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"If your apps take any more than a few seconds to load, you better be ready to kiss your users goodbye. When it comes to page abandonment, there\u2019s no quicker way to lose loyalty than slow load time.\r\n\r\nAn infographic\u00A0from KISSmetrics shows that 12 percent of respondents say they expect load times on mobile to not merely match those of desktops, but exceed them. For sites that don\u2019t deliver on par with reader expectations, an e-commerce site making $100,000 per day could lose more than $2.5 million in sales - all over a one-second page delay.\r\n\r\nHow can you make sure your Web app doesn\u2019t lose all your consumers to mobile? We spoke to several London developers to get their top tips and tools for increasing your app\u2019s speed.\r\nCheck for unnecessary or oversized images\r\n&amp;quot;For me, [Web app speed] revolves around images,&amp;quot; says Lewis Flude, Product Lead at\u00A0PublicBeta. In the early days of the Web, to make your app look fancy, you needed images to create good looking buttons and embellishments across the site. &amp;quot;This is no longer the case. Whatever you do, it's good to evaluate how your app is using images, and whether there are any quick-wins available to you.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nIt's also important to prioritize and refocus your team on getting the app to load quickly. Functionality may be key, but performance will keep your user base steady.\r\n\r\n\u201CA lot of the time, I think developers aren't in a position where they can spend time refactoring old code, so there's a huge pressure to get things right the first time round,\u201D Flude says. \u201COther things take priority, and what you end up with is a bunch of bloated features. Developers need to fight for their right to refactor and keep a Web app's speed in check.\u201D\r\nDon\u2019t ignore Android\r\nThis seems like a common consumer problem: Apps tend to come out first on iOS with a promise of the Android iteration to follow.\r\n\r\n&amp;quot;Developers have a tendency to developer for one platform first and treat the other as a second class citizen,&amp;quot; Flude says. &amp;quot;Because of this, every now and again you'll find an app that works beautifully on one platform, but doesn't have the resources to do the other platform justice. Put comparable engineering teams on any of these platforms, and I'd expect them to come back with comparable results.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nBen Nortier, Engineer at\u00A0Future Ad Labs, adds that as iOS owns 54 percent of browser market share; it\u2019s no wonder why developers focus on this operating system. But the standard Android browser has a 23 percent share, with Chrome on Android holding 6 percent.\r\n\r\nCouple that with Android\u2019s OS\u00A0powering four out of five handsets\u00A0in Q3 2013, and developers would do well not to ignore it.\r\n\r\n&amp;quot;In general, you can be assured of a good experience on iOS,&amp;quot; says Nortier. &amp;quot;On Android, the situation is more complicated. The standard Android browser doesn't perform as well as Chrome for Android or other browser alternatives, but it has a lot more users.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nDon't forget to optimize the app for users who may be using older devices or those who haven't upgraded to the latest operating system. Doing so allows your team to gauge how well your app will perform equally well for iOS and Android users.\r\nConsistent measurement\r\nWithout constantly checking up on your app, you might never realize how slow your app is loading. \u201CWeb apps may be slow because of a server responding slowly to requests, or it could be on the client side,&amp;quot; Nortier says.\u00A0\u201C[But] as a rule of thumb, you can get some really good performance improvements by reducing the number of requests your app makes to the server and the size of those requests.\u201D\r\n\r\nBoth Flude and Nortier say there\u2019s no set protocol for how often to increase your app\u2019s speed, but stress that developers should constantly check that new updates or features don\u2019t decrease performance. Flude adds that it\u2019s more important to refactor and refine code within realistic time frames.\r\nMultitask\r\nNot every developer agrees that speed updates are must. Elina Hedman and Andrew Bennett, co-founders of Mobile Agency\u00A0Aware\u00A0and Social Enterprise\u00A0SixP.me, say that jumping straight into technical solutions rather than framing app problems psychologically is the biggest mistake developers make.\r\n\r\n\u201CRather than spending time and money on optimizing speed, look to how you can make your app seem quicker,\u201D says Hedman. \u201CInstagram\u00A0is a great example of this; [the app] starts uploading a user\u2019s image to its servers way before you think. So while you\u2019re pondering which hashtags to use, your image is already 50 percent uploaded.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nBennett adds that if your Web app must take its time to load properly, at least make the less painful for the users. \u201CLoading things in the background is vital, but things like manipulating loading bars to entertain users when something is loading can also help influence feelings towards the app.\u201D\r\nTools to get started\r\nKeeping in mind the above comments, are some tools developers can use to increase your Web app's speed.\r\n\r\nKraken.io\r\n\r\nWith features from API integration to image resizing, it\u2019s no wonder why Flude recommends\u00A0Kraken.io\u00A0to increase app speed. Kraken\u2019s resizing feature scales your images to the sizes that suit your audience\u2019s primary mobile platforms. The company's motto maintains that \u201Cevery single pixel counts\u201D- and the work reflects this ethos.\r\n\r\nTinyPNG\r\n\r\nA second image option for image management,\u00A0TinyPNG\u00A0reduces the size of your PNG files, thus requiring fewer bytes to store data. The brainchild of Dutch Web service provider\u00A0Voormedia\u00A0is\u00A0praised across the web\u00A0for allowing users to upload up to 20 images at once, then watch as TinyPNG compresses them instantly after each upload has finished. Users are guaranteed stable reduction values of at least 70 percent, and as of March of this year, images can now be 3 MB per single picture vs. 1 MB last summer.\r\n\r\nRequireJS/UglifyJS\r\n\r\nWorking on JavaScript? Nortier recommends using\u00A0RequireJS\u00A0alongside JS compressor/minifier\u00A0UglifyJS. Require is used to manage dependencies between modules, whereas Uglify increases app speed via decreased HTTP requests.\r\n\r\n\u201CA big problem with front-end Javascript is that it's non-modularity,\u201D Nortier explains. \u201CYou end up downloading an entire library like\u00A0jQuery\u00A0even if you only use parts of it.\r\n\r\nRequireJS has the added benefit of modularizing code so you avoid downloading Javascript you don't need.\u201D\r\n\r\nChrome DevTools\r\n\r\nGoogle\u2019s range of tools offers developers access to Web apps\u2019 internal systems. Organized by task-specific groups,\u00A0DevTools\u00A0let you focus your work across eight types of specific app information, including Elements and Resources.\r\n\r\nDevTools\u2019\u00A0JavaScript Console\u00A0lets developers test web apps by logging diagnostic methods and entering commands. And to debug JavaScript, look no farther than\u00A0DevTools\u2019 options.\r\n\r\nDid we miss any tips or tools to increase app speed? Tell us in the comments.\r\n\r\nListen to this post as audio, courtesy of\u00A0SaveToListen.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nImage credit:\u00A0Sashkin/Shutterstock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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