Performance is one of the most important concerns when developing an application. All software developers should monitor and improve performance in every layer of the application. From the database to the server-side language, there are plenty of opportunities for performance issues to arise, and the front end is certainly no exception. So that’s why today we’re talking about JavaScript performance and how to improve it.

Customer experience is becoming a key differentiator between competitors. Actually, it already is! If your website is performing poorly, it’s hurting your business. The first step towards improving this performance is using a real user monitoring tool to identify problems and monitor your progress towards improvement.

Since Real User Monitoring first launched in 2015, Raygun has helped thousands of teams identify and resolve front-end performance bottlenecks impacting their customers. Today, we’re excited to announce support for first paint and first contentful paint, along with rich new visualizations designed to help you better identify and diagnose performance problems in your software.

Are you still thinking about last year’s software performance headaches? You aren’t alone. Even large-scale retail apps experience preventable problems like broken payment buttons, and every year we hear of another retail giant that is unable to cope with traffic spikes on Black Friday – a $3 billion e-commerce day. Luckily, many of these software problems can be prevented. We’ve put together a few tips for maintaining performant retail apps so you can be ready for anything.

Raygun’s Launch Notes are your regular round-up of all the improvements we made to Raygun last month — from major features to performance updates. With the release of our new first paint and first contentful paint metrics for RUM, you’ll be able to get a more granular understanding of how users experience your application. We’ve already started the beta, and we will be releasing the feature in the next few weeks. Watch this space!