Creating Fast-Feeling Web Apps

💬 Testimonials

Among the many insightful lightning talks at the conference, I also had the chance to attend one by Trung Vo from Ascenda who shared valuable strategies for optimising web apps to feel faster. Trung’s key takeaway was that web performance isn’t just about actual speed, it’s about improving the user’s perception of speed. He shared practical tips, including:

• Delay the Loading Spinner: Wait 300ms before showing it to reduce perceived slowness (Trung showcased an example of Spotify applying this technique).
• Provide Instant Experience with Initial Data: Use tools like React Query or SWR to immediately load key data while the rest continues fetching in the background.
• Lazy-Load Images and Frames: Implement lazy-loading to reduce load times by only loading content when it comes into view.

— Nivian Lee, Software Engineer @ GovTech Singapore

In web development, perception is reality. A website that feels fast is fast, regardless of the metrics. In web performance, we focus on four key areas: reducing overall load time, ensuring the site is usable as soon as possible, enhancing smoothness and interactivity, and optimising perceived performance. In this talk, we’ll explore topics in each of these areas, highlighting proven patterns and techniques from large-scale codebases to create lightning-fast user experiences that effectively engage users.

Learn how to make your web applications not just performant but also feel instantaneous. Topics will include reducing layout jank, optimising loading indicators, seeding the data, image loading optimisation, optimistic UI, and much more.

See all recordings from the event here