How To Improve Your Website’s Speed and Responsiveness with a Single Line of Code

Your website is your customer's first stop, so it must make a good impression. A slow-loading website can irritate customers and quickly make them exit your website.

Your website is your customer's first stop, so it must make a good impression. A slow-loading website can irritate customers and quickly make them exit your website. That's why many website owners use third-party tool managers and software to improve their site's speed, loading time, and responsiveness to create a better visitor experience.

However, many people don't know that third-party integrations and additional scripts also play a role in your website's performance. Google's evolving core web vitals, used to measure web browsing experience, have also left site owners concerned about speed and responsiveness.

Let's explore some third-party tools that can help put an end to this dilemma by reducing visitor churn and increasing revenue. We’ll also introduce a platform called Zaraz that recently gained traction among webmasters, and for several very good reasons.

API integration vs. building your own line of code

API – an acronym for Application Programming Interface – is an intermediary software that allows interactions between two applications. For example, every time you use Facebook Messenger on your mobile to send a message or use the weather app on your phone, you're using an API.

Developers use APIs to write codes and software using a pre-existing framework to integrate the API with new applications instead of reinventing the code every time. This allows ease of integration, faster website speed, and automating tasks.

Businesses should not think about identifying vulnerabilities in the API system as a mere afterthought. Instead, they should inculcate the most secure practices right at the start during the source development process.

According to the security analysts from Cloud Defense, "APIs tend to expose endpoints that handle object identifiers, creating a vast attack surface Level Access Control issue. Object-level authorization checks should be considered in every function that accesses a data source using user input.”

Ease of integration

APIs can make it easy for applications and platforms to connect with each other and share information. A good example of this would be software that can be used within another platform or tools to streamline specific processes.

Improve website performance

The best way that your API can improve website performance and responsiveness is by storing caches. Customers are quick to exit a web-page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. The best way to counter this is to store data in your web server caches.
For example, if your visitors frequently visit the same pages, your API can store a cached version of it locally. This way, the next time your customer lands on the page, it loads faster.

The easiest way to clean caches to improve website speed is to expire it after a set period or as soon as certain updates happen. This makes sure that there is no overcrowding of cookies or caches in user history.

Automating tasks

Integrating APIs allows a smooth transition between linked applications and automates tasks that would otherwise have required manual processing. This saves costs, time, and effort and is one of the essential components of API integration.

Pros of using your own code

Even though many sites use third-party chatbots, widgets, or APIs to improve operations, these tools can ironically slow their performance. On the other hand, improving your website performance with a single code line can prove more secure, efficient, and responsive.

Here are a few benefits of using your own line of code:

Greater security

An API source code is open to everyone who uses it and can be accessed over the internet just like any other URL code. As a result, sensitive data can easily be hacked by attackers.

According to web developer Gary Stevens of Hosting Canada, most CMS platforms use proprietary code, which leads to security concerns because "one of the drawbacks to leading CMS platforms is that their source code is open to everyone — good guys and bad. The reason is to keep a larger (and presumably more talented) pool of people working to improve the product. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. The open-source philosophy is a wonderful thing – but it does mean that the tools to create mischief through hacking are out there for anyone to use."

On the contrary, your own code is free from the vulnerabilities of APIs, effective at improving your website performance, and also harder to crack for malicious attackers. Additionally, you can code as many security bugs as you want within your line to add a layer of extra protection.

A start-up program called Zaraz aims to survey your website's third-party tools to alleviate external scripts that are connecting to the browser. This, in turn, increases page speed and performance with just a single line of code.

What makes Zaraz so unique is the ability to treat every third-party tool differently. After all, every integration has different codes and serves distinct purposes for the application. Loading all these integrations altogether in the browser may slow down your website, which may frustrate your users. Zaraz recognizes this pain-point.

Instead of running applications with the same script and then evaluating them in the browser, Zaraz runs it all on its back-end, leaving the browser to focus on the customer's experience.

Conclusion

When it comes to improving your site's performance and speed, business sites aren't the only ones that can benefit from a good user experience. UX forms the crux of how much your customer’s value and appreciates your service.

Google's new algorithms also rank websites higher that are responsive and offer customers a fast and secure browsing experience. Therefore, your website must have a quicker response system while prioritizing your customer's safety.

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How To Improve Your Website’s Speed and Responsiveness with a Single Line of Code

API integration vs. building your own line of code

Pros of using your own code

Conclusion

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Lee Li

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