Improving the loading of the home screen

Ideas đź’ˇ
#1

Currently, it looks like the total amount of investment, the “graph” and the “investments” sections on home screen are all loaded and displayed together at the same time.

I usually get a blank screen for 3 to 4 seconds before everything appears all at the same time. This is not ideal comparing most of my other apps nowadays pretty much show something useful once opened.

I’m not sure which one of three sections is slow to load but there should be ways to fix this by just loading and displaying them separately. My guess is that the “graph” is slow because a lot of data is needed for it.

Personally, I don’t pay too much attentions to the “graph” on the home screen because I don’t think it reflects the performance of my current investments (e.g. it spikes every time I deposit some cash into my account and that should have nothing to do with the performance of my portfolio). What I usually do is go through my investments and might do something with one of them, e.g. look at the P/L, go into it and look at the average cost etc.

Could someone look into this please? It shouldn’t require too much efforts to improve but I think it could be a big win for both the users and FT as well.

#2

I agree this is an ongoing issue. The app takes a long time to load and then the portfolio value takes at least 10 seconds to refresh. The messaging/notification system can also be quite laggy.

#3

I would say mine on android takes less than a second

1 Like
#4

Interesting. I’m an iPhone XR user for reference so could be an iOS issue.

#5

I’m on Android as well (Oneplus 6T). It takes 3-4 seconds not only on first opening the screen, but even switch from another tab back to the home screen.

I’m happy to assist FT if they can’t reproduce it.

#6

I am using Android as well and it takes 3-4 secs to load. I agree maybe the graphs should not be in the first page.

#7

Mine loads instantly after entering the pin, android, S8. Odd

#8

It seems it’s related to the size of your portfolio.

I’ve got both basic account, which only has 4 holdings, and the ISA account, which currently hold 18 investments. The basic account loads faster than the ISA account (I feel it’s about half of the time it takes for the ISA account).

I guess this is all down to the amount of data loaded when entering the screen. It could be loading a lot of extra data, e.g. the activities of each investment, so that it loads faster later on when opening each individual investment.

I think there’s definitely room to improve the performance of home screen. It’s probably not obvious for new users to the app or people with small portfolio. But the more you use it, the more annoying it feels. Maybe I should just stop checking my portfolio every time I pickup my phone :sweat_smile:.

But I guess this is low priority for FT for now although it’d be great if they can improve it sooner than later.

#9

Maybe they’re trying to encourage good investor behaviour (not checking your portfolio too often) :slight_smile: