29th April, 2014
4 Min read
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A recent study, published by Keynote, the Internet and mobile cloud monitor software, has found that over 80% of the survey’s participants are disappointed by the performance of mobile devices when it comes to browsing. The survey shows that the use of smartphones would’ve been greatly increased if the browsing experience was improved.
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The study shows that the “Web page slow to load” is the top frustration, and that 6 out of 10 tablet users want a sub-three second download. Keep in mind that the top activities for tablets are to read news and entertainment, search for information and watch videos. Having a fast website means getting rid of all that’s not the focus of your experience. If you can do without it, do without it.
The three basic tips on reducing the loading time would be:
The less the downloads, the less the HTTP requests. Try these tips for size:
One of Amazon mobile sprites. Image source
Simply use responsive images.
The basic idea is to have the vistor download only those images that are best sited to their device. Lower-resolution images are the best bet for smartphones, which are quickly downloaded and rendered. JavaScript is used to detect the device’s screen size, which is written to a cookie. For large screen sizes, JavaScript swaps the smaller image with the higher-resolution image.
The main benefits of these responsive-image techniques are:
Keep JavaScript to a minimum. For instance, Starbucks’ website takes 3.53 seconds to load via Chrome with JavaScript disabled on a solid breadband connection on desktop. With JavaScript enabled, it takes 4.73 seconds, which is a 34% increase. The loading time would’ve been greater on a smartphone due to the devices’s smaller CPU, memory and cashe. The moral of the story: keep the JavaScript to a minimum, or don’t use it at all. Before using a JavaScript framework, consider whether it’s really necessary. In some cases, using small bits of JavaScript is more efficient than initiating calls to a framework.
Avoid widgets. What is a “Web Widget“? A web widget is a small helpful software program embedded directly into a web page, it just occupies a portion of a webpage and does something useful with information fetched from other websites and displayed in place. Widgets can have a horrible impact on real loading time, causing an average 0.9 second delay.
Don’t forget to test your website on multiple devices. A fast load time on any given android or mobile device is the ultimate green light for your website load time efficiency.
If you want to have a satisfied mobile-deviced user base, optimize your website to a 4 second load time or less. You can do that by minimizing the processing load on smartphones which means cutting down on JavaScript and optimizing the HTML, CSS and images.
Read detailed how-to with examples on SmashingMagazine.
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