App Size Matters I
Article Summary
Gonçalo Alvarez from Farfetch drops a hard truth: your bloated app is costing you users, installs, and market share. Here's why app size is a business problem, not just an engineering one.
This is the first in a series from Farfetch's engineering team on mobile performance. Alvarez breaks down how app size directly impacts business metrics and why treating it as a performance budget matters for international growth and user retention.
Key Takeaways
- Top app sizes grew 1,000x in a decade while download speeds only 20% yearly
- Data costs 3.5x more in developing markets, making large apps a barrier
- Larger apps get uninstalled first, affecting app store rankings and discoverability
- User expectations scale with size: a 500MB calculator will get destroyed in reviews
App bloat creates a widening gap between size and download capability that directly hurts adoption, retention, and international market penetration.
About This Article
Farfetch noticed that as mobile apps grow larger, users expect more from them. Meeting those expectations gets harder, which can lead to poor experiences and negative reviews that turn away potential new users.
The team found several ways to reduce app bloat. They optimized images according to Apple and Google design guidelines, removed files that weren't needed, assessed whether third-party SDKs were worth keeping, and used app thinning along with remote resources.
Farfetch created a methodology to treat mobile app size as a business factor. They built performance budgets and business propositions that account for app size in decision-making. Their upcoming article series will explain the details.
