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21 Key Application Performance Metrics For Monitoring Apps

Breaking down the metrics in application performance monitoring can be a complex task. Imagine the user's frustration when your application unexpectedly slows down, leading them to abandon it quickly. This article explores the critical nature of application performance metrics and explores how effectively monitoring these metrics can enhance user experience.

For those seeking application performance monitoring and understanding the key application performance metrics needed to keep their apps performing top-notch, Alerty’s free APM tool is a guide to a successful app.

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Table of Contents

What Are Application Performance Metrics?

Performance Metrics - Application Performance Metrics

Application performance metrics are measurements used to evaluate and assess:

  • System's efficiency
  • Responsiveness
  • Overall health

When observed, these metrics provide insights into how well an application performs, both from a user perspective and in terms of technical performance.

Developers and operations teams benefit most from observing these metrics in production. They can use metrics to identify issues, optimize performance, and make informed decisions to enhance the user experience and achieve business objectives.

Performance includes, but is not limited to:

  • Availability
  • End-user experience
  • Resource utilization
  • Reliability
  • Responsiveness of software application

Continuously monitoring your application’s metrics is called application performance monitoring.

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Why Measure Application Performance Metrics?

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Application performance metrics allow you and your team to proactively address issues affecting your application. This is particularly important in situations when the application is the business itself.

  1. Monitoring application performance metrics helps your team:
  2. Avoid downtime.
  3. Identify anomalies, troubleshoot, and remediate issues early and before they impact the end users.
  4. Ensure the application’s performance is always optimal.
  5. Keep your end users satisfied.
  6. Drive business growth and better scale your business.

As important as it is to monitor application performance metrics, trying to monitor everything will be time-consuming, ineffective, and unproductive. Thus, tracking the right metrics is much more important, as this will provide better insights and understanding of your application's technical functionality.

Alerty's Cloud Monitoring Advantage

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups, offering:

  • Application performance monitoring
  • Database monitoring
  • Incident management

It supports technologies like NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js, helping developers identify and fix issues. 

  • Alerty monitors databases such as Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS
  • Tracking key metrics like CPU usage and memory consumption
  • It features quick incident management and Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize user experience
  • Its universal service monitoring covers dependencies like Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel. 

Alerty uses AI to simplify setup, providing a cost-effective solution compared to competitors. It is designed for ease of use, allowing quick setup, and integrates with tools like Sentry, making it ideal for developers and small teams needing efficient, affordable monitoring. 

Catch issues before they affect your users with Alerty's free APM solution today! 

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21 Key Application Performance Metrics For Monitoring Apps

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1. Apdex and SLA scores

Apdex and SLA scores are foundational metrics for monitoring application performance. Apdex measures an app's relative performance by setting a goal for the time a web request or transaction should typically take, indicating the app's speed. SLAs are the metrics in customer contracts, with anything below the defined SLA risking a drop in customer experience (CX) and potential penalties.

2. Application availability, aka uptime or web performance monitoring

Application availability is fundamental, measuring whether the application is online and available, often to comply with SLAs. Uptime reflects the system's overall reliability and health. Downtime can negatively impact user satisfaction for organizations offering online services and provide insight into overall system health.

3. Error Rates

Monitoring error rates is crucial to prevent users from encountering errors. Tracking HTTP error percentage, logged exceptions, and thrown exceptions helps identify potential performance issues that can lead to end-user problems and reduce overall application performance.

4. Count of Application Instances

Monitoring the number of server/application instances running is crucial for applications that scale up and down in the cloud. Understanding the number of instances helps auto-scaling meet demand efficiently and save costs during off-peak times, presenting unique monitoring challenges.

5. Throughput

Throughput refers to the number of requests an application can handle within a given timeframe, often measured as requests per second or transactions per second. Monitoring throughput helps assess an application's capacity and scalability, indicating when additional resources or optimizations are needed for efficient performance.

6. Application & Server CPU

Monitoring server and application CPU usage is critical for identifying potential performance problems. Tracking CPU usage per server and across all application instances helps ensure optimal performance and scalability, enabling proactive maintenance and optimization.

7. Garbage collection

Garbage collection helps optimize performance by reclaiming memory allocated to unused or redundant objects. Balancing GC frequency is crucial for maintaining system performance without excessive overhead or memory depletion, ensuring optimal application performance.

8. Request rates

Monitoring request traffic helps identify anomalies, such as sudden increases or decreases in user activity. Correlating request rates with other metrics provides insights into application scalability and potential issues, helping detect and mitigate security threats or performance bottlenecks.

9. Memory Usage

Monitoring memory usage is vital for diagnosing memory-related issues impacting application performance. Understanding memory usage statistics helps identify memory leaks, crashes, and other performance inefficiencies, ensuring optimal application performance.

10. Disk I/O

Observing disk I/O metrics helps users understand the rate of input and output operations on the disk, highlighting potential performance bottlenecks. High disk I/O rates can slow application response times, indicating the need for optimizations or resource allocation adjustments.

11. Network Latency

Measuring network latency helps assess network performance and identify delays in data retrieval between the application and dependencies. High network latency can impact overall application performance, emphasizing the importance of monitoring and optimizing network performance for efficient operations.

12. Security Exposure

Monitoring security exposure helps ensure application and data safety, highlighting vulnerabilities and potential risks. Understanding the coverage of security measures and exposed areas enables proactive risk mitigation and maintenance of secure application environments.

