React is undoubtedly the first choice of developers for app development. Ever wondered why? It’s mainly due to the flexibility and stability of the framework. Moreover, it also provides a faster UI than other JavaScript frameworks.
But as the React application grows, potential performance issues arise. It can negatively impact the user experience of React apps. Nearly 90% of users are likely to stop using an app due to poor performance.
So, what’s the solution? An ideal option is to optimize React’s performance and increase the conversion of your website. In this article, you will learn about the best and most effective React performance optimization tips to leverage. Let’s dive in.
Top Techniques for Effective React Performance Optimization
Leverage React Fragments
While working with React, you will come across several cases where there is a need to render multiple elements. However, it can often result in extra nodes in the DOM. As a result, the performance of React apps suffers.
How do you overcome this problem? The best way is to leverage React fragments. It enables the developers to wrap multiple elements without adding any nodes.
It also eliminates unnecessary divs in the code, ultimately improving the speed and performance of React apps.
Lazy Loading Images
Recently, users prefer to engage with truly interesting content only. Simple texts without images can be boring. That’s why businesses add unique illustrations to the content of apps to capture the user’s attention.
However, it can harm the performance of the React apps. Does your React app consist of several images? If yes, the loading speed and app performance are likely to degrade.
It happens because the DOM renders all images together before displaying them to the users. One of the React Best Practices to overcome this problem is lazy loading. It loads a component only when it is essential.
Moreover, it prevents the creation of unnecessary DOM nodes. Lazy loading can optimize performance and enhance speed significantly. The popular libraries you can use to lazy-load images and improve React performance include react-lazy-load-image-component and react-lazy-load.
Use React Memo
Re-rendering the React application’s different components slows down the app significantly. It can also result in making the UI unresponsive. How do you deal with this situation? Implementing React.memo is an excellent option. It prevents the need for re-rendering if there is no change in the props of the component.
Server-Side Rendering
Server-side rendering is another great way to boost the speed of React apps. It resolves the potential issues relating to React app performance and SEO. Also, it has the potential to generate static content on the browser before the actual content is sent to the user’s browser.
In other words, the user will see a glimpse of the web page before the final page loads completely. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about blank pages that result in the abandonment of websites by users. So, retaining your users and ensuring their loyalty becomes easy.
Leverage CSS Animations
The addition of animations in applications is on the rise to enhance user experiences. There are several ways to implement animations. It includes JS animations, CSS transitions, and CSS animations.
Compared to JS animations, it is better to use CSS animations. It improves the loading speed and performance of React apps.
Memoizing React Components
Want to prevent unnecessary rendering? In that case, memoization is an ideal option. Memoization refers to an optimization strategy that involves caching a component-rendered operation and then saving the result in memory. It returns the results whenever the same input occurs again.
Whenever a child component receives a prop, it will be compared by the memoized component. If there is no change to the prop, the re-rendering of the child component will be skipped.
Virtualize Long Lists
Windowing, or list virtualization, is a technique that improves React performance while rendering a long list of data. It focuses on rendering a small subset of rows at a given time. As a result, there is a significant reduction in the time to re-render the components. Moreover, the number of DOM nodes created is also reduced.
How do you virtualize long lists? Several React libraries are available to help you with the process, such as react-virtualized and react-window. These libraries can provide reusable components and enable you to display grids, lists, and tabular data easily.
Immutable Data Structure
Are you looking for an effective way to lower memory consumption? An easy way is to leverage an immutable data structure. These structures are pretty straightforward to understand.
It allows the developers to avoid making direct changes to objects containing complex data. As an alternative, it focuses on creating a copy of the object with the desired changes.
The best part is that comparing the new and original objects and identifying the changes is simple and easy. Moreover, making a UI update becomes convenient, and it can provide you with several other benefits, like zero side effects, avoiding temporal coupling, and less memory consumption. Ultimately, it boosts the speed and performance of the React apps.
Use a CDN
Leveraging a CDN is another effective way to provide static content from the React applications to the target audience. CDN usually depends on the geographic locations of the users. The CDN server closest to the user is called an ‘edge server.’
Users will be connected to the edge server whenever they request content from the application. As a result, users can gain access to the required content much faster and more efficiently. It enhances the overall user experience of the React apps in a hassle-free manner.
Debouncing and Throttling Event Actions
If you want to optimize event triggering effectively, debouncing and throttling can help. Wondering what the trigger rate is? It is the number of times the event handlers get invoked within a given period. The higher the event trigger rate of the React apps, the higher the chances of the application crashing.
That is where debouncing and throttling prove beneficial. Throttling can effectively postpone the execution of functions. On the other hand, debouncing prevents frequent event-triggered firing.
It allows the developers to limit the number of event triggers successfully. Moreover, it ensures the optimization of React apps for a better user experience.
Conclusion
By now, you should have a complete picture of the best ways to optimize React app performance and enhance user experiences. It is time to hire proficient experts and implement these strategies. Partner with experienced professionals, improve React app performance and ensure optimum success like never before.
