Optimizing Design System Performance

In design systems and web development, performance optimization focuses on improving the speed, responsiveness, and overall efficiency of a solution. This lesson covers three optimization outcomes, their specific benefits, and general best practices for optimization in Liferay.

Performance Optimization Outcomes

When determining strategies for optimizing performance, first consider your desired results. Generally, there are three types of outcomes:

User Experience Optimization: Focuses on creating seamless and engaging user experiences through faster loading times, improved accessibility, and higher retention.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Aligns with search engine algorithms by optimizing page loading speed, lowering bounce rates, improving mobile experience, and enhancing Core Web Vitals (e.g., LCP, FID, CLS).
Resource Optimization: Improves resource efficiency by reducing server load, lowering bandwidth usage, extending hardware lifespan, and increasing scalability, ultimately leading to cost efficiency.

While these outcomes are distinct, they often share characteristics, and a single optimization may contribute to more than one outcome. With these points in mind, the next section explores specific strategies for optimizing design system performance in Liferay.

Optimization Strategies in Liferay

There are many ways to optimize performance in Liferay. The strategy you choose depends not only on your specific solution implementation, but also on your level of technical expertise. This section provides a brief survey of recommended optimization strategies so that you can familiarize yourself with what is possible in Liferay. As you progress through the course, you'll revisit these strategies in the context of specific design elements.

Streamline Content Delivery

Deliver content as efficiently as possible.

Caching: Use Liferay's built-in caching mechanisms, such as template and fragment caching, to reduce server load and improve response times.
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Serve static assets like images, CSS, and JavaScript from a CDN to reduce latency.

Minimize Resource Overhead

Reduce the footprint of frontend resources.

Code Minification: Compress CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to reduce their size.
Combining Resources: Reduce the number of HTTP requests by bundling CSS and JavaScript files.
Adaptive Media: Ensure that optimized image sizes are used based on the end users device and screen size. Smaller sized images will require less data transfer.

Use Asynchronous Processes

Handle tasks in parallel.

Background Tasks: Offload time-consuming processes such as batch operations and integrations to Liferay's Message Bus or scheduled tasks.
AJAX Requests: Use AJAX requests to update specific parts of the page without needing to refresh the entire page.

Leverage Liferay Features

Take advantage of Liferay's powerful out-of-the-box capabilities.

Fragments: Use fragments for lightweight customization instead of heavy custom code.
Content Personalization: Dynamically deliver content tailored to user segments to enhance relevance and reduce unnecessary data rendering.

Optimize Frontend Performance

Follow modern web design standards whenever possible.

Responsive Design: Leverage the Page Builder editing tools to ensure that your pages are optimized for various devices and screen sizes.
Client-Side Rendering: Use frameworks like React or Angular when creating custom elements, leveraging Liferay's support for JS frameworks.

Leverage Search

Use the under-utilized search server.

Search for Read Operations: Offload read operations from the database to the search server.

To determine which optimization strategies are best suited for your solution, you need to evaluate its current performance.

Measuring and Monitoring Performance

Liferay provides built-in tools and third-party integrations to assess system health, analyze content performance, and identify bottlenecks.

Page Audit

Use the page audit tool to assess the performance of a page. When enabled, this tool will break down the individual items that are in the page and report how long it takes to render each item. This tool ensures that you waste no effort trying to improve resource load times that are not contributing to slow page speed.

Real-Time Alerts

Liferay provides real-time alerts to optimize page speed and interactivity as you work. This proactive approach helps you avoid performance issues during the authoring process by identifying elements that might slow down page load times.

Glowroot Integration

Glowroot is a lightweight, open-source performance monitoring tool that integrates with Liferay to provide metrics and feedback on a running system. Glowroot provides

Detailed Transaction Tracing: Identify slow requests and trace them back to specific code or database calls.
Real-Time Monitoring: View live metrics like response times, active sessions, and resource usage.
Historical Data Analysis: Track trends over time to pinpoint recurring issues.

Conclusion

Performance is a critical consideration in implementing solutions with Liferay's design elements. You can optimize for user experience, SEO, resource efficiency, or any combination of the three. Whichever outcomes you aim for, there are a variety of strategies you can employ to optimize the performance of your solution. To select the correct strategies, it's important to monitor and tune your performance regularly and continuously.

Clarity recognizes that optimizing design system performance should never be an afterthought. Rather, it is one of the most important considerations for you to make when implementing a solution.

Next you'll review what you've learned before moving on to the next module.