13. Average response time

Calculating average response time provides insights into application performance, with lower response times indicating better performance and user experience. Monitoring response times helps identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, enabling optimizations for enhanced performance.

14. Transaction tracing

Transaction tracing tracks the execution path of transactions within the application, providing insights into request processing and performance. Recording transaction details enables troubleshooting, bottleneck identification, and failure analysis, facilitating proactive maintenance and performance optimizations.

15. Database queries

Monitoring database queries helps identify inefficient queries impacting application performance. Analyzing query performance and optimizing resource-intensive queries enhances application efficiency and user experience, ensuring optimal performance and scalability.

16. Dependency Health

Tracking dependency health helps maintain application uptime by monitoring the status of essential dependencies. Identifying failing dependencies helps prevent disruptions and streamline troubleshooting, ensuring continuous application operation and performance.

17. HTTP Status Codes

Monitoring HTTP status codes helps troubleshoot server performance issues and broken resources, assisting in identifying and resolving common errors. Understanding and visualizing HTTP status codes enhances performance monitoring and maintenance, ensuring optimal application operation.

18. Thread Count

Tracking thread count provides insights into processing activity within the application, identifying bottlenecks and thread leaks. Monitoring thread count helps optimize thread handling and enhance application performance, ensuring efficient operations and scalability.

19. Node availability

Tracking node availability in cloud environments helps assess operational capacity and readiness to handle workload demands. Monitoring node availability facilitates effective disaster recovery planning and quick service restoration during outages, ensuring continuous application performance.

20. Error Logs

Analyzing error logs helps identify recurring errors affecting application health, enabling proactive resolution. Utilizing error logs within comprehensive monitoring analytics dashboards facilitates error prevention and timely resolution, ensuring optimal application performance.

21. User Experience

Monitoring UX metrics, such as click-through rates, bounce rates, and page load times, provides insights into user responses and application usability. Understanding user behavior and experience metrics helps developers identify areas for improvement, enhancing overall user experience and application performance.

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5 Ways To Improve The Performance Of Your Web Application

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1. Bundle and Minify Your Files

One essential optimization technique involves minimizing and optimizing the number of files. The goal is to:

  • Reduce the overall number of files (bundling)
  • Minimize their size (minification)

This practice involves removing unnecessary characters—such as white spaces, comments, new lines, and block delimiters—from CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. Minification reduces the amount of code needed to be requested from the server, which can improve load times.

2. Use Network Caching

Caching is a common technique to enhance an application's throughput and latency. Caches store fetched information temporarily for quicker access later on. Files that change infrequently or static resources are ideal candidates for caching, such as:

  • JavaScript files
  • Images
  • CSS stylesheets

Caches can be implemented at different levels (client, server, CDN, reverse proxies) and can be private (single user) or shared (multiple users).

3. Apply Prefetching Techniques

Prefetching involves executing instructions before user initiation. This technique works by anticipating user actions and loading links or content in advance. Modern browsers support prefetching by default based on user behavior patterns. There are various prefetching types, including:

  • DNS-prefetching
  • Link prefetching
  • Prerendering

Prefetching requires user behavior analysis to make accurate assumptions.

4. Optimizing Images

Optimizing images using appropriate formats (e.g., WebP for web images) and compressing them can reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality. The attribute can be used to implement responsive images that adjust based on the device's screen size.

5. Implementing Lazy Loading

Lazy loading means loading media content like images, videos, or other elements only when they are about to enter the viewport. This approach reduces initial load times and resource consumption. The loading="lazy" attribute in HTML can implement lazy loading effectively.

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Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's Free APM Solution

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service designed specifically for developers and early-stage startups. It offers application performance monitoring, database monitoring, and incident management solutions. This innovative platform supports various technologies, enabling developers to identify and address potential issues efficiently; this includes:

  • NextJS
  • React
  • Vue
  • Node.js,

​​Database Performance Optimization

With Alerty, users can monitor key metrics for databases such as Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS, keeping track of critical indicators like CPU usage and memory consumption. By providing real-time insights into these databases' performance, Alerty empowers developers to proactively manage their applications and address potential bottlenecks before they impact end users.

Rapid Incident Management

One of Alerty's standout features is its quick incident management capabilities, which allow users to respond rapidly to any issues. This ensures that downtime is minimized and performance is optimized for end users. Alerty offers Real User Monitoring (RUM) functionality, enabling developers to gain valuable insights into how users interact with their applications, allowing for further optimization.

Real User Insights

Alerty's Universal Service Monitoring covers a wide range of dependencies, including popular APIs like:

  • Stripe
  • OpenAI
  • Vercel

By providing visibility into the performance of these dependencies, Alerty enables developers to ensure that their applications are running smoothly and efficiently.

Cost-Effective Monitoring

One of Alerty's key advantages is its use of AI to simplify setup, offering a cost-effective solution compared to competitors. This makes the platform attractive for developers and small teams looking for efficient and affordable monitoring solutions. Its integration with tools like Sentry further enhances its usability, making it an ideal choice for teams to streamline their monitoring processes.

Streamlined Management with Alerty

Alerty offers a powerful and user-friendly solution for application performance monitoring, database monitoring, and incident management. By providing developers with the tools they need to manage their applications effectively, Alerty is changing how developers monitor and optimize their applications.

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