Why Is JavaScript Important for Optimizing Your Website

Whether you know it or not, Javascript is a huge part of your everyday life. How come? Well, 95.2% of all websites are using it in some way. Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia are among the biggest sites that choose Javascript as their client-side programming language.

Such widespread use means that the language has enough benefits to make it the top choice for almost all of the Internet. And those same benefits are the reasons why you need to use Javascript on your own website, even if that means you have to rework it with your team or with one of the Javascript development companies available.

The basis for complex websites

The simplest way to explain why most web developers choose Javascript to work on their websites is that this programming language lets them create an interactive design. In other words, most dynamic elements you’ll find on a website exist thanks to Javascript. It basically magnifies the browser’s capabilities by augmenting its default controls and its potential behavior.

Javascript provides you with a series of technical benefits that make it irresistible for web development. The possibility to use it to create client-side scripts, the simplification of web app development, and the ability to use it for responsive designs are reasons in and by themselves to hire a Javascript development services partner to help you implement it in your site.

Additionally, Javascript allows for more complex websites that end up giving a friendlier experience to the end user. This translates to elements that have become increasingly common in the modern Web and that you’ve surely come across a lot of times. Segments like confirmation boxes, certain calls to action (CTAs), forms, menus, and slideshows wouldn’t be the same without Javascript.

Let’s review these benefits in more detail.

Technical benefits

Client-side scripts creation

In its origin, Javascript was developed as a client-side scripting language and it still is a great tool to do so. Web developers can write tailor-made scripts to run on the client’s side and then insert them into their HTML codes.

This is one of the main pillars of Javascript, as it provides enough flexibility to generate more interactive pages with changing behavior that depends on the actions taken by the users. This leads to the creation of richer interfaces that require less server interaction, which considerably reduces the server load.

Web app development

Javascript allows developers to generate complex web applications by simplifying how the app itself is composed. Thanks to its numerous libraries, you can create shadow DOM boundaries that simplify the app’s whole structure which, in turn, decouples the components of those libraries.

Those DOM give web browsers the possibility to display documents through more common elements. In other words, you can use HTML tags like div, select and input to create your web apps in a more neatly and organized form.

Responsive web design

By combining Javascript with CSS3 and HTML5, developers can create web pages that look great regardless of the device in which they are displayed. This is called responsive web design and it lets you create a site that responds to the device that’s trying to display it, adjusting the appearance and composition to show the version that best fits the device and the browser.

What’s more, using some of the countless Javascript APIs and libraries, you can take your website to the next level. You can use a vibration API to make a mobile device shake in case of a specific event. There’s also an open source framework called A-frame to create VR experiences. There’s even a Navigation Time API that lets you track your website’s performance with accuracy to find improvement opportunities based on real uses.

These are just but a few of the things Javascript can do on a technical level. There are more possibilities you should discuss with your in-house team since they can really take your website to radical new places. And if you don’t have Javascript experts on your company, consider Javascript development outsourcing to a third party to take that quality leap.

Elements enhanced with Javascript

Confirmation boxes

Have you seen those boxes that pop up here and there to confirm or cancel an action? Those are possible thanks to Javascript. The basis for it is a logical line of code that creates different paths of action depending on the user’s behavior. In that way, Javascript enriches your website by providing simple options with different outcomes for the navigation and for data recording.

CTAs

Another frequent use for Javascript is the creation of animated calls to action (CTAs) that appear depending on a predefined set of factors. For instance, you’ve surely have seen those windows that pop up after you’ve scrolled on a website, asking you to subscribe to a newsletter or to download a free ebook. Those CTAs are built with Javascript, which uses factors like time spent on the page or the scroll below a certain point to display the chosen message.

Forms

All online forms have fields for the user to fill out. After doing so, the data needs to be validated before being processed. This was typically done by sending the form for server-side validation that would return the it with highlighted errors if there were fields missing or invalid data. You can make that process easier and faster by using Javascript. With it, you can apply the validation to each individual field to provide immediate feedback to the user.

Menus

This might seem irrelevant,, but it’s the sort of details that make users feel they are on a modern website. When adding Javascript to a menu, you can make it scroll out when hovering the mouse over it and scroll back when the mouse moves off. That makes it look more animated and smooth, a little detail that doesn’t affect the menu itself but that makes the website seem more alive.

Slideshows

Older slideshows needed to reload the entire web page to go from one image to the next one. That was tedious and impractical, so web developers started using Javascript to prevent the page from reloading altogether. The language allows loading the new image within the slideshow and without refreshing anything else. This results in a more dynamic and fast slideshow and a richer UX.

Some final words

As you can see, there’s plenty Javascript can do for your website. It can bring new interactive features, reduce server loads, contribute to a better mobile browsing experience and create web apps in a simpler manner.

There’s also a wide array of ‘little details’ that modern web users have come to expect since they are so common. Things like animation effects, smarter online forms, and smoother menus and slideshows are great examples of this.

Optimizing your website using Javascript is something you should really consider, as the language can improve your online presence and make it look and feel more modern. It’s true that hiring Javascript development services has become harder since everyone is looking for these experts. However, since refreshing your website is a one-time project, maybe outsourcing Javascript tasks to a company devoted to it is a quicker answer to get your site optimized.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.