Why a good front-end is the primary necessity of any digital solution and how can you, as a web/mobile designer or app owner, can be built a performance-optimized front-end for its users.
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How to Build a High-Performance Front End for Your Digital Product
1.
2. Google Play Store and iTunes are piled up with mobile applications. The web is flooded
with websites and web apps. Increasing competition in the digital era has tensed the
competition for every business, so everyone tried to go extra miles to please its visitors or
users.
Are you also thinking to start with mobile/web app development for your existing
business or new venture/idea?
If yes, thrive towards designing a high-performance front-end. It’s not just important, but
essential.
In this article, we will explain why a good front-end is the primary necessity of any digital
solution and how can you, as a web/mobile designer or app owner, can be built a
performance-optimized front-end for its users.
Why should your Digital Entity/Product have a
High-Performance Front End?
Consider these cases:
Kissmetrics says that 40% of visitors close a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to
load, resulting in a high bounce rate. Similarly, a slow mobile app will too result in a bad
performance, irritating the users. In a few trials, the user will uninstall your app and
download a better app which provides the convenience of use.
3. Not so good.
Performance of the app is directly related to the convenience of use and user-friendliness
of that particular digital solution. If compromised, it affects user experience and reduces
the chances of users’ regular interaction or long-term association with the app or website.
On the other hand, web or mobile app development, done keeping front end performance
in mind, boosts the chances of success of your product. Hence, fast-loading, SEO-
friendly, performance-optimized and well-designed app/website should be your first
motive.
Before we proceed towards understanding how to craft a performance-oriented front
end development services, let us tell you a few prerequisites for the same –
Development Strategy
Minimalist design is so far the best approach for UI and front end development. Be it an e-
commerce website, utility app or business website, this approach never fails to impress
the visitors and users. Minimal layout not only ensures that the user has least distractions
while using the solution but also improves the performance due to fewer UI elements
presence on each page/screen.
4. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript seem to be the best combination for developing the front end.
Precise text in each section, optimized high-resolution visual content, and well-placed UI
elements are some more aspects which improve performance of front end.
In the end, careful interlinking and navigation labels result in improving the overall user
experience and performance.
Tools and Techniques to Prefer
Technical aids like tools to test page loading speed (e.g. Pingdom) should be used by front
end developers to ensure the good performance of the final solution. Similarly, Chrome
developers’ tools, performance-trackers, LightHouse, etc. can be utilized to further polish
your app and make its operations smoother than before.
In the process, techniques like image optimization, deferring of scripts, code
optimization, asset minification, etc. should be done too.
7 Things to remember while Developing Front end of a
Performance-Centric App/website
Assuring that your app or website performs as per user expectations or exceeds the
benchmark is very much needed in you want to come up as a tough competition for the
existing rivals in the same field. To do so, knowing our 7 secret tips may help. Check out
our list of ways to improve front end –
5. 1. Utilize CDNs and Compress Files
Content Delivery Networks, or CDNs, are very helpful in building a light-weight front end
for your web or mobile solution. These web directories have a global well-performing
network. Using files stored on CDNs lets you use the cached files from nearest servers,
increasing the load speed for your app. With its help, you can serve more users rapidly
and avoid bottleneck issues.
Next thing after using common files from CDNs is – compressing the files to be used. From
documents to images (JPEG, PNG), videos, audio clips, and presentations – every file can
be compressed, in order to improve the performance of your app. There are plenty of
compression tools in the market, which could be used for this purpose.
Once you will perform these two tasks, your application or website will become relatively
very responsive to the users’ queries.
2. GET and AJAX Requests
Gone are those days when users were ready to wait for loading of the complete page on
every request. In current times, if your app does not allow dynamic section loading of
content, users won’t prefer using it. Hence, AJAX and GET become your necessity. Let us
explain what these both terms imply for:
6. GET Request
Whenever a user fills a form in your app, you have two ways to send the data to the server
for querying or storing. One is GET, another is POST. POST method requires two steps to
complete user request, while GET needs just one.
