There's no doubt images play a significant role in improving the user experience of any website. They can help showcase products, instill emotions, build trust, or even encourage viral sharing. A wide body of research shows that they can significantly boost conversion rates compared to text-only versions of a website.
At the same time, HTTP Archive estimates that 64% of the average website's size comes from images, which makes them a large contributor to page-load speed. Of course, page-load speed has its own impact on conversion rates, search engine optimization, and the overall user experience. Visitors demand a fast and responsive website.
Read about how to optimize your images for less load times while maintaining quality, so you can realize the best of both worlds.
Use the following best practices to ensure that your web application delivers the best possible user experience.
- Reduce Dependencies
Modern web application development involves the use of many third-party libraries, plugins, and other dependencies. These dependencies may contain bottlenecks that slow down your overall application, particularly if they’re hosted off-site.
- Minify & Compress Assets
Many web applications have large JavaScript files, such as single page applications (SPAs), and extensive CSS assets. You can shrink the size of these assets through a combination of minification and compression.
- Database Optimization
Databases are a common source of bottlenecks, particularly if SQL queries aren’t properly designed. Caching can help reduce the number of queries, while indexing can help improve efficiency in performing lookups and other queries.
- Use Fonts Sparingly
Web fonts are very popular in web design, but they can add extra requests to external resources, particularly when using Google Fonts. You should limit fonts to only those that you need while using modern formats like WOFF2.
- Use Prefetching Strategies
Modern browsers enable developers to prefetch assets before a user actually performs an action. For instance, you can start loading a resource after a hover action before a user clicks a link in a single page application.
LoadNinja makes it easy for developers to debug these issues with access to specific browser instances. You can also easily integrate these tests into a continuous integration and deployment process to run seamlessly with each sprint.
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