Top 5 Mobile APM Myths: Myths 3-5

if you’re just tuning in, please check out my  previous post where i dispel myths 1 & 2  , bad app ratings are uncontrollable and it’s impossible to understand your backend services.

typically, mobile app developers accept some things they feel they can’t change — ratings, end-to-end visibility, user experience, and so on. however, these can all be avoided and under your control with the right mapm solution to give you the proper insights to give your users a seamless experience.

now, on to the myth busting…

myth #3: users are an enigma that i can never really understand

you cannot nail down the mobile end-user experience unless you know your audience. you need to understand where the end user is spending time while using your application. are they spending time scrolling down search results to find what they want? in other words, are you presenting the most relevant information at the top? are they abandoning the shopping cart at any specific points in the checkout process? is there funnel friction that you need to optimize your app against?

the modern mobile apm tools have some great capabilities to understand your end user and their behavior. you can inject timers across any two arbitrary points and measure times taken for a collection of any number of steps. for example, you can measure how long it takes your user from conducting the first search to purchasing a product or a service. this can be done at an individual user or at aggregate levels. you can measure how much time users spend on which screen. this will give you great insights into who your typical user is and what interactions do they indulge in with your application. you can then optimize the app experience for those common patterns.

myth #4: i’m going to spend the rest of my life certifying my mobile app on the infinite permutations and combinations of device types, os types, and network carriers/types

this is where you need concrete data to understand your user demographics. a good mapm solution will give you detailed breakdown of who your core audience is. what device types they prefer, what os’s (ios vs android) they run, and which networks they mostly originate from. a good apm solution will also allow you to correlate this information with revenue or engagement information to determine your highest-value audience.

with all this valuable information, you can prioritize development, testing, and certification of your mobile app. you can even optimize your app experience and test for performance bottlenecks for the high-value audience. and lastly, you can focus on retaining them by delivering on their roadmap demands over the lesser engaging ones.

myth #5: there’s no way to know the business impact of the performance issues of my mobile app

most mapm tools in the market today are too developer-centric. they deliver crash analytics and performance delays caused by delayed response from backend services but little else. often times, the mobile channel is an enabler of some business goals such as better customer engagement, additional revenue streams, cost savings from productivity or efficiency gains. plus, it’s the broader context that feeds investments into the mobile channel. ignoring the business context is like missing out on half the picture.

the right tool needs to deliver full context on the mobile application. the full context should include what impact the app has on business metrics such as revenues, cost savings, customer engagement kpis, etc. a comparative chart that shows performance impact of mobile app on these business metrics can be incredibly powerful to raise awareness among the organization.

with these myths dispelled, i hope you have gotten a different perspective on your mobile app initiatives and are rethinking your approach to mobile apm. feel free to leave comments and share your thoughts.

also, check out my  previous post to learn about myths 1 and 2  .

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