Have you ever made a download or install decision based on the quality of the app icon? I’ll be the first to confess that in a time where apps are becoming more and more abundant, where you have the choice of hundreds of thousands of apps, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out and find a useful app. Much like in speed-dating, users will make decisions in a matter of seconds, especially considering the mobile context and our increasing demand for instant gratification.

Arguably, the quality of your app icon will increase the chances that users will give your app a fair shot and (hopefully) fall in love with what it offers behind the scenes. In other words, if you put together your app icon without much thought and effort, the chances of a user choosing your app versus skipping it for the next one are close to nil. Does that mean a quality app icon equals a quality app? Certainly not. The same is true for the inverse. However, it will most likely make users at least explore your app in more depth and lead to an install for further evaluation.

So, what does a quality app icon look like? There are plenty of app icon tutorials and resources out there on the net, some better than others. Michael Flarup (on his PixelResort site) has put together one of the better set of guidelines for app icon design (even though it’s a little dated) and I won’t rehash any of it here. The only thing I would augment is the “Stand out from the crowd” section. While Michael shows some good examples, we can push the envelope a bit more. I’ve seen some great concepts come through on Dribbble, a site where some of the top designers hang out and show off their latest works. Here is a small sampling from some work featured on Dribble of how your app icon can stand out even more:

Examples of App Icons that Stand Out

Unfortunately, there is not much, if any, data on what types of icons actually work better in the various app stores. It would be nice to run some A/B testing and get a better understanding. Regardless, making your icon look great is likely a step in the right direction (don’t skimp on the value the actual app provides either). Remember, first impressions matter.

What are your favorite app icons?  Feel free to post in the comments.

David May, Director of Creative Services; W3i, LLC
David has been working in the design industry for over 9 years and carries a fancy B.F.A. with focus in Graphic Design. He’s a native of Germany and loves peanut m&m’s. about everything related to the web and design in general.

What are your favorite app icons?

On March 14, 2011, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). The look and feel changed with the information bar moving to the bottom of the browser and the search bar being integrated into the address bar. But overall, the change in user functionality is what affected add-ons the most. This change also created a very different experience for the user in terms of what they have to do to use add-ons after they install them.

IE9 asks for the user’s consent to enable newly installed add-ons, instead of automatically enabling them from the start:

IE9 Asks for User Consent to Enable Add-ons

When the user clicks Enable, they are shown this screen:

User Must Now Enable Add-Ons

This could lessen the chance of the user actually being able to use the add-on that they installed. They may click Don’t enable or they may just X out of the message completely because they don’t understand what it is or they are annoyed by the messaging.

IE9 also gives the user information on what is slowing down their browser and messages them on a regular basis asking them to speed up their browser by disabling add-ons:

Users Asked to Disable Add-Ons to Speed Up Startup

When the user clicks Disable add-ons, they are shown this screen:

Screen Shown to User When They Click Disable Add-ons

If the add-ons the user has installed and enabled total a load time of more than .2 seconds, the add-ons will show up on this list and the user may choose to disable them. This new functionality helps speed up the user’s browser, but it can also cause the user to want to uninstall all add-ons listed whether or not they really contribute to slowing down their browser.

On November 8, 2011, Mozilla released Firefox 8 (FF8).   This new version adds a new confirmation prompt for add-ons.  This prompt is different depending on whether or not the add-on is installed via an XPI or an EXE.

When an add-on is installed via an XPI, FF8 displays a modal dialog box with an Install Now button:

Modal Dialog Box with an Install Now Button

The user has to click Install Now to enable the add-on(s).  If they click cancel, the add-on(s) will not be enabled for use.

When an add-on is installed via an EXE, FF8 opens a new tab with a checkbox confirmation screen:

Add-on Installed via EXE, FF8 Opens Checkbox Confirmation Screen

By default, the checkbox is not checked, so the user has to check the box next to Allow this installation and then click Continue to be able to use the add-on.  If the user doesn’t check the box and clicks Continue, the add-on will not be enabled.

With the changes these new browser versions bring, it seems that the ultimate goal is speed. Each browser wants to be the fastest. These changes can be seen as both positive and negative for users.  As a positive, users may have a faster browser and not have to wait as long for load times.  As a negative, they have to take additional steps to “enable” add-ons that they have already agreed to install and in some cases, they have agreed multiple times through certain processes that confirm the user is installing what they want to install.

