As we’ve noted in previous articles, Web site developers and system administrators are paying greater attention to mobile performance these days. Wading into these waters requires a new approach to Web performance measurement, as well as new tools to support it. In this article we will review the difference between mobile testing and desktop testing, the tools (both free and commercial) currently available for measuring mobile performance, and, finally, some tips and tricks for developing Web sites that exhibit high performance on mobile operating systems such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry.
Client-Side vs. Server-Side Performance
The first factor in improving mobile performance is figuring out exactly how much improvement your site needs. This requires an accurate measurement of the current state of performance. But what do you measure, and how? As Web Performance Today recently pointed out, over 90% of performance gains on mobile devices are to be found on the mobile client’s front end, and not on the server side. This suggests the need for tools that measure mobile performance on the device side.
Measuring Mobile Performance
Given the importance of client-side performance for mobile sites, how do developers capture client performance data? This isn’t an easy task, given the plethora of devices and operating systems (iOS, Windows, and multiple flavors of Android) in today’s market.
The pcapperf toolkit goes a long way to meeting the need for a mobile performance measurement tool. Using pcapperf, developers can upload PCAP files captured from a private wireless network and analyze them using the online tool to pinpoint performance issues.
Development teams can also take inline measurements using LoadTimer, an IFRAME-based test harness that can be used from your mobile Web browser of choice. Besides capturing page load measurements, LoadTimer also supports recording and submitting data to creator Steve Souder’s live database of crowdsourced mobile performance results.
A third option for measuring mobile performance is Mobitest, an online tool from Blaze.io that runs a given URL through a variety of mobile operating system devices. This sophisticated but simple tool gathers performance information for iOS 5.0, a number of Android versions, and Blackberry OS 6.0. The downside is that Blaze.io has a limited number of devices available for testing, so users may have to wait a few minutes for their results.