migration

Keep an eye on performance during cloud migrations. This helps with transitioning to new environments and adjusting to changes, whether moving to a new server or upgrading infrastructure.

When traffic increases

Monitoring app performance during peak times, like sales events and product launches, ensures the app handles increased traffic without disrupting user experience.

To avoid software performance issues caused by increasing traffic, you need to develop or refactor your app with scalability in mind. We can help you with this task — just contact us.

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Before audits

When preparing for regulatory compliance audits, it's essential to monitor performance standards specific to certain industries. Compliances like GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and ISO/IEC 27001 require apps to handle processes without delays.

After user feedback

When users report slow performance, crashes, or glitches, monitoring provides insights into these issues, allowing for quick fixes. For apps used in various regions, regular monitoring maintains consistent worldwide performance and helps identify regional bottlenecks.

As you can see, it's best to monitor app performance regularly and after certain events. By regularly checking application performance, businesses can spot and fix potential issues before they impact users, keeping the experience stable and positive.

Key performance metrics to monitor

Before you start optimizing your app, you need to understand which metrics show how the app performs. From our experience, these are the key performance metrics that you should check:

Response time

This measures how quickly an app responds to a user's request. Slow response times can frustrate users and reduce engagement. Compare your app's response time against industry standards or the trends within your specific application category. For many web applications, a response time of under 1-2 seconds is generally considered good, while anything exceeding 3 seconds may be viewed as poor. Different applications have varying expectations; for instance, real-time communication apps need to have near-instantaneous response times, while users might tolerate slightly longer times for data-heavy applications.

Throughput

This refers to the number of transactions or requests an app handles in a given timeframe, indicating its ability to manage workload. A high throughput shows that the app processes many requests efficiently, especially during peak times. Regular monitoring ensures the app scales effectively as demand rises.

Error rate

This reflects the percentage of failed requests compared to the total. A high error rate might signal bugs, configuration problems, or server issues. Businesses should employ monitoring tools to detect errors automatically and set alerts to inform development teams when performance dips. Early detection minimizes user impact.

CPU and memory usage

Monitoring these performance metrics shows how hardware resources are being used. High CPU usage may indicate inefficient code or resource leaks, impacting performance. Consistent monitoring helps optimize resource allocation to balance performance and costs.

Uptime

This measures how long the app is operational and available to users. A normal uptime rate for apps is typically considered to be 99.9% or higher. This uptime level translates to roughly 43 minutes of downtime per month and is often seen as the standard for software.

Load time

This measures how quickly the app loads its initial content. Faster load times ensure that users won't leave the app out of frustration. By assessing load times under various conditions, such as different network strengths, businesses can make adjustments to improve initial user engagement.

Network latency

This metric shows delays in data transfer over the network. High latency can slow response times, especially for apps reliant on real-time data. Monitoring latency helps determine whether performance issues stem from the app itself or external factors.

User engagement

Monitoring user interactions, like session length and frequency, provides insights into user satisfaction and behavior patterns. High engagement typically indicates a well-performing app. Analytics tools can follow user paths and identify areas needing improvement.

Apdex score (Application Performance Index)

This standard metric measures user satisfaction based on application response time, categorizing performance as satisfactory, tolerable, or frustrating. Monitoring the Apdex score helps prioritize performance improvements where they will most impact user satisfaction.

How to find performance bottlenecks

A bottleneck happens when a specific part slows down the whole app, leading to lag and poor capacity. Finding performance bottlenecks in an app is key to keeping it running smoothly and ensuring users are satisfied. To address these issues, you first need to set up baseline performance metrics during regular use. These metrics give you a comparison point to spot deviations in the app.

Use monitoring and testing tools

It's helpful to use Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools to get insights into your app's performance. These tools track real-time data on things like CPU and memory usage, response times, and error rates, helping you easily identify slow areas. Performing load tests can also be valuable. By simulating many users accessing the app at once, you can see how your app performs under stress and where it might struggle. Tools like Apache JMeter or LoadRunner are helpful for these simulations.

