Bootstrap Website, the topic of today’s article, can help you create visually appealing and responsive websites for any purpose; however, they sometimes requires optimization.
Any website requires the best user interface, site quality, and responsiveness to create the best user experience and satisfaction.
Large search engines like Google and Yahoo have pinpointed that it rewards faster, responsive websites with higher search rankings than their slower counterparts.
With this added benefit; Optimizing Bootstrap to improve speed and responsiveness, it’s a top priority for you to do to get the most out of your website.
Here are the best ways to optimize your website’s Bootstrap framework to improve responsiveness and the website’s speed.
Optimizing JavaScript & jQuery plugin/scripts
In today’s modern web development age, more plugins and scripts are accessible than ever before, making it a tempting option to add to your website.
While some jQuery and JavaScript add-ons can help your website, adding too many or the wrong ones can slow it down, making it unresponsive.
It is crucial to select only essential plugins or scripts you require so your website requires fewer resources; A good rule of thumb would be, the more resources required, the slower the website.
Removing unwanted or unnecessary scripts and plugins that aren’t being used on the website can dramatically increase responsiveness and the website’s speed by reducing the resources needed to operate.
Move servers to the target audience location
.While having a server where it’s highly populated is more likely to get traffic, it only works if your target audience is in that region. There is no point having a server in America if the audience is in Australia. Having a server across the world from your audience will mean the search results will take much longer to load than if it’s located in the audience region. Moving servers to accommodate the target audience is one way to increase your website’s speed so that your target audience can have a better user experience and higher satisfaction.
Cleaning the website database
If your website contains any kind of database, chances are it could become unordered, making the database work twice as hard to find results to post.
This could be anywhere from post revisions, saved drafts to plugins that become redundant and much more.
Removing and clearing the database of these “littering” pieces can improve the website’s responsiveness and load times, requiring fewer resources for the database to function.
Optimizing with WordPress Plugins
If your website is built within WordPress, chances are you may be using some plugins to optimize it.
Supposing you are not using them already, we suggest trying using optimizers and plugins such as TinyPNG, Compressor.io, and others to reduce image sizes, compress websites, clip irrelevant information, and overall reduce the size of the website.
After doing so, your website will require fewer resources to load. Other plugins can help trim code, remove unwanted redundant JavaScript & jQuery scripts or plugins.
Cleaning Code
Seriously extensive and dense HTML, CSS & JavaScript codes can dramatically slow down a website, making it a sluggish, heavy complex structure.
Removing unused CSS, JavaScript, and HTML lines from the Bootstrap template will reduce the request size and improve the website’s responsiveness and speeds.
Don’t use Precompiled Bootstrap Files
The latest release of Bootstrap allows you to select portions of the code to include in your project. When you download precompiled files, it will most likely have parts that your website may not need.
When you have code that is not required, browsers will still download them; Even if they don’t use them, which in return will slow down the website; This is especially noticeable on slow networks.
A better way to utilize the Bootstrap codes is to include only the parts you need to run the website, customize, and remove any parts you do not need.
In return, this will result in a leaner, minimal stylesheet that loads much faster and makes the website fully responsive.
Utilize Bootstrap to accommodate devices
If your priority is responsiveness, setting up bootstrap to accommodate for different devices is a must. Today, there are four sizes to accommodate, starting from extra small, small, medium, to large devices. Each of these has different resolutions, so setting these correctly will make a world of difference.
- For extra small devices, set a resolution less than 768px
- Small devices with greater or equal to 768px
- Medium devices with greater than or equal to 992px,
- Large devices with greater than or equal to 1200px resolutions.
These can be applied in the CSS3 @media query within a <div> class in your HTML files.
Doing this will ensure the website detects screen sizes of most devices. Automatically tailoring its features accordingly, without any lag, unresponsiveness, or downtime.
Browser Compatibility
By utilizing Bootstrap properly, it ensures that your Bootstrap website works and is compatible with most browsers. If your website doesn’t support older browsers, you can make another branch for them. Additionally you can degrade some of the features to be more accessible for mobile and tablet device users.
Ensuring your website is compatible with most browsers also have its perks, such as a quicker load times, higher rankings and better user experience. So be sure to make the site a little more user friendly, it’ll reward you.
Wrap Up
Optimizing a website that utilizes the Bootstrap framework can be highly efficient if set correctly. Having bloat and excessive plugins or scripts can slow down your website, causing it to be unresponsive.
This trade-off is detrimental as it will lower user experience and satisfaction, causing traffic to leave your website.
The list of ways to optimize your Bootstrap website listed above will help you boost responsiveness and your website’s speed. As a result, your target audiences experience will be more pleasurable.
Big Kitty Labs is one of the leading software development companies in Columbus Ohio that has been developing applications, websites, and software for over 10 years. Contact us for free discovery and consultation on your next project!
