Learn best practices from Fortune 500 companies on how to optimize the app metrics that deliver a 5-star mobile experience such as app load time, crash rate, and battery drain.

1. 7 Tips for Optimizing Mobile App
Experience Metrics
Rob Kwok, Co-Founder & CTO

2. “
©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Our busiest branch in 2014 is the 7:01 from Reading
to Paddington – over 167,000 of our customers use
our Mobile Banking app between 7am and 8am on their
commute to work every day.
Ross McEwan
CEO
Royal Bank of
Scotland
Mobile is About Delivering Great Micro-Moments
Delivering the best user experience regardless of location, motion, proximity, time, and speed –
at all times, under all conditions

3. “
©2016 Copyright Apteligent
It took one day to lose a star and 6 months to get it back.
Mobile PM
Major News
Service
There’s No Margin for Error on Mobile
Getting mobile wrong is hazardous for your business.
• 30% of consumers indicate that they will consider leaving a brand due "
to a poor app experience
• 51% of consumers believe mobile should be easier than web
• 70% of millennials will critique an app based on their experience
Source: Apteligent Data

4. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Typical Bad User Experiences on Mobile Apps
Transaction
Failure
Slow apps
Crashes
Network"
Services Error

5. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
User-Centered Metrics are Critical for Reputation, Retention, and
Monetization
It took one day to lose
a star and 6 months to
get it back
Mobile PM
Major News
Service
“ • Slow load times
• Crashes
• Freezes
• Failed transactions
• Sluggish response
”

6. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
The “Hierarchy of Abandonment”
Think About Customer Experience from Your User’s Perspective
• The app crashes or freezes
• Broken features
• App takes forever to load
• Waiting constantly
• App drains my battery
• App kills my data plan
FAILURE
FRUSTRATION
ANNOYANCE

7. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Prioritize Crashes by Number of Affected Users
Avoid Failure – Tip #1: Fix the Top 10 Crashes Every Sprint
• The best apps have crash rates of less than 0.25%
• 75% of apps across iOS & Android platforms do not meet this standard1
data.apteligent.com
1Source: https://data.apteligent.com/ios/benchmarks/global
https://data.apteligent.com/android/benchmarks/global

8. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Prioritize Crashes Failing Your Most Critical Users
Avoid Failure – Tip #2: Fix Crashes in Critical Userflows
1. Identify the three most important
User Flows in your app
• e.g., Login, New Account Registration,
In-App Purchase
2. Fix the top crashes affecting critical
User Flows each sprint
3. Maintain a crash rate < 0.25% in
your most critical User Flows

9. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
How do your apps stack up to competitors and your users’ expectations?
Prevent Frustration – Tip #3: App Should Load in Less Than 2 Seconds
… Just to be Average
• 50% of consumers consider app load time
a major source of frustration
- 25% would leave a brand for unacceptable load
times
• 46% of iOS apps and 53% of Android
apps globally, across all categories, take
more than 2 seconds to load2
0
10
20
30
40
50
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
2000
>2000
%
of
iOS
Apps
Load
Time
(mS)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
2000
>2000
%
of
Android
Apps
with
Load
Time
(mS)
2Source: data.apteligent.com

10. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Suggested Metrics for High Performance Apps
Prevent Frustration – Tip #4: Interactions Should Take < 1 Seconds
Userflow User Expectation Time
App load (time to availability of first
user-interaction)
App is “working” 1.0 s
Login (not including data entry) App is “working” 1.0 s
Registration (not including data entry) App is “working” 1.0 s
Search App is “working” 1.0 s
Screen transitions Immediate 0.1 s
Browse Immediate 0.1 s
Add to shopping cart Immediate 0.1 s
Check-out App is “working” 1.0 s
Locate (e.g. locate store) App is “working” 1.0 s
Barcode scan App is “working” 1.0 s
Human computer interaction
research shows if a user expects3:
• an operation to be instantaneous, then
it should take no more than 0.1 second
• the app to be “working” then the operation
should take no more than
1.0 seconds
3Powers of 10: Time Scales in User Experience, Jakob Nielsen

11. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Monitor the latency of network calls that cause the user to wait
Prevent Frustration – Tip #5: Monitor Important Network Calls
1. Monitor the three most important Userflows in your app
2. Time how long they take to complete
3. Identify network calls that each Userflow depends on
4. Monitor the latency and error rate of each call
- Latency < 1 second
- Error Rate < 0.25%

12. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Ensure Your Users Don’t Uninstall Your App
Avert Annoyance: Tip #6: Measure Data and Battery Usage
• Request Volume
- Monitor increased network calls due to new SDKs
• Data Received and Sent
- Monitor the amount of data your app sends and
receives with each new version and with the addition
of new SDKs
• Don’t be a “Battery Killer”
- Monitor battery drain

13. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Stay On Top of Every OS Release, Every App Release
Tip #7: Monitor Your Performance Metrics – Over Time and Per Release
• Track your app metrics release over
release, across internal infrastructure
changes (internal API and back-end
services), and across major ecosystems
events (e.g., OS version releases).
• A historical view of 30 to 90 days will
enable you to fill in the critical “why” to
the changes you measure (both positive
and negative), in the “what” of your key
business KPIs.

14. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent 14
Key Metrics and their Targets
To Sum Up: Your Critical Mobile Metrics
• Avoid Failures
- Overall Crash Rate < 0.25%
- Crash Rate of Critical Userflows (e.g., “Login”) < 0.25%
• Prevent Frustration
- App Load Time < 2 seconds (to meet the industry, < 1 second to excel)
- Critical Userflows < 1 second
- Userflow Dependent APIs: < 1 second latency, < 0.25% error rate
• Avert Annoyance
- Monitor Request Volume, Data Sent/Received, and Battery Impact

15. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent 15
Measure metrics from the Customer’s perspective
Final Considerations
• At a bare minimum monitor for app “Failures” like crashes, hangs and exceptions.
• Monitor the time it takes to access the visible and important user flows (how customers
typically journey through your app). Address “Frustration” and “Annoyance” issues.
• App load time is key user flow because it has a direct connection to your business result
though your abandonment KPI.
• To set app metric targets, recognize the insights of human perception research, and set
metrics to meet or exceed your users’ built-in timing expectations.
• Track both the duration of the user flow and the latency and error rates of the underlying
network calls over time and between app releases.

16. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Build better, Acquire More, Engage Deeper, Monetize Faster
Great Mobile Teams Have Both Vision And Visibility
Apteligent delivers user-centered metrics – helping mobile
teams prioritize app issues, focus on new feature
development, and deliver the best possible user experience.
The “why” behind the “what”

17. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Build Better, Acquire More, Engage Deeper, Monetize Faster
Apteligent: Real. Enterprise. Mobility
Apteligent provides tools that empower mobile developers and product managers to
troubleshoot, prioritize, and resolve issues that damage their users’ app experience.
• Developers get detailed, real-time information to find and resolve crashes, freezes, and
issues in key user flows.
• Product managers and KPI owners get global mobile industry and competitive insight to
better plan and focus their mobile initiatives, as well as real-time visibility to app metrics that
enable rapid issue detection, prioritization, and release-over-release app improvement.

18. ©2016 Copyright Apteligent
Thank You!
www.apteligent.com
@robkwok