You Need to Optimize Your Mobile App to Stay on Top

Author: Katerina Muzyka

No prize for guessing that mobile phones have transformed the manner of racking up the internet which leads to a significant preponderance of smartphones and tables having over stationary computers in terms of web traffic consumption volumes.

Similarly, Google has been introducing an index primarily for mobile platforms within few previous months that is likely to impact dramatically the SEO productivity of websites which haven’t prepared yet for this innovation that is expected to be launched at full capacity this summer.

Together with this substantial transformation, Google is initiating a velocity upgrade which will make allowance for a website loading time when assigning your app with a rating position.

Velocity is a key factor not only for searching engines. It also strongly affects a user experience. Google determines page velocity as a period of time starting from the moment when you call a page to the moment when it is completely loaded. For example, increasing loading duration of 1 second in three times the likelihood of visitor leaving the page increases for more than thirty percent.

Moreover, if loading time is extended to six seconds, the percentage of bouncing will increase to more than 100 percent and in case of loading time prolongation to 10 seconds – 123% leaving rate will be observed. These figures look like really impressive in view of the fact that the average mobile application requires more than 20 seconds to be completely loaded. Here is a huge space for enhancement.

Still, there are several moves you can make in order to facilitate your mobile application and to get more visitors attracted.

Deploy minimum redirects

Redirects are considered to be a simple method to reinforce SEO and to activate more online traffic, however in this case the velocity upgrade is problematic. In a simple phrase, redirects allow transfer of the visitors from one online address to another. When clicking on a common mobile link, your gadget inquires peculiar file which can be found at the specified address and the server delivers the document.

By using a redirect, a server delivers a new online address that has to be visited by a user in order to file a new inquiry for a document. According to the number of redirects called, the entire process supplements few more seconds to the loading time of a page, that’s why it is recommended to deploy them charity.

In fact, the redirects are extremely low-speed in mobile format since lots of steps have to be passed each time when a gadget sends a request to the server. At the same time, mobile phone users require higher processing velocity than the users of stationary PCs.

For more effective use of mobile apps redirects, you may review the possibility to use Varvy’s Redirect Mapper tool. This instrument will provide with data on the number of redirects for each URL, therefore you will be able to track their origin and take away if required.

Minimize the size and number of images

Obviously, this is the first thing that has to be done by web designers, coders, and marketing staff in order to shift the application from desktop to mobile format. As long as the mobile gadgets have been progressing, the websites have been keeping pace. In a nutshell, the average size of a website increased in three times in the period of 2011 and 2015 finally amounting to almost 1.2 megabyte mostly due to lack of images optimization that takes more than a half of this volume.

The most effective way to decrease the size of the images used in mobile format along with maintaining same quality is Compressor.io. What about the code, you may deploy adaptive CSS media query to choose the configuration of an image to be loaded based on particular display parameters in order to stay offloading extremely massive files.

Diminish the code

By minification, the experts mean reduction of the code size that is placed on the website. Basically, minification can’t be narrowed down to the withdrawal of specific attributes or functions. Abstracts, empty spaces, and block delimiters are among the most widespread causes of squandering code space. It is recommended to monitor for unspent CSS design, particularly in the pages which have been remodeled or suggest various monitoring opportunities.

The truth is these modifications can be performed manually, however you can use multiple digital instruments which are called to facilitate code reduction, namely: Minify Code, CleanCSS and so on. It is also possible to deploy the PageSpeed Insight Chrome Extension to create the improved configuration of the website’s HTML code.

Shift to on-demand loading

Cut away all the fat and bloat out of harm’s way. This principle is the bedrock of lazy loading web development approach. As long as the above-the-scroll information is the first thing the user finds on the website, this content has to remain undisclosed until the user initiates its scrolling. This can be ensured by using the related functions:

• installation of Lazy Load jQuery plugin;
• reorganize the code into above-the-scroll and below-the-scroll parts depending on visibility ranging;
• deploy exclusively external CSS document or an individual page-related incorporated CSS block that enables the above-the-scroll information to load on-the-spot;
• hold off JavaScript until the page is completely loaded.

Hold off JavaScript

Amazing pop-ups and passing to other objects can be of use but they are irrelevant when the user is just approaching the content. As JavaScript disables simultaneous loading, it is recommended to postpone it to further stage.

After several seconds of loading, you may launch a loading spinner or any other notification rather than restraining users from seeing desired content.

Sometimes the experts advise to perform slight transfer of the script tags to the end of the website code as a solution to this issue, however, this approach may be not sufficient and you’ll have to transform JavaScript code in order to get a better experience.

Summary

Since mobile web technology is on the rise, it is crucial for the application vendors to reinforce loading velocity as a key factor in making your product’s audience growing. In order to preserve and multiply your website visitors, it is recommended to introduce several transformations to your application that will facilitate web traffic consumption and make the website more easy-to-use.