How to Improve Website Performance by Focusing on Front End

There may be countless ways to improve your website's performance and make it stand out from others in your respective country.

There are a number of factors that come into play here and compromise the experience you offer through your platform.

You can solve a majority of these problems by focusing on the front end. Optimizing it may be comparatively easier than working on server-side components.

Plus, you can't always access or make changes to server settings, especially when leveraging shared hosting. So, you can start with the front end and see how things work out.

The following are a few useful tips that may come in handy:

1. Identify the Issues

To improve the performance of your website, it's essential to start by identifying the pages that affect the overall user experience.

If certain pages are unimportant and causing problems, the best course of action is to remove them.

If deleting the pages is not a viable option, you may have to look for CSS, HTML, and JavaScript issues.

The images may also lead to website performance issues as they affect the load time of the respective pages.

The goal is to optimize the page components, keeping their size as small as possible. The quicker the components load, the higher the performance of your site will be.

2. Optimize Images

You may find issues with different components of your pages. Image optimization problems are quite frequent.

Two things may lead to such issues: the size of the images you use on your website and the image format.

The acceptable formats that you may want to consider are JPEG, GIF, and PNG. You should avoid using WebP format, as it's new and lacks browser compatibility.

Furthermore, you should find the right balance between image size and quality. When you try to reduce the size of your images, there's always a risk of pixelation. So, you need to be careful and not overdo it.

3. Leverage CSS and JavaScript Minification

A bulky code is another reason your website may end up performing poorly. Hence, minifying CSS and JavaScript files may serve as a viable tactic to improve the user experience you offer.

To do this, you may need to consider removing unnecessary characters, such as lines, tabs, spaces, and so on.

It makes your code clean and reduces the file size drastically. As a result, your website becomes lighter and performs better.

Your pages don't take long to load, and your visitors can quickly access the information published.

There are a variety of tools available that you can leverage for minification. The selection of these tools depends on your goals and preferences.

Ideally, you should leverage these tools when creating a website. However, you can also use them to optimize and maintain your code.

4. Reduce HTTP Requests

The number of HTTP requests also has a significant impact on your website's performance and load time.

The server receives an HTTP request for every component involved in rendering a web page. The number of CSS files dictates the total of HTTP requests for a particular page.

So, keeping the file count to a bare minimum may serve as the best course of action and improve your website performance.

One way you can do this is by combining the CSS and JavaScript files using PHP. You can also consider other methods to merge the codes and significantly improve your website's response time.

5. Combine Images

Reduce the number of HTTP requests encompassing your site to offer an enhanced user experience by combining different images into one.

Image spriting significantly reduces the number of components representing your website. As a result, your pages load quicker and facilitate your visitors' access to useful information.

You can use CSS to position different images combined into one. So, the placement of images will not be a problem.

It will appear as if you are using different images, and they will work as you intend them to. You will just be making your website a bit lighter.

You can choose to combine images on your website manually or use a CSS sprite generator of your choice.

6. Avoid Complex Rendering

Have you ever wondered why a website takes longer to load the first time compared to when you visit the page again?

All leading browsers have a caching feature. So, when you access a website, your browser stores certain JavaScript files.

When you access the same page for the second time, it loads faster because your browser doesn't need to download the files all over again.

As a result, you are able to offer a seamless experience to your audience and make them want to keep visiting the site.

However, excessive use of CSS and JavaScript may cause caching problems. It may compromise the browser's caching capabilities due to complex rendering. So, it's best to optimize your code to avoid running into performance issues.

7. Optimize Page Structure

The structure of your page may have a significant impact on how your website performs and the experience you offer through it.

Plus, the elements of your web pages may make your website heavy and critically affect its load time.

Therefore, you must experiment with different page structures till you find one that gives you the best results.

The goal is to offer an enhanced user experience without having to compromise the visual appeal.

Quick information accessibility is the key to retaining your visitors. However, it's the visual appeal of your site that sets you apart and gets you more eyeballs.

Wrapping Up

There you have it: the seven useful tips on how to improve website performance by focusing on the front end.

Working on the front end helps you solve many critical issues that affect your website's load time and the experience you offer to your visitors.

You can make quick adjustments to your website without having to require expensive tools to do so.

Sometimes, you just don't have access to server-side optimization. In that case, improving your front end takes user experience up a notch and enables you to cultivate high engagement.