Frontend Performance

A comprehensive list of best practices to enhance frontend performance.

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High priorities

  • Minimize number of iframes
  • Minified CSS – Remove comments, whitespaces etc.
  • CSS files are non-blocking
  • Inline the Critical CSS (above the fold CSS)
  • Avoid the embedded / inline CSS
  • Analyse stylesheets complexity
  • Compress your images / keep the image count low
  • Choose your image format appropriately
  • Minify your JavaScript
  • Non-Blocking JavaScript: Use async / defer
  • Use HTTPs on your website
  • Keep your page weight < 1500 KB (ideally < 500 KB)
  • Keep your page load time < 3 seconds
  • Keep the Time To First Byte < 1.3 seconds
  • Minimize HTTP Requests
  • Serve files from the same protocol
  • Avoid requesting unreachable files (404)
  • Set HTTP cache headers properly
  • GZIP / Brotli compression is enabled

Medium priorities

  • Minified HTML – Remove comments and whitespaces
  • Use Content Delivery Network
  • Prefer using vector image rather than bitmap images
  • Set width and height attributes on images (aspect ratio)
  • Avoid using Base64 images
  • Offscreen images are loaded lazily
  • Ensure to serve images that are close to your display size
  • Avoid multiple inline JavaScript snippets <script>
  • Keep your dependencies up to date
  • Check for performance problems in your JavaScript files
  • Service Workers for caching / performing heavy tasks
  • Cookie size should be less than 4096 bytes
  • Keep the cookie count less than 20

Low priorities

  • Pre-load URLs where possible
  • Concatenate CSS into a single file
  • Remove unused CSS
  • Use WOFF2 font format
  • Use preconnect to load your fonts faster
  • Keep the web font size under 300kb
  • Prevent Flash or Invisible Text
  • Keep an eye on the size of dependencies

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