No more crash and burn: how to ensure your app's stability?

It’s no surprise that app crashes may cause burnout of any app developer. Even the top apps can be a victim of this monster. Add to that the fact that makes app instability unbearable: the growing number of uninstalls.

To avoid repeated app crashes, it’s crucial to ensure your app delivers consistent performance to the users. Luckily, there is a lot you can do to achieve your app’s stability. It all starts with exploring the causes of app crashes and the ways to avoid high crash rates.

Let’s explore in detail.

Monitor errors as they occur

Picture this: your app users have uninstalled the app. The reason? According to them, “the app has bugs.” You acknowledge it and say,“I apologize."  But to retain users while ensuring high-level user experience and keeping them engrossed in your app, you must go beyond just acknowledging the crashes and bugs.

Instead of apologizing, you should identify errors and fix them, so that there is no way the user can think of a reason to uninstall the app.

As you monitor IIS (Internet Information Server) performance, also look for possible errors. While doing so, you may come across different ones. You can have control over some of these, though. For instance, when a user loses access to their Wi-Fi while file transfer is in process, you can inform them about the issue through building a communication channel.

However, when errors result from unexpected app behavior, you need to use app monitoring tools to identify the behavior that lead to app crashes. Once identified, you can fix the errors.  

Work on memory management

Lack of memory is one of the primary causes of app crashes. That’s because not all users possess high-end tablets and mobiles. Therefore, you should come up with an app that serves its purpose without comprising memory management.

Curious to know how?

Consider these useful points:

• Within the app, identify the areas that are taking up the major chunk of data. Once identified, analyze if such data structures are necessary to be added to the app. Based on the analysis, remove the ones that aren’t necessary.
• Organize the network requests while making sure they are small enough so that you don’t end up overloading the device. When there is no way to save memory, practice prioritizing. Do this by getting rid of features that don’t add value to the app.

Improve user experience

Overall user experience is one of the most important factors that determine your app’s fate: if it’s going to succeed or fail. Prompt response and immediate feedback play a critical role in your app’s stability.

The OS declares apps lacking the UI thread as “unresponsive” – thus, resulting in ANR crashes. To maintain high consistency in your app’s UI, move heavy processing tasks (for instance, image loading, file system accesses, and network fetches) to the background threads. However, don’t overdo the switching. The key is to maintain a balance while ensuring consistent UI experience.

Test compatibility with the app

Let’s face it: each of your target users may install your app on a different mobile device. If the app offers compatibility to only a few mobile devices, this may affect the number of installs. This isn’t something you should ignore.

The best bet is to make sure your app is compatible with almost all devices. But let’s not forget that you may come across limitations because it’s just impossible to test all smartphones and tablets. Plus, some users also have devices that don’t technically align well with all apps (because of slow functioning, not enough memory, busted screens, and other factors).

Comprehensive mobile app testing will ensure that your app is compatible with a variety of mobile devices and help you identify bugs and fix them before launching the app. 

Check if the app remains functional in poor networks

Some mobile devices heavily rely on strong internet connection. This also includes the usage of news apps, games, and apps related to social media. To access additional services, users may often require high-speed internet connectivity. Otherwise, poor networks may lead to app instability and poor performance, thus causing app crashes.

Most developers test mobile apps on fast Internet connections that far from all users have. When later run in slow networks, the app has a higher probability to face a crash.

Testing apps in slow networks may reveal problem areas early so that the software doesn’t lose functionality when run in all types of networks.