Your app just launched, and you want it to succeed. How do you ensure its performance keeps improving?

To ensure your app’s performance keeps improving after launch, start by implementing robust monitoring tools to track metrics like load times, user engagement, and error rates. Gather user feedback through surveys or in-app analytics to identify pain points. Regularly release updates to fix bugs, optimize features, and enhance user experience based on this feedback. Foster a culture of continuous improvement within your team by encouraging experimentation and adopting agile methodologies to quickly respond to performance issues. Finally, stay informed about industry best practices and emerging technologies to keep your app competitive and efficient.

To ensure your app's performance keeps improving, it's crucial to regularly monitor key metrics. Track metrics such as load times, crash rates, user retention, and session duration using analytics tools like Google Analytics, Firebase, or New Relic. These metrics provide insights into how well your app is performing in real-world scenarios and help you identify areas that need improvement. In one project, we noticed increased crash rates shortly after launch through our monitoring tools. We quickly identified the issue, released a patch, and stabilized the app, improving user satisfaction. Regular monitoring allows for swift responses and continuous performance improvements.

Actively gathering and analyzing user feedback is crucial for ongoing improvement. In one project, we closely monitored user reviews and in-app feedback after launch. Users highlighted a confusing navigation issue, which we promptly addressed in the next update. This not only improved user experience but also boosted our app ratings. Regularly engaging with user feedback helps identify areas for enhancement and ensures the app evolves to meet user needs.

Adopting an agile approach to updates allows you to respond quickly to issues and user feedback. In one project, we implemented a series of small, frequent updates to address bugs and add new features based on user requests. This iterative process kept the app fresh, maintained high user engagement, and ensured that we could rapidly adapt to any challenges. Agile updates help maintain momentum and continuously improve the app's performance and user satisfaction.

The agile approach has a few key phases to promote continued development success. In my experience the most important phases are planning, updating and reviewing. A good roadmap should provide a clear path to continuous improvements. Agile updates ensure that a team is following the roadmap without issue. Retros should incorporate new learnings into the roadmap. If continuous improvement is not occurring it usually points to one of those phases are not being given the attention it deserves.

This is a very important factor which is mostly forgotten/ignored in production, users love to see things happening in less resources & time. An example would be to decrease the webpage loading time to make user experience better, or reduce image size, use CDN where applicable to transfer content even faster. monitor crash reports closely to eliminate crashing factors and increase app performance. There are even more factors to increase performance, some are common between app categories, and some are unique to different domains e.g. Web apps, Desktop Apps & Games.

Stay Updated on Competitors’ Releases: Track Update History: Keep a close watch on the release cycles and updates of your competitors. For example, if a competitor has recently rolled out a significant update that enhances data security, it may signal a market trend towards stronger security measures. You can proactively address this by enhancing your own app's security features, perhaps by integrating advanced encryption methods or zero-trust architecture. React Quickly: Being aware of new features or improvements in a competitor’s app allows you to respond promptly. For instance, if a competitor introduces an AI-driven loan approval feature that significantly reduces processing time, you can prioritize similar or better enhancements.