Thoughts on website optimization

Process & Techniques
#1

Hi everyone, I am new here (and in the field of UX). It excites me about the contrast of collaboration in the community as compared to my previous discipline. (This would be a short intro as to why I decided to make a career switch.

Moving on to my query:

I am currently looking at a website which is has tremendous lag. Lag which in our era, can be nostalgic in the frustrating sense. I feel this (the lag) would in itself contribute to user frustration.

Based on the little experiences I have had, what comes to mind is that:

  • Too many fonts are used.

  • The images are not optimized.

I tried checking in developer mode, and found that the site only uses “Open Sans” and “Verbana” in various weights. Which to my knowledge should not be having an effect on the loading speed.

As for the images, I find that most are under 15kb (about 10 images, and one lazily imported website which does not looks optimized. (It is really pixelated).

Coming back to my questions,

Any advice on what should I be looking at as a UX practitioner (I am just starting on a few courses, and have not had professional experience in the industry)

What responsibilities or roles do I play in helping optimizing this website? (Am i overstepping my responsibility as a UXer- I do not know what company cultures are like as a UX designer, yet.)

Thanks so much for your time(:

Warmest,

Realistic_Student

#2

Hi Maria @Realistic_Student851

Welcome to UX Mastery! Glad to know you switched your career, and we’ll try our best to support your learning journey. A quick aside: I am quite curious as to what your previous discipline was.

On to your questions!

On Website Optimization:
I’m no expert in diagnosing the cause of website speeds, and as you said, fonts and large image optimization are common reasons for slow load times. From your observations, I think the issue may be due to the way the site is structured on the back-end. Perhaps it is built using a CMS (for example, Wix or WordPress). Maybe it uses multiple plugins. If it is hand-coded, perhaps the way the code is written, or the server on which the website is hosted has issues. My suggestion would be to speak to a developer to help diagnose and fix the slow page loads.

On the role/scope fo UX design
Well, as much as I wish there was a standardized answer, I’m afraid, the answer is “it depends”. It depends on your company, the size of the team you’re in, how much the company invests and acknowledges UX design. You may be a one-woman army handling everything from research to writing code. Or you may be a specialist within a large team. Or somewhere in between these extremes.

In case you’re concerned about overstepping your role, it would be best to reach out to your team members and ask them. If I were in your position, I’d ask other designers for their inputs. If someone has been working in the company for a bit longer, they’d have more context and background information and can point you to the right person to discuss this issue with. Perhaps the company has an appropriate work process for you to report something to the developers. Maybe your company is open enough and enables you to reach out to developers directly.

I don’t know if I answered your questions, but in case it’s useful, here’s a guide to understanding the different roles within UX design:

The Ultimate Guide to Understanding UX Roles and Which One You Should Go For

Best wishes for your new role!

#3

Thanks so much Kasturika(:
Yes, your response has brought me much more clarity!

Warmest,

Realistic_Student

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