Conduct code reviews

Code review or audit is another useful technique. This process analyzes how the code runs to spot inefficient paths or methods, helping developers optimize or rewrite code for better performance. Databases can also be a source of slowdown, especially if queries aren't optimized. By using monitoring tools, you can pinpoint slow or complex queries and apply methods like indexing, query optimization, and caching to boost database performance.

One of our clients, an owner of a Nigerian trading platform, faced significant design and technical challenges. The previous development partner didn't meet expectations, leading to a poor user experience and damaged reputation. Our client requested a thorough app audit. We conducted a manual code review and used SonarQube Analysis and IntelliJ IDEA Code Inspection, uncovering major issues such as high-severity bugs, complicated code, low test coverage, and security vulnerabilities. We suggested a complete rewrite instead of a simple refactor, to fully address the issues and rebuild with a clean, well-structured architecture.

In rebuilding the app, we kept the original design style but simplified the interface to get rid of clutter. Our software development goals focused on creating a secure, reliable infrastructure to protect user data and support quick system rollbacks, which is crucial for performance improvement. We wrote clear, maintainable code and integrated automated testing with a test-driven development approach. To prevent vendor lock-in, we used open-source solutions, which gave the client full ownership of the app and flexibility in choosing technology providers.

Check network and server performance

Network performance can also affect app speed, as sometimes issues occur in data transfer between the client and server. Monitoring network latency and bandwidth can uncover such issues, and optimizing data sizes or using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) can improve performance. Evaluating server performance metrics is equally important, as a lack of resources like CPU and memory can create bottlenecks. Ensuring the server is set up for your app's needs and scaling up resources when required can alleviate these problems.

Check the performance of third-party services

When your app relies on third-party services or APIs, monitoring their performance is crucial since it can impact your app. Track their latency and reliability, and consider caching frequently accessed data to reduce dependency.

If you find a performance bottleneck, conduct a root cause analysis to understand the problem, checking logs, metrics, and reports to apply targeted fixes.

Performance monitoring tools that can help you

Let's look closer at the tools for optimizing performance. Here's a list of some of the most popular and helpful ones that improve aspects like load balancing, performance testing, and data processing:

1. Apache JMeter: Apache JMeter can be used for performance testing. It helps simulate heavy traffic on a server to test its strength and identify bottlenecks, ensuring the system can handle anticipated loads.
2. NGINX: NGINX is key for load balancing. It distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers, preventing any single server from carrying too much load. This improves the responsiveness and availability of applications.
3. ApexSQL Plan: This tool is valuable for data processing and data structure optimization. It analyzes SQL Server query execution plans, showing us how queries are executed so developers can optimize them for better performance.
4. New Relic: It offers insights into performance optimization by monitoring applications and infrastructure. It provides detailed analytics to help refine efficient algorithms and optimize operations.
5. Redis: Known for its speed and reliability, Redis enhances data processing capabilities. It improves app performance for applications that need fast data access and supports data structure optimization.
6. PagerDuty: PagerDuty integrates with other tools to address performance issues quickly, ensuring issues are identified and resolved swiftly.

Next, let us show you the tools and techniques we use at Ronas IT to improve app performance for our clients.

Our performance optimization approach

As a software development company with 18+ years of experience, we came up with our own approach to performance optimization. It's a combination of different practices and tools we use throughout the development process.

General optimization techniques

We improve app performance through focused optimization efforts and best practices. Our process starts with creating high-quality designs that provide a solid foundation for each project. We follow specific development standards and use proven architectures for application optimization, conducting detailed code reviews to keep our team working efficiently and focused on quality. We also maintain consistency in updates with checklists during releases.

To add features without reinventing the wheel, we use reliable third-party libraries. We employ tools such as PageSpeed Insights for ongoing performance tuning, regularly measuring and improving app speed.

We incorporate load balancing to improve system resilience and efficiency. Additionally, we prioritize continuous learning and innovation through research and development, allowing us to stay on top of the latest technologies.

