The digital marketplace is forever growing and evolving—a virtual environment that demands consumer attention nearly every hour of every day.
While this development is great for users, it means companies and developers must ensure that their web applications are running at peak speeds. Failing to do so will allow the competition to pull ahead, potentially costing you customers and reducing your web traffic.
Here's 3 statistics that can illustrate the importance of making your websites and web pages load fast:
- The first five seconds of page-load times have the highest impact on converstion rates. (Portent, 2019)
- The average mobile web page takes 15.3 seconds to load. (Google, 2018)
- Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-5). (Portent, 2019)
- 9 more statistics on the importance of website load times and performance
#GatsbyJS solves web performance issues
Leading companies and developers around the world are turning to GatsbyJS to reach their goal of improving app speed. This framework is especially appealing for two reasons:
- It's open-source (and free)
- Built with React
By leveraging React, GatsbyJS creators have made an easy-to-use framework that is applicable to many projects.
Below, we dive into what exactly makes the framework so great and provide a few tips for improving speed with GatsbyJS. Implementing these tips can optimize speeds and improve client experience. Let’s get started!
#1. Prefetching
Long load times are a surefire way to discourage web traffic and lose business. When you make the switch to GatsbyJS, you will experience improved speeds—thanks to prefetching, one of its default features.
When a frontend user navigates to your page, the data and code are divided into small portions. GatsbyJS begins improving app speeds by loading only those vital elements from the site. This provides complete rendering and smooth interactions.
After the user begins interacting with the page, GatsbyJS prefetches the data for subpages. This makes navigating through your web application smooth and seamless.
#2. Make Use of Plug-Ins
The designers of GatsbyJS place performance at the top of their priority list. With that goal in mind, they have created a massive library of plug-ins. Improving speed with GatsbyJS is often as easy as downloading the appropriate plug-ins.
They have plug-ins for all of the major categories, including CMS, CSS, and even E-Commerce. Just like the framework itself, all of GatsbyJS plugins are 100% free.
#3. Optimize Your Images
Simple text is one of the most speed-friendly pieces of content that you can put on your static page. However, the modern consumer needs stimulation to keep their interest. Most companies seek to accomplish this goal through images and videos.
As you know, adding visual content reduces app performance and places additional strain on consumer bandwidth. Dealing with this problem is essential when your goal is improving app speed. Fortunately, GatsbyJS has a plug-in called Gatsby-image.
This plug-in will automatically resolve common issues and adapt the image to the client’s device size. It also eliminates shifting elements and content jumping—two issues that discourage web-traffic and frustrate clients.
#4. Test Your Speed
A great way of gauging the difference in speeds is to test your web application before and after making the switch to GatsbyJS. Google Chrome’s built-in Lighthouse tool is one of the easiest ways to do so.
Once you have made the transition to GatsbyJS, you can continue to manipulate your web application until you optimize speeds. Testing it after adding in one of their free plug-ins can further hone in on your ideal level of performance.
#5. Reduce JS Through Preact
Overall, improving speed with GatsbyJS simply requires making use of their framework and supplemental plugins. However, if you are looking to further separate yourself from the competition, you can implement Preact X as your rendering engine.
Despite its many benefits, GatsbyJS is somewhat JavaScript heavy. Since GatsbyJS is essentially a static site generator, all of this excess script can hinder speeds as opposed to improve them. This is especially true for relatively simple pages, such as non-interactive blogs and service pages.
By reducing JS, you will reduce the “max potential first input delay”. This is one of the figures used by Lighthouse and other efficiency tools to gauge overall performance. You can make the switch by installing a simple Preact plugin.
#6. Add PWA Support
While your short-term goal may be improving speed with GatsbyJS, the long-term mission is to improve your client experience. One way that you can do this is by implementing PWAs or progressive web applications.
These fast-moving programs are web pages that imitate mobile apps. Fortunately, GatsbyJS allows you to create PWAs by simply installing two plugins.
As with many other plugins discussed above, the PWA plugins are provided by the GatsbyJS development team, making for smooth integration.
#Need Help Improving App Speed? Contact With Pulp!
GatsbyJS is one of the principle frameworks used by our partners at With Pulp. We design and build customized digital websites and apps that will optimize your customer experience and encourage repeat traffic.
We believe that merging technology and artistry is the key to accomplishing this goal. By using these master communicators, we can improve productivity and customer satisfaction. If you are ready to get started, send us a note and let's start the conversation.