Is there such a thing as too much exposure for your mobile application? If you haven’t properly load tested the product and aren’t quite sure how it will perform under real-world situations, getting millions of people to download and run your app might actually be more of a curse than a blessing.
If it’s a paid app, sure, that influx of cash is nice. But attention spans (as well as patience) are shorter than ever, so if someone downloads your app and it immediately crashes or fails to connect to a server, there’s a strong possibility that the app will be uninstalled and forgotten by your users before you get a chance to fix it.
A single day's worth of traffic can make or break a business, and that’s why it’s critical to performance test your apps to make sure they’ll both work on real devices and be able to handle a large number of users. Even the most patient users can become frustrated when apps fail to load a single action, so it’s vital to take this step.
Genefa Murphy, the vice president of product and partner marketing at HP Software, spoke with StickyMinds on the importance of testing a mobile app in a noncontrolled environment:
One of the key things that I've definitely seen with customers, if you want to be successful in testing the real app's performance, it's not just looking at the core fundamentals, but also looking at network conditions and the context of how that user is going to use your mobile application. ... Being able to simulate or virtualize those network conditions in the testing side of the house, before you go to production, that's the real key to making sure you're testing the full context of the app.
The benefits of network virtualization and load testing are being seen by the tech companies you’d expect, such as Samsung. The group is looking to build a more agile network system through network virtualization in order to prepare for next-generation telecommunication technology, such as 5G.
Even the military can improve through virtualization. By monitoring demand, managing enterprise applications, and reducing planning cycles, the military can become more efficient and streamline its operations while reducing costs.
It’s a simple concept: Use your available resources to prepare for what’s to come. By properly performance testing your mobile devices and anticipating a significant amount of traffic, you can feel much more secure when your app gains traction and garners more downloads than you ever would have expected.