Testing and QA

We focus on automated testing to support software optimization and ensure our apps run smoothly. We don't hire dedicated QA testers or heavily rely on manual testing. Instead, we focus on automation, especially for backend systems that handle important business functions. Each backend project includes automated tests from the beginning to eliminate unnecessary computations and ensure everything works properly.

Types of testing

We have different testing stages throughout the process, from development to pre-release, ensuring comprehensive performance testing. Developers first test the features using simulators or real devices. We often use iOS and Android emulators during software development to test easily across different versions. Our designs are responsive to work on various screen sizes, and we also test on smaller screens to catch any layout issues.

Automated testing

In our PHP projects, we use PHPUnit along with custom tools we've created. These help us manage things like database testing and tracking changes, crucial for maintaining system performance. We keep an eye on test coverage during code reviews to ensure any issues are addressed promptly. With our laravel-swagger tool, we also automatically create API documentation based on test results. This approach is vital in our software development process to achieve optimal performance.

Testing workflow

Our testing process starts with developers ensuring software optimization by testing features themselves. Then, team leads review the code for any errors. Features that pass these checks enter development builds for weekly internal testing. After ensuring everything works, the app is tested by clients. Once approved by clients, we do a final test before launching the app in stores. This workflow contributes to continuous software performance optimization.

Performance testing

We use tools like Sentry to monitor for mistakes and performance issues after launch. We create detailed test cases for complex projects and use them for end-to-end testing when necessary. For load testing, we simulate how our systems handle lots of users to maintain their stability and optimize software performance continually.

DevOps

We use a DevOps approach to drive continuous improvement in app performance, making software updates and testing quicker and more efficient. Our development and operations teams collaborate closely, allowing us to integrate code changes frequently and test them automatically. By handling code changes in the development environment before they go live, we implement updates with minimal downtime.

Additionally, we focus on software performance by optimizing the infrastructure as needed, ensuring clients aren't overpaying while maintaining site accessibility. By using infrastructure as code, we can quickly adjust resources to fit current needs without waste, ensuring our applications run efficiently and stay responsive.

Scalability in mind

Building apps with scalability in mind or refactoring them to be scalable directly impacts performance optimization by allowing the application to efficiently manage increased user demands and data loads.

We create flexible architectures using open-source programming languages and frameworks like Laravel, React, and React Native, along with reliable third-party solutions. For our infrastructure needs, we rely on providers such as Google and Amazon, using Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3 to handle object data like images, videos, and texts. For databases, we frequently choose Google Cloud SQL, Amazon RDS, MongoDB Atlas, and Redis Enterprise Cloud. These decisions ensure stability, security, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, tailored to our projects and our clients' needs.

Code optimization

Writing clean code helps software applications run better by making the codebase easier to understand and fix. We organize the code to keep it simple, which makes it easy to spot and repair problems quickly. This approach leads to fewer errors and allows us to add new features or make changes faster. Clean code also optimizes resource use, reducing processing power needs and speeding up load times to improve how apps perform.

We ensure our code is clean by following industry best practices. We stick to consistent coding standards across all projects, using meaningful names for variables and functions so the code is intuitive. Code reviews are a part of our process, where team members give feedback and suggest improvements. We also use modular programming, breaking down large code segments into smaller, reusable parts. This not only simplifies fixing issues but also allows us to reuse parts of the code in different projects. By following these best practices, we maintain clean and efficient code, leading to smoother app development and better performance optimization.

To conclude

Optimizing app performance is crucial for keeping your business successful and your users happy. By learning the basics of how apps should perform, entrepreneurs can ensure their apps are fast, reliable, and meet user needs. Regular monitoring helps catch issues early before they become big problems, protecting the app's reputation and function. Performance testing provides valuable insights, helping businesses fix slowdowns and improve the user experience.

Using best practices like clean coding, load balancing, and scalable architecture keeps apps strong and adaptable. Tools like PageSpeed Insights and Sentry, along with reliable third-party libraries, help businesses stay competitive. Prioritizing performance tuning not only protects your investments but also supports growth, ensuring you stay ahead in the market.