How we sped up our app by 80%

You may be surprised to learn that when renewing an Irish driving license, an Internet utility bill is not considered reliable evidence of address. I brought it with me to my renewal nonetheless since I was so certain it would work (it didn't).

It's not hyperbole to state that without an Internet connection, I couldn't accomplish my work and would have to look for a whole other skill set to generate any sort of revenue.

Fast WiFi is necessary in the world to which I've become used. The significance of the "rapid" aspect, though, only becomes apparent when my Google-fueled satisfaction no longer seems so immediate.

More generally, consumers might feel frustrated by anything that deviates from the expected standard since they have learned to expect quick satisfaction from any website or app, network connection or not. When everything is going well, we don't notice it, but when something isn't right, we can't help but notice.

According to one survey, 37% of users claimed that any crashes, bugs, or performance issues in a mobile application would cause them to think less favorably of a company's brand. Additionally, 61% of users said that they want a mobile app to start in 4 seconds or less.

performance phobia

To prevent any user annoyance, you should keep the majority of mobile apps robust and performant. Most individuals use apps for their convenience, to socialize, to pass the time on lengthy train rides, or for entertainment. These applications want you to use them as frequently as possible, and a big part of that strategy is to make sure you get the best possible experience when using them.

However, things are different with the Birdie app.

Our software, which is intended for use by caregivers visiting elderly patients in their homes, enables quick paperless reporting on anything from meals to forgotten pills.

More information, more issues

Reducing the quantity of data we handled was our main effort to boost performance.

Our app's offline-first support, which enables caregivers to continue reporting on Birdie as normal without a signal or by turning on their cell data, is one of its most important features. This feature allows the app to download and retain all relevant visit and care information for the day when you do have an Internet connection.

Reading and writing such a big volume of data may logically result in some major performance issues if the carer's agency was fairly large, as would the amount of data that the device would need to keep if it were.

This reasoning was particularly strong when we took into account the requirement for stringifying and sending any data saved to the device for offline usage through the React Native Bridge in order for Redux Persist to keep it. This process of stringifying and passing across big amounts of data appeared to be a serious contender for our main bottleneck based on our first performance monitoring.

So we started working. We reduced the amount of data we decided to persist, developed a number of ways to give users a choice over how much data their device downloaded for offline usage, and even experimented with completely new ways to transfer things through the React Native Bridge.

Request pardon instead of permission.

One thing that didn't quite match up was the extremely strong association between agency size and performance concerns, despite data reduction having no discernible effect at all. At that point, we discovered that permissions were yet another factor that scaled with agency size.

Birdie users are given lists of specific rights they have been given, depending on a variety of circumstances, both on the app and on the care manager's online interface. The manage visits permission would be one of your user permissions if, for example, you were a care manager at an agency where the Visit Planning feature was activated. This would mean that you as a user had the authority to add visits.

This strategy is based on permissions.

last thoughts

All of this serves to emphasize the need of never underestimate monitoring. Never undervalue the value of having actual, concrete data while troubleshooting. Never undervalue the power of a simple repair, if you're prepared to put in the time to look for it.

You might just brighten and speed up the lives of your users a little bit.

Wama Technology offers specialized services for designing Android, and iOS, cross-platform apps for flutter and react native, hybrid apps, and other platforms. Wama Technology is the best mobile application development company in the USA. We are a respected mobile app development company with offices in the USA AND India. We mix your business goals with the best web developers to deliver a solution that exceeds your expectations.