These changes can also be seen as both negative and somewhat positive for add-on developers. As a negative, these changes make it harder for an add-on developer because users have to take additional steps to be able to actually interact with their add-ons.  As a positive, with survival becoming harder and harder for add-ons, it encourages developers to make sure their add-on has a fast load time and it creates enough value so the user will want to take the necessary steps to enable the add-on for use.  However, even with those changes, it doesn’t ensure that the user will “enable” their add-on.  Another alternative for add-on developers might be exploring the options of building out a desktop version of the add-on so the application isn’t affected by any of these changes.

Overall, sometimes change is good and sometimes it’s not so good.  As things change though, we have to roll with those changes and allow ourselves to make the best of them.  We will just have to wait and see what comes next! Do you have any tactics to deal with browser changes?  If so, add them to the comments.

Nicole Virnig, Account Development Manager, W3i, LLC
Nicole focuses on growing W3i business relationships, making sure the  client has what they need to make them successful. If they aren’t  happy, she isn’t happy.

I just returned from the GDC Online (Game Developers Conference) in Austin, TX, and found many of the sessions focused on data and how to use it to grow an app business. This is a subject dear to my heart, as it has helped my company grow our business over the years. For example, in 2004 we created our first business intelligence system and grew the business by more than 400 percent. (Making all the employees quite happy, as they won a trip to the Florida Keys.) Here are some examples of how you can use your data for actionable insights that will have a major impact on your app business.

Optimizing Images for Huge Performance Improvements

It is very important to test and optimize images. Our game investment company, Recharge Studios recently optimized an image in My Pet Zombie that increased the click-through rate (CTR) from 6.6 percent to 32 percent. Just by testing and optimizing the creative, 4.8 times more users clicked the image.

Optimizing the Tutorial Reduced Churn

Not many developers think of optimizing their tutorial. The new iOS game called My Pet Zombie from Riptide Games had a huge churn rate during the game tutorial prior to optimization. By optimizing the tutorial and improving the user interface, My Pet Zombie reduced the churn from 41 percent completion rate to 81 percent completion rate – a 98 percent improvement.

Improving just one particular image in the tutorial saw the churn rate go from 25 percent to 4 percent. The developer focused on the elements circled in pink.

Distribute Through Multiple Channels and Measure the Results

Not all app developers believe in paying for distribution. However, buying the right traffic and knowing the return can have a major impact on scaling your business. By knowing the return on investment (ROI) for each source of distribution, you can make smart buying decisions, but you need to experiment and understand the data. Also, some of the more expensive channels may have the most qualified users and can prove to be your best source of traffic, but you will never know unless you look at the data.

On the left side are various sources of traffic, and on the right side are the user retention rates after 30 days. As you can see, there was a lot of variance in the traffic sources. Once you know what traffic has the best ROI, it is a pretty easy business decision to buy more of that traffic. If you are interested in more information, check out my blog article.

Offer Users More Than One Revenue Stream

Only around 5 percent of users are willing to pay for an app or make an in-app purchase. By adopting an incented purchase model – offering users virtual currency for installing another app, for example – app revenue can more than double.

In this game, Dolphin Play, the user is offered Dolphin Bucks for installing Tap Fish 2.

In a recent case study using the incented, offerwall system, My Pet Zombie’s average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by 131 percent.

Do I have you convinced that to grow your app business, testing and optimization is important? (It’s almost as fun as playing the game itself.) Getting actionable insight from your app stats can turn an unprofitable app into a profitable app. Are there other tests you performed that made a major impact on your revenue? If so, please share the data in the comment section.

Rob Weber, Senior Vice President of Mobile Business Development and Co-Founder, W3i, LLC
Rob is an Internet marketing pioneer with over ten, profitable years evolving W3i in the consumer application industry.

The inverse relationship between image quality and file size is something that every web designer must deal with when creating images for their sites. While this still remains true, there is another step that many people do not even know exists that can shave precious file size off of every image they create for the web.

ImageOptim (for Mac OS X), The Jpeg Reducer (for Windows) and PNGGauntlet  all have similar functionality. All hree programs work by processing images that are dragged into the application and then removes unnecessary data from those images. In a few simple, quick steps you are able to save anywhere from 5% – 30% or more from your web images. And the best part? The  compression methods these  applications use cause no image quality loss. Oh, and it should also be mentioned that all three of these programs are completely FREE.

