When you develop a web application for either desktop or mobile platform, there are certain aspects, which you must keep in mind. In fact, you must optimize these parameters in order to make your web apps perform better.

Let us look at some of the parameters which developers need to keep in mind at the time of the development of their web apps to make the apps perform better.

•   Concurrent Users

The term ‘Concurrent users’ is used to denote the number of users who access the web app at any given point of time. No developer can estimate the accurate number of concurrent developer for his/her app, but at least they can make an effort to make a close estimate during their research phase. This estimation of concurrent users depends on various factors such as the target audience, the type of application and the likes.

For instance, an eCommerce website which sells women’s apparel will have a larger number of concurrent users as compared to a legal website which is just there to provide information to the users. The latter is for a niche audience and surely, will see a much lower footfall as compared to the former. Even in such cases, the developers must go with the higher end of the estimation and develop their websites accordingly.

•   Average Response Time

Average response time refers to the time taken by the web app to respond to a user request. For example, if the users utilize a web app to book flight tickets and taps the confirm button, they will see a message on the screen which says “your order has been confirmed and you will get an SMS from us shortly”. This means that the users will expect the SMS to reach them as soon as they click on the confirmation button.

But there is a catch here; the average response time varies with the number of users using the web application; it decreases with the increase in the number of users using the web apps. If there is a delay between the users’ actions and the response, it leaves a bad impression on the users.

•   Connectivity

Another factor which affects the functioning of web apps is the network bandwidth requirements.  For instance, if your web app has a number of rich and heavy components such as audio/video and images, then you must accommodate these components cleverly to fit the network bandwidth requirements. You can opt for:

•     Browser Caching : where same resources are not downloaded for every request
•     Content Delivery Networks : where users download content from the nearest server
•     On Demand Loading :  where you make users download data only when they need it. (scrolling down to see images and not before that)

 
•   Handling The Peak Load

Many times it so happens that a web application experiences more load than estimated. For example, think of a web app which is used to order food. Obviously, such an app will be used by maximum users only during meal times (breakfast, lunch or dinner). As a result, there is an increased load on the application, known as Peak Load i.e. load on the app during the “peak” hours, when the number of concurrent users using the app is the highest. This causes the app to freeze or crash.  But this scenario can be avoided. One of the ways in which you can avoid Peak Load, is by hosting your web app on multiple servers. The technical term for this process is called Mirroring and is used to reduce the load on the app.

•   The Scalability Factor

Last but not the least, scalability is another important parameter that developers must focus upon.  This parameter typically needs to be considered in enterprise applications.  Such applications need to be continuously updated/upgraded/modified to suit the growing demands of the organization. These demands could be in relation to business growth, addition of more services, increase in sales of products and services, more number of concurrent users, etc. A developer must ensure that the app is scalable enough, so that it can keep meeting the changing needs and requirements of such businesses. You must see to it that your web app caters to the expectations of the users and ensure that the app’s ecosystem is able to handle handles an increase in the number of users as well as, the functional updates that are integrated within the app, if and when those happen.

These were some of the important parameters of web applications which must be considered by developers while creating their web apps.