Speed
The User Experience must be fast.
As we detailed in a previous article, Google has changed the ranking metrics for websites to optimize UX (user experience.) Google’s Cores Web Vitals influence a website’s Google search rankings and how well it works on the popular Chrome browser. Google’s outsized influence on the web makes their Core Web Vitals the de facto standard for good web design.
Two of these metrics focus on the speed of your website—how fast it loads and how fast it responds to inputs. Slow loading and reaction speeds feel excruciating to users, causing them to abandon a site prematurely out of frustration. Optimizing speed is not only good practice, it’s essential.
The key to speed
Achieving faster website speeds is somewhat technical. Yet the underlying concept is relatively simple––don’t present users with content until they need it.
Three key to speed is to quickly load a stable framework and then optimally position your content for speedy, on-demand access. This will make your site smaller, less cluttered, and faster.
These three principles can help guide your planning:
- Use a framework that allows you to manage content flow.
- Strategically map your pages and your content flow to keep your site uncluttered both visually and on the backend.
- “Outsource” content to larger, faster, more geographically strategic, networks, so it can load faster without affecting your page.
Speed checklist
When working with your developer, you’ll want to use technologies and techniques that streamline your pages. This checklist is a great starting point:
- Choose VPS* not shared hosting
- Maximize browser caching
- Make images Internet friendly (smaller files)
- Don’t overuse “plugins” and CMS* features
- Host your content on a CDN*, not on your page
- Only load content for a page that’s currently open
- Have content load as your scroll
* See below:
VPS—virtual private server. Instead of being on a single dedicated server or a shared plan, content is distributed across the Internet on large server farms. This speeds up website loading based on geography and real-time Internet traffic.
CMS—content management system. The framework behind most modern websites, CMS keeps them very stable and makes updating content easy. Examples: WordPress, Shopify and Squarespace.
CDN—is content delivery network. This brings features similar to VPS to your content. Broad distribution allows much faster loading. Examples: Amazon’s AWS, Google Cloud and Cloudflare.
UX 2022 Series
In 2022, good UX has become the standard for good website design. In this series we look more closely at important UX features, learn how they work and how they can improve a website.
Here are other articles in this series:
Core Web Vitals: Googles three essentials to user experience.