Three FREE Programs to Reduce File Size

(Mac OS X) JPG + PNG –  ImageOptim

(Windows) JPG – The Jpeg Reducer

(Windows) PNG – PNGGauntlet

Shrinking the file size of your images reduces load times,  saves you bandwidth and makes for happy users across all devices!

Mike Albers, Senior Web Designer, W3i

With more than eight years of webmaster experience, Mike focuses on creating quality websites and landing pages for W3i and its partners.

Analytics were the talk of GDC Online last week.  Apps are getting much more competitive.  You can no longer just build a great app and hope to get discovered and retain your users.  You need to not only market your game but do predictive analysis to improve engagement.

Nick Lim of Sonamine pointed out the following in his session, “Predicting Player Behaviors.”  There are three stages in life cycle  management for games:  1.  Welcome/educate, 2.  Upsell/referrals, and 3. Seek renewal/retention.

Stage 1,  Welcome/educate.  Make your game easy to play with simple tutorials.  Predictive analytics can help you determine where the drop off is in your tutorial (see case study at end of article). The more engaged the user is the higher retention, less churn.  More  engaged users are also easier to upsell.

Stage 2,  Upsell/referrals.  Limit your messaging.  Your game should message the user at the right time with the right message. If you try to upsell too soon, you will overwhelm the user.  The user is only receptive during a brief window.  Predictive analytics can determine the optimum number and timing of messages.  “Spamming” the user causes the following:  numbness, annoyance—user can only do one thing and is trying to focus on the game, waste of money, hurts your reputation and degrades trust.

Stage 3, Seek renewal/retention – Again use predictive analytics to communicate with the user at the right time.

What is the difference between Metrics and Predictive Analytics?

Metrics measure and report the past with 100% certainty.  When using metrics, you can only view correlations between a few variables.  Predictives estimate and predict the future; certainty is impossible.  You can do predictive analysis with 50-100  variables.  Predictive modeling will give you a competitive advantage.

When using predictive analysis you are looking for the users that are “on the fence” as it will be easier to get them to cross the conversion line.

Case study of analytics at work at W3i

Speaking of tutorials. One of Recharge Studios games, My Pet Zombie, had an abnormally high churn rate during the game tutorial.  By optimizing the tutorial and improving the user interface MPZ reduced the churn from a 41% completion rate to a 81% completion rate—a 98% improvement.

My Pet Zombie - Conversions Prior to Test

Through testing churn rate reduced from 41% completion rate to 81% completion rate--a 98% improvement.

Improving just one particular image in the tutorial, shown below, saw the churn rate go from 25% to 4%.   The developer focused on the elements circled in pink.

The churn rate went from 25% to 4% by focusing on the elements circled in pink.

Predictive analytics will give you the information you need to grow your game business or just contact Recharge Studios, and we can help you improve your game marketing.  Have you run any tests that increased performance considerably?  If so, feel free to comment.

Debby Manthei, Director of Marketing Communications, W3i, LLC

Debby’s focus is on app marketing—strategies for increasing user acquisition and monetization for mobile and desktop apps.

With Google  putting more weight on landing page relevance, it is now more important than  ever for you to optimize your landing pages for improved AdWords Quality Scores.   If getting lower CPC, improving ROI, and gaining greater visibility are  important to you, here are a few things to consider when revamping your landing pages:

Get them to your page!

Tip 1: Make sure your load times are  fast.

According to Google, “Users value ads that bring them to the information they want as efficiently as possible…users are less likely to abandon a site that loads quickly.”[1]

Keep them on your page!

Tip 2: Reduce bounce rates by making  sure the user stays engaged.

There are several techniques you can  employ to keep a user engaged once they hit your landing page.

1. Make it user friendly – provide easy  and obvious navigation so the user can quickly find the information they are looking for. If they can’t easily find it, they are likely to navigate off your page.
2. Have a transparent message – make it  clear to the user exactly what your product or service is about.  Lack of clarity reates doubt in the users  mind and when users doubt, they abandon.  Let them know exactly what you are offering through a clear and easy to  understand message.
3. Provide unique and relevant content –  add value to your landing page by including content that will help the user find the information they want, get your transparent message across, and call  the user to action.  This content can include items such as videos, images, ad copy, comparisons, testimonials, reviews  and more.

Make your page relevant!

Tip 3: Stay true to the ads you are serving.