GET sends the values of form variables in URL, therefore, visibly. The benefit here is – fast
loading while the threat is data security. So, whenever you have to send normal data
which needs no hiding, GET can be trusted upon. It will speed up the form submission for
you.
AJAX
AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript. Have you seen search boxes showing
suggestions to complete the term you are typing? That’s because of AJAX. AJAX is
generally used for loading different sections of a webpage or screen dynamically. It
means, people using your app won’t have to wait for reloading of a whole page when they
try doing some small task through it.
3. Bundle and Minify Assets
A Good front end development expert never forgets to bundle and minify the CSS and
JavaScript files of his project. Bundling, here, is the process of merging multiple files with
the same extension and reducing the repetitive parts. On the other hand, minification is
about compressing these files, reducing blank spaces, comments or duplicate characters,
etc.
7. The sole purpose of doing bundling and minification is to optimize the front end code,
thereby reducing the size of files. This step improved the performance of your project and
ensures faster loading of elements/pages/screens.
You may also use critical CSS techniques in this step. It divides the critical and non-critical
CSS elements into two files. Critical CSS loads at the beginning of page loading while the
non-critical part loads thereafter. Due to this, the user becomes able to view the required
page elements very quickly, ensuring even better user experience.
4. Don’t ignore the importance of HTTPS
Google’s browser has started highlighting ‘Not Secure’ for websites or web apps, which do
not use HTTPS yet. And if you are an e-commerce business or need to make users pay for
some service, importance of Secured HTTP (i.e. HTTPS) is even more.
We are counting the use of HTTPS in performance-related aspects as it is potent enough to
make or break things. There are high chances that page visitors will leave your site on
seeing this. On the other hand, 90% of buyers will not make any purchase from such
website. Additionally, integrating a reliable payment gateway will be very tough for you if
you don’t have an SSL Certificate. All said and done – always use HTTPS for your website if
you want to appear a trustworthy organization or business.
8. 5. Allow Caching
If the script is redundant or repetitive, simply allow caching for it. This practice will
improve the performance of your app by manifolds. Caching can be enabled for AJAX
requests too. As all the queries are executed numerous times, servers can be saved from
heavy traffic by allowing caching.
Content and code files should be cached in order to achieve the best performance. By
doing so, you will be able to serve users’ requests way faster and hence, they will
experience improved UI performance.
Additionally, you can also enable 3 types of caching or pre-fetching in your projects,
namely – Link Pre-fetching, DNS pre-fetching and pre-rendering. The process of pre-
fetching is very simple and reduces the page load time significantly. You can pre-fetch
URLs, images, CSS, JS, etc. using this technique.
6. Avoid URL Redirects and Empty SRC/HREF tags
Unnecessary URL redirects increase the page loading time and hence, result in degraded
user experience. In the case of mobile browsers, this delay could be even more. To
prevent this situation, reduce the number of requests for the redirecting URL as much as
possible.
9. Similarly, empty img SRC or HREF tags are bad for the web page’s performance in many
browsers. Such behavior sends redundant traffic to the server and slows down the page
loading process. Hence, better is to avoid using these tags when these are not required.
7. Remove Every Unnecessary or Redundant element
External requests, DNS lookups, 404 pages, unnecessary code or script files, irrelevant
images or media files, unsupported or depreciated components, DOM elements, CSS rules
which are not needed – there are so many things which we leave in a project needlessly.
Little did we know, this mistake can degrade the performance of our website, mobile app
or web app.
However, this problem can be solved easily.
All you need to do is – remove whatever is not required. Add an optimization step in your
front end development process so that you do not forget to remove all such elements from
your product. Once done, you will experience elevated performance and better efficiency
guaranteed.
Conclusion
Apps and websites are assessed at first glance through its frontend and UI. Convenient of
use, smooth navigation and fast-loading are a few factors, which decides that a user will
or will not use your digital product in the future. Therefore, it is important to take care of
the performance efficiency of a web solution – be it an RoR App or an e-commerce
website. With the tips we’ve shared above, you will definitely be able to do so.
10. Thank You
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