How JavaScript is contributing to enhancing user experience
User Experience shouldn't be as dreaded as it is. In fact, UX in its simplest form is making the user journey simple, swift, seamless and most importantly user-centric.
“ESPN.com improved its revenues by 35%, just by changing their homepage as per the user’s suggestion.”
We all know what wonders can a good UX do - it allures users, fosters trust, reduces bounce rate, improves conversion and helps you generate more revenue, but it is more fascinating to know how.
And one of the way to enhance the user experience of your web application is - JavaScript.
The inception of JavaScript was itself a rejuvenation to the boring primal HTML pages. And today, when the web apps are ultra sophisticated, its importance has become more significant.
So how exactly JavaScript is contributing in improving the user experience?
Here check the following factors.
1. Smooth transition - Single Page application
As the name Single Page Applications are the web apps that fit the entire website in just one page and they provide superfluid experience with JavaScript under the hood.
When the user interacts with the app such as clicking on an element, instead of the whole page refresh, the requested chunk of the web app is updated and the entire interface remains the same. Thus, the users get the smooth and swift transaction for the requests, which in case of multi-page-application would result in reloading a whole new page.
(Gmail - Single Page Application)
2. Real-time Information - No page refresh
Loading time is one of the factors that affects the user experience of the web app. As per a research by Akamai and Gomes.com, the consumers tend to become impatient when the page takes more than mere two seconds to load.
In fact, 47 percent of consumer expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. According to another static 1-second delay in page response can end-up in a 7% reduction in conversions. And the modern web apps being graphic intensive augments the issue of network latency. But thanks to JavaScript that loads the page instantaneously without a page refresh.
(An infographic by Google on effects of page load time)
And the reason why web apps made with JavaScript are so swift is because it is a client-side language. It means that the requests are handled within the user’s browser rather than the server. Moreover, JavaScript doesn't even require the code compilation that further boosts the speed and performance of the web app.
3. Boosts Overall Performance of the App
Performance is the key ingredient for the success of your web app in this digital environment. The faster, the smoother it is, the better user experience. In fact, our brain perceives the load time 15% slower than the actual time. Further, slower web performance even hits the perceived credibility of your website. So if your web app is sluggish, the consequences can be dire.
(Source)
And performance is one of the attributes tagged along whenever we talk about the JavaScript. In many ways it improves the performance of your web app and overall user experience. Apart from real-time page refresh and smooth transaction, web apps made with JavaScript are super light. It reduces the lines of codes to be written and thus, allowing the browser to render the page faster, improving the overall performance of the app.
4. JavaScript Makes it Easier to Implement Complex Design Attributes
Netscape introduced JavaScript in 1995 (Mocha at that time) as a glue language to help programmers to combine components such as images, plugins and Java applets and to automate the interactions. Since then, we have come a long way. The modern websites with complex designs and sophisticated features are no match to that of the 90s. I mean, you are interacting with the web app and it simultaneously gives you real-time notifications while the content is being updated in the back. Thanks to Javascript for making these complex development easier!
JavaScripts frameworks such as Angular, React and Vue has been a boon to the web development. These technologies are helping the developers to execute some of the complex attributes which were near to impossible before. No doubt why 92% of the world’s website are made using JavaScript. Of course, that includes your favourite ones too!
5. Efficient and Uniform Design with Frameworks
The web apps are getting more and more complex in order to provide better features to the user, resulting in more complex development. The fluid transactions, easy navigation, futuristic features, pixel-perfect buttons and forms that looks so divine of the user’s screen takes a lot of time and efforts to execute. Here the number of different design frameworks like Angular, Vue, Meteor, etc. that provide inbuilt capabilities are making the work more efficient for the developers and web development companies. This allows uniformity in design and makes the entire process quite easier.
For instance, Angular material provides reusable components of Google’s Material design. The developers get readymade components such as Form Controls(datepicker, radio buttons, slider, form field, etc), Navigation ( Menu, Sidenav, Toolbar), Layout (Grid, list, tabs, card, etc) Button & Indicators, Popups, Data Table and more that reduces the toil and trouble of the developers. This also makes the designs uniform across the web apps making it easier even for the user to navigate.
(Angular Material Design)
Wrap Up
The above are few of the major contributions of JavaScript towards improving the web user experience. Since its inception, during the days of Netscape, it has been a profound part of our web world. But now, with the owners focusing to provide apogee of user experience and the ever increasing number of frameworks, JavaScript’s contribution has increased and will continue to play an important role in the coming time.