Your landing page should be relevant  to the ad the user clicked to get there.   The keywords in the ad are what got the users attention and that is the  information they are looking for when they land on your page.  Add relevancy for the user by including those  exact and broad match keywords on your landing pages.  Areas of the page where you could place these  keywords include ad copy, metadata such as title tags and meta description  tags, headers, image tags, link anchor text, and even the URL if possible.  The keywords should not be randomly placed to make it appear that your page is relevant, but rather be placed where they make  sense and actually add value to the user.

If you optimize with these three tips  in mind, not only will you increase your Google Quality Score, but you will  also improve the user experience and increase the likelihood a user will take  the desired action for which your page was designed.

Never fear, help is here!

If you are unsure about your landing  page performance or relevance, Google provides a multitude of information to give you a guiding hand.  Here are a few  resources for reference:

Web Speed Tutorials – a treasure trove of articles with tips on performance best  practices for improved load speed.

Google Keyword Diagnosis – a tool provided in your AdWords  account that will show details about your Quality Score.

Use Google Keyword Diagnosis to understand your quality score.

Page Speed Testing Tools – Google recommended free tools for evaluating the speed of your site.

Google AdWords Tips – general tips for overall AdWords  campaign success including tips for keyword selection and placement.

Relevancy Checks and Balances – Do you have any idea what Google  thinks your page is about?  The Google  Keyword Tool allows you to enter your URL and get insight into how Google interprets  your page theme.  This tool will produce  a list of keywords that Google feels are relevant to the content on your  site.

Little changes can mean big results!

We use these tools often at W3i to determine if our landing pages match up to the ads we are serving.  In one test, we used the data from the Google Keyword Tool to make a few quick  changes to the keywords on our landing page resulting in a quality score jump  from 3 to 7. By doing a quick analysis, determining what Google felt was  relevant, and making some keyword alterations, we were able to drop our minimum  CPC from $.20 to $.05 on highly competitive brand terms.

Keeping up with Google can be challenging,  but if you evaluate your keywords and landing pages regularly, utilize the many tips and tools at your disposal, and implement changes for Quality Score  improvement, you can have much success with your Google Adwords campaigns.

Randi Kucala, Account Development Manager, W3i,  LLC

A proponent for business partner and user satisfaction, Randi endeavors to make  every interaction with W3i a positive one. She specializes in copy writing and  on-page SEO.

Have you ever wondered how your user interacts with your website or application? Tools like Crazy Egg and even Google Analytics offer some insights for web pages, but what about desktop applications? Inspired by Firefox 3.6 Main Window Usage Study, we thought it would be interesting to gain insight into our user behavior through heatmaps. We implemented functionality to capture click events throughout the installation process and then compiled that data into heatmaps.

Needless to say, we were more than a little surprised by what we saw. Users were doing some very unusual things with static pages.  We were able to couple the heatmap results with our vast array of existing metrics and successfully improve the user experience based on user behavior and intent. Here are a couple of examples of what we found.

One example of how we used heatmaps was on the Yahoo! screen where people have the option of installing the Yahoo! Toolbar. The areas with orange and red are areas that were most clicked on, even though this is a static disclosure page. See anything interesting?  That’s right, many users were clicking on the image of the toolbar, in particular the search field. There could be a number of reasons for this, but our hypothesis was that the user was confused by the image, so we removed it and added textual information instead. The new version removes confusion about whether the screenshot was an actual toolbar or not and focuses more on taking the steps necessary to install the toolbar, still providing the necessary language to enable the user to make an informed decision. The results? Less confused users and big performance gains without affecting attrition.

Use Heatmaps to Guide You in Optimization

Another example of how W3i used heatmaps is on our proprietary recommendation engine, InstallIQ™. From reviewing the heatmaps, several areas of the installer were getting a large amount of unexpected clicks.

Notice the checkmark and the area around the checkmark at the bottom is a widely clicked area as is the progress indicator strip towards the top. In an attempt to improve the installation process for the user, we crafted a small instructional message that appears when these areas are clicked, informing the user what steps to take next. Again, we observed gains in performance.

Heatmaps Help You Improve the User Experience

Clearly, there is value in the knowledge gained from being able to track clicks within a process and taking a crack at getting a better picture of user behavior.  As with any optimization process, heatmap testing  is an iterative experience, so if you don’t see gains the first time keep trying, it will come.

Heatmaps are one of many  great  tools available to improve your process or application and aid in understanding your users behavior and intent.  If you’d like to know more about heatmap testing at W3i, please contact your Account Manager.  We’d love to work with you to reduce friction for your users.

