Pillars of Mobile Web Performance Optimization
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I still remember the day I bought my rst mobile phone. It didn't have any fancy
stuff that you nd in today's mobile phones. The only advanced feature that it had
was the Short Message Service (SMS). It didn't have a camera, all the applications
were pre-installed, the user couldn't install any applications, and there was no
Internet browsing.
However, nowadays, we use mobile devices for many things because communication
through a mobile device is faster, cheaper, and can connect to anyone from anywhere.
According to surveys, the number of active mobile devices and human beings crossed
over somewhere around the 7.19 billion mark. It means that each and every person in
the world most likely has a mobile device. Because of this large consumer group, many
organizations and consumers invested and made their marketing campaigns to cater to
mobile users and as a result, each and every day thousands of new mobile applications
and mobile websites have been introduced into the market.
However, today mobile applications and mobile websites have a fatal ow. Websites'
sizes are getting bigger at an alarming rate, and we are quickly heading towards the
wrong way. We never notice it as it happens, and when we do, it's often too late.
I had the privilege to work with excellent internal developers to complete a website
a couple of months back, and our initial goal was to build the website in such a
manner that it loads at top speed. Although we planned everything upfront to
achieve our goal, we made a fundamental mistake. When we saw the designs, it was
already approved by the top management and we never saw the designs upfront
before they were sent to the client. Then we got the internal deadline dened by the
management, and it was too tight. Then, Make it fast turned into Make it work and we
thought we can make it faster later; of course that later never came.
After a couple of months' hard work, we managed to launch the website, but it was
a disaster. The site looked great in frontend, but it took more than 20 seconds to
load the home page. The website was responsive, and when we came into a mobile
breakpoint, it loaded a lot of unwanted elements that shouldn't be there. Once we
saw this aw, we had to work very hard even at night to tweak the website, and after
a massive effort, we managed to load the website within 7 seconds.
That day we promised ourselves to check and plan everything upfront, and
never leave anything behind to damage the site's performance. So, in this book,
I am going to discuss a few tips, tricks, and tools that I have learned in the past couple
of years. I hope it will help you to improve your website's loading time by at least a
couple of seconds.