Did you know “a site that loads in 1 second has a conversion rate 3 times higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds?”
We’ve all experienced the frustration of a slow-loading website or an unresponsive application. As the research above shows, users are quick to abandon an application if they have to wait more than a mere few seconds. In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, ensuring your application performs well isn’t just about slow load times—it’s about delivering a seamless user experience (UX) that keeps people engaged. That’s where performance engineering comes in.
What is performance engineering?
Performance engineering is a practice designed to make performance a priority from the very beginning—not something that’s tested as an afterthought. It gets woven into your entire development process, from the initial design phase through to post-launch monitoring. Performance engineering encompasses more than just testing for speed or load capacity. It’s an end-to-end, cross-functional approach that ensures performance considerations across all disciplines: UX, visual design, development, and quality assurance (QA).
The concept (and practice) of moving performance engineering into the full design and development phase is referred to as “shifting left.” By moving testing, quality, and performance evaluation into the earliest stages (even before coding begins), teams can make informed decisions about design, architecture, and infrastructure that reduce the risk of late-stage delays or costly reworks. It also ensures a smoother user experience.
How to approach performance engineering
Tackling performance engineering effectively requires a well thought out, multi-disciplinary approach. At OXD, we believe that every digital solution should be uniquely tailored to meet the specific needs of its users. By understanding user expectations and aligning our engineering efforts accordingly, we create applications that are not only fast and reliable but also serve the people who use them. Here’s how we integrate performance engineering into every stage of a project:
- Performance modelling: Creating performance models early in the project helps to identify potential bottlenecks and set realistic expectations for how the system will behave under various conditions.
- Design optimizations: Performance isn’t just about speed—it’s also about how responsive and smooth the experience feels to the user. A sluggish interface, even if functional, can lead to frustration and abandonment.
- Architecture: Optimize the software design and system architecture with performance in mind. This involves selecting the appropriate technologies, designing for efficient data flows and considering scalability and redundancy in infrastructure.
- Development practices: Implement efficient coding practices, including the use of asynchronous processes, minimizing redundant computations, database query optimization, and reducing resource-heavy operations. This may also involve continuous integration (CI) that includes automated performance tests.
- Performance testing: Continuously test the application under different loads, simulating real-world and edge-case conditions. Types of tests include: Load testing, stress testing and spike testing.
- Continuous monitoring: Set up real-time monitoring tools (e.g., APM, logging, and telemetry) to track system performance under real-world usage. Analyze metrics such as response times, memory usage, CPU load, and user behaviour patterns. Use these insights to continuously optimize the system.
Setting your performance goals
To ensure your application performs well, you need to define your performance requirements at the beginning of the project. This requires collaboration with stakeholders and actual end-users to capture real-world scenarios your system will need to handle.
- Define target metrics: Use historical data or analytics from similar systems to set performance benchmarks. If you have an existing system, leverage its analytics to understand current performance levels. If no such data exists, add analytics tools as soon as possible to gather insights.
- Engage with stakeholders: Speaking with stakeholders and actual users ensures your performance goals are based on real needs, not assumptions. Understanding how people will use the system helps guide realistic performance goals.
How each discipline influences application performance
No single discipline can take full responsibility for an application’s performance. The best results are achieved when UX, visual design, development, and QA teams collaborate closely, bringing their unique perspectives to the table. Here’s how each discipline contributes, and why their work must be tightly aligned.
User experience
UX designers need to work with developers to ensure features like navigation, pagination, and progress feedback are optimized and align with user needs.
- Response time and feedback: Ensuring that users receive progress feedback and that navigation remains consistent and efficient is critical for maintaining a smooth user experience. The perception of speed is just as important as actual speed.
- Bandwidth degradation: Applications need to gracefully handle slow connections. Features like pagination and type-ahead can significantly impact performance if not optimized.
- User testing and feedback: Analytics and user testing help refine the experience and allow for continuous improvement, ensuring users’ real-world needs are being met.
Visual design
Visual designers have a direct impact on application performance, especially when it comes to how assets like images, fonts, and animations are handled. Their choices in design should be made in collaboration with developers to ensure applications are optimized for both aesthetics and performance.
- Graphics optimization: Ensure that all graphics are optimized for different user conditions. Vector graphics, when possible, can improve performance across device types.
- Loading times and consistency: Larger graphics can drag load times, so it’s essential to consider how they are delivered across platforms. Designs with large amounts of graphics can be avoided or make use of lazy loading to improve the perception of performance.
- Animations and transitions: These can enhance or hinder the user experience depending on how they’re applied, as it can cause excessive resource consumption, leading to slower rendering performance.
Development
Developers play a central role in ensuring that the application’s performance is optimized from the ground up. Their task is to implement efficient code, manage resources properly, and work closely with other teams to ensure performance goals are met.
- Efficient coding: Writing efficient code and making use of async processing where appropriate can improve load times and overall application responsiveness.
- Application architecture: Scalable application architecture with load balancing ensures that your application can handle varying user traffic without compromising performance.
- Database optimization: Efficient database queries and memory management play a significant role in the speed and scalability of an application.
Quality assurance
Quality assurance (QA) teams are essential in verifying that the application meets performance standards through testing and monitoring. Since performance isn’t just about speed, a QA team can also check for reliability, scalability, and how well the application handles real-world scenarios.
- Load and stress testing: QA teams simulate real-world conditions to test how the application handles different levels of user traffic, working closely with developers to identify bottlenecks.
- Monitoring and profiling: QA and development teams ensure that proper tools are in place to monitor both hardware and software performance. Continuous monitoring after deployment ensures that any issues are quickly identified and addressed.
Shifting left to keep your digital services optimized
Performance engineering is not just a technical consideration but rather a mindset that spans the entire development lifecycle. By shifting left, and incorporating performance considerations into your entire project, while working across disciplines, organizations can ensure that their applications are fast, scalable, and ready to meet the demands and expectations of today’s users.