Jessie Golombiecki, Marketing Specialist, W3i
Jessie uses her experience in internet marketing, graphic design and testing to lead the charge in marketing management optimizing all touchpoints with consumers.

Good day, App Marketers, we previously wrote about how to improve your ranking in the App Store.  I just listened to a 30+ minute podcast by a couple app developers with a few more tips that boiled down to the following:

1.  Be realistic and follow the money.  It is tough to get started marketing apps these days.  If you find a niche, it is all-out war to conquer the space.  The title of your app is very important; try to capture a key search term. Colin from Spreadsong mentioned that his success was due to recognizing that “free books” should be in the title to capture the searches for free books.  He then tweaked the title to Free Books – Classics to capture the audience of the competitive app.  Rishi & Anirudh from Fliplab mentioned that they created one of their first apps around a “hot trend” in the UK—Barclay bikes (a new start-up business) and received a tremendous amount of  press.  They also mentioned that the app was high quality and offered the user value.

2.  Their second tip was focusing on the icons.
You MUST have an icon that stands out and gets attention.  The first icon for Free Books used loud  colors—red and yellow but was of fairly low quality so they felt it did the job initially but also turned off some of the audience.  In order to succeed in the current app stores you need pop, quality and brand.  Colin recommends comparing the app to the top ranking apps in the app store charts to see if it pops out so it catches potential new users eyes.  Think  outside the box and do something different—what do you have to lose?

London Cycle App Icon

Talking Gremlin App Icon-Make sure it POPS!

Free Books App-Quality images draw quality app users.

To listen to the entire podcast: http://www.appteardown.com/

Do you have any additional tips on getting better ranking in the app stores?  If so, please respond in comments.  Contact W3i to consult on monetization models for your app.  We would love to share what we’ve learned in monetization, distribution and optimization; and will work with you to grow your app business.

Debby Manthei, Director of Marketing Communications, W3i, LLC

Debby’s focus is on app marketing—strategies for increasing user acquisition and monetization for mobile and desktop apps. 

Your landing page is the first impression visitors have when they hit your site.  It’s here you get the chance to market your product or service quickly and efficiently.   The general goal of the landing page is conversion.  Making sure your page is in tip-top shape matters to your bottom line.

The following are a few tips to make sure you’re doing all you can to increase conversions.  Some may not be new to you, but illustrate why it may be worthwhile for you to revisit your landing page to see if there’s room for improvement. You can read tips 1- 11 here.

12.) Testimonials. Share reviews of your products from your users.

13.) Terms & Conditions.  Make them understandable and easy to read.

14.) Always, always, always tell the truth! Remember good and bad experiences will be shared with friends.

15.) Don’t hide the price. They found you because they’re looking for a specific product or service.  Tell them how much your product costs and don’t make them dig for it.

16.) Use word of mouth, the social media way: add social media sharing buttons so they can tell others about your cool product!

17.) Subscription or Lead Forms – Get them right!

18.) Make them clear and concise – keep your visitors happy by asking only the info you truly need.  Too many questions are a sure-fire turnoff.

19.) Keep your form “above the fold”. They need to see it without scrolling.

20.) Use large enough fonts and action buttons that are easy to read and identify.

21.) Tell users why they’re filling the form out.

22.) Say “thanks” after the form is filled out.

23.) Testing – Assume Nothing.  Test Often.

Consider building two identical landing pages and vary the features slightly.  Test them both to determine the better conversion rates.  Then build another to test again.  Test again and again to make sure your landing page is easy to use and meets your users’ needs.

Use analytics reporting to gather information about your users.  Know where they came from, how long they stayed and adjust accordingly.

Consider utilizing heat maps to provide insight into visitor behavior.  You can see where people are clicking or being drawn toward.  You’ll quickly see non-hyperlinked images where users are expecting action and can correct.  High traffic spots may be a great place for an ad to be placed.

These are just a few important tips but you can see why landing pages are crucial to the success of your app.  For additional tips on optimizing your landing page, contact W3i at info@w3i.com.

Sue Ann Heck, Account Development Manager, W3i, LLC

Sue Ann has extensive experience in account management and prides herself in building quality, long-term relationships with W3i’s valued partners.

So you created a killer new app, tested it thoroughly, ran a beta test by some early adopters and now it’s time for release.

