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Speed is a major contributor to user experience on modern web sites.

It is important to pay attention not only to technologies that said experiences are build with, but to the way they are designed as well.

Proper speed design is a collaboration between product managers, UI designers and developers as all the aspects of the page composition must be balanced to achieve fast experience that is useful for end-users and deliver on the goals set by creators of the site.

Below is the list of common speed design problems and their design solutions. We try not to concentrate on specific technical implementations or specific types of sites so it can be used in any context.

Fast Start

Before user can start the experience, there is an inevitable delay as user's browser goes away from previous view to the current view. Making it a requirement to start painting quickly is critical, especially as it competes with other technical and design goals of loading large amounts of code and displaying a large number of elements on the page.

Immutable Layout

A common problem on web sites that use ads or other 3rd party display elements (widgets), but also manifests in regular websites is change in layout as page loads. Instead of shifting the layout, always set the expected size of the available space.

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