Treat Performance as THE key feature

In the highly competitive digital era , there is no more option of keeping performance as just 'good to do' quality aspect.

Performance can significantly define & drive the end user experience. And with sincere respect quoting Mr. Steve Jobs here:

Even a kid playing music , video or any game , educational app recognises & rank your app based on performance(which is experience for him). It is easy to judge and rationale to engage with app based on performance. It's like as all of us agree to social media addiction, on similar psychological mechanism performance is intangible but THE feature which translates :

1. To % increase in user engagement which in turn can be converted to % increase in revenue.
2. Performance is THE feature which helps in branding as well. Just visualise any brand with app experience on the slower side.

Moreover , it's not just about typical performance categorisation of frustrating(slower then 10 sec) , tolerable(5-10 sec) & acceptable(within 3 sec) limits. It's the sub-second aspect where organisations can compete & succeed if they acknowledge Performance as THE feature. For example following insights from industry shows how 100ms performance gains impacts the bottomline:

• For every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed, our customers see a 1.11% lift in session based conversion.
• For every half second decrease in homepage load speed, our customers see an average annual revenue increase of $376,789.*
• For every 100ms decrease in checkout page load speed, our customers see a 1.55% lift in session based conversion.
• For every half second decrease in checkout load speed, our customers see an average annual revenue increase of $526,147.*

Another example of growth achieved by solely treating performance as feature:

• The result of rebuilding our pages for performance led to a 40 percent decrease in Pinner wait time, a 15 percent increase in SEO traffic and a 15 percent increase in conversion rate to signup.
• Because the traffic and conversion rate increases are multiplicative, this was a huge win for us in terms of web and app signups. In 2016, this was our team’s biggest user acquisition win.
• In addition, Pinners with slow internet connections got a significantly better experience.

Because of this project, the team now focuses on performance as one of the biggest opportunities for new user growth.

As per my opinion, performance is no more just a quality aspect , NFR which should be matched, instead it is the feature now which drives can help you drive success, clicks, revenues to your app & websites.