Many things can go wrong in the wild. Computer configurations vary greatly and users have a wide variety of system settings and hardware configurations. Many variables can affect the performance of your app—slow Internet connection, low-end hardware, buggy drivers and antivirus software to name just a few. It’s not uncommon to release an app and find out later it is failing on one segment of computers—and even worse…you have no idea why nor can you reproduce the problem in a lab!

More often than not, all you will hear is “it’s not working,” and for every one of those you can assume there are ten more who simply uninstall your product and move on.

You can save yourself a lot of time and aggravation by building performance monitoring into your app. It is a great way to gain insight into how your app is performing for your users, and it will help you react quickly and fix problems before your app fades into obscurity because of poor app performance.

Plan from the Beginning

Plan to implement app performance monitoring from the beginning. As with any code change, it is more difficult and far more expensive to go back and retrofit performance monitoring. Although there are some methods that don’t require extra code at all, you at least want to make sure that you are ready with whatever tools you use on the release date.

Have a Method to Receive Information

There are a number of ways to send information from your app. If you are creating your own solution, the most common method is a simple POST operation to a web page on your server. From this page you can capture information and store it in a database or save log files to disk. You can then query the data to find out if problems are occurring on a particular type of computer or system configuration. If you don’t have a database, you can simply capture files, or if you want an even simpler solution, just set up some hidden pages to track a hit counter. This won’t give you as much information but it can still help you find out if a particular type of problem is happening.

There are third party solutions available too. For example, Microsoft’s Windows Error Reporting (WER) is a set of technologies that captures crash data and makes it available to developers. WER provides reporting as well as dump files, which enable you to load a crashed session into your debugger and view stack trace and variables at the point of failure. You need to follow certain steps when building your app to make crash data useful. You also need to setup a Winqual account to access the information. The service is a bit cumbersome to use, but it can be a very powerful tool to help diagnose problems in the wild.

Know when your App is Performing Badly

Having the tools to capture information is great, but it’s not going to help much if you don’t know when to capture it. If you’re using a third party solution to capture crash data, information gathering is usually automatic, but if you are building error logging and reporting into your app, you want to spend some time during design and development to identify the key performance points and build in measures to detect when the app is not performing optimally. It may be tracking download time if your app downloads files from the Internet, or detecting application errors and crashes. Whatever it is, take the time to build these measures into your app and trigger an action whenever they fall below an established baseline.

Be Sensitive with User’s Personal Information

In any scenario where you are sending information back to your servers be aware of privacy concerns and take care both to inform your users and ensure that you are not unintentionally sending sensitive data. Data collection practices should be covered by your privacy policy. It is also good practice to prompt the user and ask for permission before transmitting data to your servers.

Capture System Information

Problems in the wild—especially those that cannot be reproduced in a lab—are often related to system configuration. You want to capture this information so you can quickly find out if a group of users having problems have the same system setup. It may be a particular version of Windows, a driver, a version of a shared component or possibly even conflict with another app such as a virus scanner. There are a number of API functions that you can use to gather system info. You can also find system info in the registry along with info about other apps installed on the computer. For example you can look under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall to get a list of software that is installed on the computer. If you are using shared components such as MFC or .NET, you should locate the relevant DLLs and get version information. Version information for your own app and components is also important. After releasing updates you want to know if errors are happening in the new version or the older ones.

Capture Error Data

Of course the most important information is: what happened? You want to capture either a crash dump or some kind of log file (or both if you can). Crash dumps can be obtained through Winqual or you can capture your own by building support into your application. Log files may be easier to deal with, but they don’t always give you the detailed information such as stack trace and variable values. Log files also require you to add lots of code to write messages to a file. However, log files can often provide information you won’t get from a dump file, such as the chain of actions a user took leading up to a crash. This is why it’s a good idea to employ both methods whenever possible.
Take care when adding logging to your app. You need to ensure that log files roll over regularly and don’t accumulate indefinitely on the user’s computer. Also make sure they don’t grow too large to send. In particular, watch out for loops which can dump thousands of messages into your log file. It’s a good idea to add safety checks to your logging routines to check if the log file has gone over a predetermined limit.

Conclusion

Computer configurations and installed software vary greatly in the wild and are often the cause of app performance problems that were missed in testing. There are far too many combinations to test thoroughly in a lab or during development. While rigorous testing is key to quality assurance during the development phase, having a strategy to diagnose and fix post-release problems is also a very important part of managing your application life cycle.

Bill Zitomer, Software Development Team Lead, W3i, LLC
Bill uses his over twenty years experience to build W3i’s core desktop products as well as back-end technologies.