Why Instrumentation Should Not Be an After Thought

Instrumentation in web or mobile applications

Instrumentation is the process of adding monitoring and analytics capabilities to your application code. It allows you to track how your application is performing and identify errors or performance bottlenecks. Additionally, you can collect valuable data about how users are interacting with your application. These data will be useful in future development efforts. For instance, to optimize the application’s performance, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions.

There are several tools and frameworks available for instrumenting web or mobile applications. For example Google Analytics, Firebase Analytics, and Mixpanel. Typically, you can track a range of metrics such as page views, user demographics, user engagement, and conversion rates using these tools. They may also provide real-time monitoring of application performance, error rates, and other key metrics.

Why we need Instrumentation?

Instrumentation in web or mobile applications should not be an afterthought for the following reasons:

1. It’s harder to retrofit instrumentation: Adding instrumentation to an already developed application an be a difficult and time-consuming task. Developers may have to modify existing code, and the instrumentation may not integrate well with the existing application architecture. This can lead to errors and delays in the application development process.
2. It’s harder to track user behavior: You should not waiting until after deploying your application to add instrumentation. It may cause you to miss important data about how users are interacting with your application. We can use this data to optimize user experience and improve overall application performance..
3. It’s harder to identify and fix errors: You need proper instrumentation in your application. Otherwise, it can be difficult to identify and fix errors. You may not know that an error exists until a user reports it. By the time, the damage may already be done.
4. It’s harder to optimize performance: Instrumentation allows you to identify performance bottlenecks and optimize your application’s performance. You should not wait until after deploying your application to add instrumentation. That can make it harder to optimize performance, leading to a sub-optimal user experience.

The lean startup model

The Build-Measure-Learn cycle is a fundamental concept in the Lean Startup methodology. It is a business and product development approach that emphasizes rapid experimentation, iterative development, and customer feedback. It consists of three phases:

1. Build: During this phase, the development team focuses on building a minimum viable product (MVP). The MVP contains basic features and functionality necessary to solve a specific problem or address a particular customer need. The MVP is designed to be quickly developed and released to customers for testing and feedback.
2. Measure: During this phase, the team collects data on key metrics such as user engagement, retention, and conversion rates. The purpose of measuring these metrics is to evaluate the performance of the MVP and to identify areas for improvement. The team uses this data to evaluate the success of the MVP and to identify areas for improvement.
3. Learn: During this phase, the team analyzes the data collected in the Measure phase. The purpose of this analysis is to learn about the needs and preferences of their customers. The team then uses this knowledge to make informed decisions about the next iteration of the product. These decisions include which features to add, modify, or remove.

The Build-Measure-Learn cycle is a continuous process that enables the development team to rapidly iterate and improve their product based on customer feedback and data-driven insights. This approach can help startups and businesses to minimize the risk of product failure by quickly testing and validating their assumptions about customer needs and preferences. This aligns with web application instrumentation to focus on rapid experimentation and feedback. It will help teams to iterate quickly and create a product that meets the needs of their customers.

Every build phase should have clearly defined items to measure, even though you can derive analytics from your application database. You definitely have an edge when you’re able to map an entire journey and do two important metrics User Engagement and Churn.

User engagement analysis

User engagement analysis is the process of measuring and analyzing the level of interaction and involvement that users have with a product or service. It involves tracking user behavior and interactions, such as clicks, taps, swipes, and other actions, and using that data to evaluate how engaged users are with the product or service.

User engagement analysis is important because it provides insight into how users are interacting with a product or service and can help identify areas for improvement. By analyzing user engagement data, businesses and product teams can determine which features and functionality are most popular, which areas of the product are causing frustration or confusion, and which aspects of the product are driving user retention or churn.

You can use several metrics to measure user engagement, such as:

1. Active users: The number of users who have interacted with the product or service within a specific time frame, such as a day, week, or month.
2. Time spent: The amount of time that users spend interacting with the product or service, which can be broken down by feature or functionality.
3. Retention rate: The percentage of users who continue to use the product or service over time.
4. Click-through rate: The percentage of users who click on a specific feature or call-to-action within the product or service.
5. Conversion rate: The percentage of users who complete a desired action or goal, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.

By analyzing these metrics and other user engagement data, businesses and product teams can gain insight into how users are interacting with their product or service. As a result, they can use that information to make informed decisions about how to improve the user experience and drive engagement.

Churn analysis

Churn analysis is the process of measuring and analyzing the rate at which customers stop using a product or service. We can also call it as churn rate. It involves tracking customer behavior and identifying the reasons why customers are leaving or disengaging from the product or service. Basically, web application instrumentation comes into play here as well.

Churn analysis is important because customer retention is a critical factor in the success of any business. If the churn rate is high, it can indicate that there are problems with the product or service that are causing customers to leave. By analyzing the reasons for churn, businesses can identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to reduce churn and improve customer retention.

You can use the following methods to measure churn:

1. Churn rate: This is the percentage of customers who stop using the product or service over a given time period. To calculate churn, divide the number of customers who stopped engaging by the total number of customers at the beginning of the time period.
2. Cohort analysis: This involves analyzing groups of customers who started using the product or service at the same time and tracking their behavior over time. This can help identify patterns and trends in customer behavior and churn.
3. Customer surveys: Surveys gather feedback from customers who have churned. This will help to identify the reasons for their departure and areas for improvement.
4. Customer feedback analysis: Analyze reviews, ratings, and comments to identify common themes and issues that cause churn.

By analyzing churn data and identifying the reasons why customers are leaving, businesses can develop strategies. This will help to improve the customer experience, reduce churn, and increase customer retention. This can lead to increased revenue, customer loyalty, and brand reputation.

Benefits of instrumentation

Instrumentation in web or mobile applications can provide several benefits, such as:

1. Improved user experience: By tracking user behavior and engagement, developers can identify areas for improvement and optimize the application. This will help to provide a better user experience.
2. Faster bug detection: Real-time monitoring of application performance and errors can help developers identify and fix bugs more quickly. Thus, reducing downtime and improving user satisfaction.
3. Data-driven decision making: By collecting and analyzing user behavior and other key metrics data, developers can decide future development efforts. This will help to prioritize features and improvements based on data.

Conclusion

Overall, instrumentation in web or mobile applications is an essential aspect of modern software development. It helps developers to optimize performance, improve user experience, and make data-driven decisions about future development efforts.

Deepak Nair

Lead QA Engineer at CeeGees Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.