Let’s learn how to make your website and web app load faster. Here are a few ways from our side.
Be it an artificial intelligence or a database for your apps and websites, you can optimise everything that is about writing code.
Yes, but the only things that are pulling you back are your restraints regarding time and requirements.
What is Front end of a Website or Web App?
Now if you are new to the terms front-end, then let us tell you, front-end in web application programming is how the website or web app appears or interacts with you when you are working with it.
On the other hand, back-end comprises of the codes as well as he infrastructure that makes the front-end work.
Both the front-end and the back end of any web app or website is equally important. And, optimising both of them is quite imperative, however, covering it all with a single blog would be injustice to both of them.
So, here in this blog we will be discussing the optimisation of just the front-end.
How to Optimise the Front-end?
HTML, CSS, and last but not least, JavaScript are the three primary component of the front-end of any website or web app.
Let’s get started with them.
HTML
HTML is a component of the front-end which focuses on creating the basic structure of any website or web app.
So, it is really not a very vital factor when it comes to the loading speed of a website. Which means, optimising it will not be of a great help.
Minification
The only things that can help you optimise the HTML of a website or web app are the usual minification techniques. These minification practices include eradicating line breaks as well as duplicate spaces, omitting attributes, etc.
These changes bring down the amount of code necessary for downloading while loading a website, hence, positively catalyses the loading speed.
CSS
Bundling
CSS files can turn quite big as they are responsible for developing the layout as well as the presentation of your website.
So, to optimise the files, web developers split the components of CSS into several parts. These parts are called bundles.
In order to perform splitting, you need to have certain set of tools.
Moreover, your entire team should be on the same page regarding this splitting procedure. This is because, often splitting components into bulky bundles can negatively affect the performance of your website.
On the other hand, too many of tiny splits can also affect your website in a similar way.
So, in order to get the best results out of bundling, make sure that you measure the performance of the website beforehand.
Minification
Just like your HTML files you can also minify CSS files too.
Minification of these CSS files help in eliminating new lines, white space characters as well as comments. This makes the overall code much smaller in size up to 20%.
JavaScript
As JS is responsible for controlling the behaviour of a few UI elements, optimisation of JavaScript can really make a considerable difference in the loading speed of a website or web app.
Bundling
Just like CSS, you can also optimise the components of JavaScript through bundling.
Bundling in JavaScript plays a quite vital role in the optimisation and thus, it is performed quite often for any big website. It helps massively in bringing down the number of codes necessary for downloading while a user enters a website for the very first time.
Instead, the website visitor is just liable for downloading the codes required to see a particular page, and not the entire website.
Minification
Minification of data is also possible while working on JavaScript in order to optimise the front-end to achieve fast loading speed.
Although, unlike CSS and HTML, the tools used for minification in JS are rather automated and do not require manual intervention.
Tree Shaking
The basics of this procedure is quite understandable just by the name of it.
Yes, you got it right. Tree Shaking helps removing all the dead or unused codes from your website.
Mostly, the codes written by web developers do have a significant role in a website, but at times, some parts of those codes become outdated or get substituted by technology, hence, new codes.
Such codes can be easily removed without hampering any part of your website through tree shaking.
Library Selection
Keeping an eye on the size of libraries that you add to your codes is quite important. And, as libraries increase the entire size of a website, you should always consider adding them only if they are necessary.
For this, you can make use of an extension called Import Cost VS Code. This useful tool helps viewing the size of your imported library.
Other Techniques
There are also certain optimisation tricks that are not directly related to the code of your website or web app. Let’s check them out.
Image Optimisation
Optimising images present on your website or web app can really prove to be quite efficient when it is about increasing loading speed. This is because, images consist of about 50% of the entire content.
As different image sizes are used as per the required screen size of the device, using WebP format proves to be quite useful. And, Google agrees on the same.
Tool Selection
For optimising further, it is extremely important to select the best architecture, libraries as well as frameworks for your web project.
So, before going ahead with the optimisation of your project, it is extremely important to have a sound understanding of these elements.
Usually, the project architect is the one who makes these decisions.
Load Testing
A QA engineer is responsible for using special scripts as well as macros that emulate instantaneous requests to a given server in order to check if there are any performance bottlenecks present.
They also study the web app in order to find if there are any issues present while the app performs under heavy load.
This entire procedure is called load testing.
Apache Jmeter is a popular tool used to perform load testing.
Caching
Be it data loaded in your browser, database content, API codes, or even the data running between the database and API, everything can be cached.
You can also save the cache data in a file that is located in a separate database.
So, clearly there are numerous ways to store your cache data and optimise your website or web app for faster loading.
In fact, for progressive web apps you also have the option to store data in your mobile devices through mobile apps and work offline.
Performance Testing
This is usually the last testing procedure which is performed in order to find out if there are any issues left that are hindering the app or website from performing its best.
QA analysts usually make use of a tool named Lighthouse. It helps improving the quality of a web app or site as well as enhancing the performance of the same by mentioning the areas where optimisation is required.
Content Delivery Networks or CDN
This is another useful way of enhancing the loading speed of a website or web app.
This makes a website visitor download the code of your website from the geographically nearest server, instead of downloading it directly from yours.
Server Response Compression
Tools like GZIP play a crucial role in decreasing page load time by compressing server responses.
However, if your website or web app is not that slow, it is better to avoid this technique as the time required to zip and unzip the entire data of your website might result in negatively affecting the loading time.
Final Thoughts
A proper and organised strategy is required in order to optimise your web app or site effectively.
And, if performed well enough, things might turn out pretty well on your favour.
Although, it is always a wise decision to have an expert web development team by your side which can steer the ship in difficult waters. And, eSearch Logix can do that for you better than anyone else.
All you need to do is getting in touch with us for a free consultation session.
