We recently took a big family road trip out west. We wound through New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and even a bit of Oklahoma before returning to Texas. We stopped to check out the cemetery plots of our frontiersman ancestors, and got great use out of a National Parks pass that we picked up at White Sands.
Life on the road presents obstacles that we don’t face at home. Among them: Internet speed!
At a historic hotel in New Mexico, I found myself hovering downstairs in the lobby near the router trying to upload a couple of things online to keep colleagues unblocked.
This reminded me of one aspect of the whole “UI/UX” space that often goes unmentioned by us design types - performance!
On both websites and digital product experiences, users expect pages to load fast, react quickly when they interact, and not jump around as they are rendering.
It’s a good idea to keep an eye on Google Core Web Vitals (CWV). A recent article from the online usability testing tool Loop 11 suggests the following actions:
Monitor both desktop and mobile performance metrics
Optimize images (decreasing the file sizes of images without sacrificing their quality)
Use lazy load to load the elements that are visible on the screen and postpone additional loading until the user scrolls.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to get your UI’s content physically closer to users, reducing load time
Reduce the negative impacts of JavaScript, by avoiding it where you can and render-blocking or minifying it where you can’t avoid it.
Stabilize your site layout by holding appropriate space on the UI before things load
You’ll likely want to work with a designer and developer in order to accomplish much of the above, but the investment can really pay off. If you need help increasing performance for your users, we offer a range of flexible programs. Book a consultation to see if there’s a fit.
Not only do fast-loading experiences satisfy users better, but they also reduce abandonment. There’s a whole cycle of benefits—lower abandonment can mean more conversion ($$$!) and higher rankings in search, leading to more traffic.