Performance Is the Number One UX (And You Can’t Convince Me Otherwise)

Let’s cut through the noise: performance is the number one UX feature. Not your fancy animations. Not your pixel-perfect UI. Not your “intuitive” navigation. If your app is slow, nothing else matters.

I don’t care how beautifully designed your loading spinner is—if users see it too often, they’ll hate your app. Performance isn’t just a technical concern; it’s the foundation of user experience. And yet, time and time again, I see teams treating it like an afterthought.

The Cold, Hard Truth About Speed

Speed isn’t just nice to have—it’s expected. Users don’t care why your app is slow. They don’t care about your bloated third-party libraries, your inefficient database queries, or your spaghetti JavaScript. They just know that clicking a button should do the thing instantly.

Studies have shown that:

• A 100ms delay in load time can reduce conversion rates by 7%.
• A 1-second delay can drop customer satisfaction by 16%.
• A 3-second delay? Say goodbye to 40% of your users.

And guess what? No amount of UI polish can make up for a slow, frustrating experience. A blazing-fast ugly app will always outperform a slow beautiful one.

What Happens When Performance Sucks

A slow app isn’t just annoying—it’s actively harmful to your business. Here’s what happens when you ignore performance:

1 Users Bounce – If they have to wait, they leave. Simple as that.
2 Frustration Builds – Even if they stay, a laggy app creates resentment, not loyalty.
3 Bad Reviews Stack Up – Slow software earns 1-star ratings.
4 Support Tickets Explode – More lag = more complaints. Your support team will hate you.
5 Developers Suffer – Debugging performance issues late in the game is a nightmare.

The worst part? Bad performance feels disrespectful to users. You’re wasting their time. They notice every unnecessary delay, even if they don’t consciously complain about it.

“But We Need to Show a Gazillion Records in a Grid!”

I don’t care. Fix it.

I’ve heard this excuse more times than I can count:

• “We have to load all the records at once.” No, you don’t. Use lazy loading, pagination, or virtualization like a responsible developer.
• “Our users want to see everything instantly.” No, they don’t. They want relevant data fast, not a slow, unfiltered mess.
• “It’s too complicated to optimize.” Then get someone who can.

I don’t have time to fight slow grids (although I could), and I don’t let my users suffer because of bad design. My go-to tool if cant spent the time, Servoy, handles large datasets without making me think about it. But honestly, I don’t care what you use—just fix it.

Fixing Performance: It’s Not That Hard

You don’t need to be a wizard to improve performance. Most of the time, the biggest offenders are stupidly preventable. Here’s where to start:

1. Stop Making the Browser Cry

Your front-end is probably the first bottleneck. Ask yourself:

• Are you loading massive JavaScript bundles? Trim them down.
• Are you overusing client-side rendering? SSR or hydration might be better.
• Is your CSS blocking rendering? Optimize it.
• Are animations tanking performance? Use GPU-friendly animations instead.

1. Optimize Your API Calls
2. Don’t fetch everything if you only need one thing.
3. Batch requests instead of hammering the server 50 times.
4. Cache intelligently. Stop making redundant network calls.

5. Use pagination and lazy loading instead of dumping a 10,000-row dataset on the user’s screen.

6. Your Database Is a Bottleneck (Yes, Yours)

I don’t even need to see your code—I already know your database is part of the problem.

• Add proper indexing. (Yes, that means actually thinking about your queries.)
• Use caching for frequently accessed data.
• Avoid *SELECT ** unless you like suffering.
• Optimize those joins before they join you in developer burnout.

1. Measure, Don’t Guess

Profiling tools exist for a reason. Use them. Log real-world performance issues instead of guessing what’s slow. If your response time “feels fine” but you haven’t measured it, you’re playing yourself.

Stop Hiding Behind Excuses

I’ve heard all the excuses before:

• “But our app is complex!” Cool, so is Google, and it still loads faster than yours.
• “Users don’t mind waiting a little.” No, they really do.
• “We’ll optimize it later.” No, you won’t. Tech debt always comes due, with interest.
• “Our competitors are also slow.” Congratulations, you’re competing for who sucks less.

Performance Is a Feature, Not a Bugfix

If your app is slow, users won’t wait around for you to fix it. They’ll just leave. The best UX decision you can make isn’t a redesign—it’s making your app fast.

Speed is the experience. Treat it that way.