As an experienced web developer, I often see site performance dragged down by the inefficent way social sharing buttons are loaded. The good news? With some simple tweaks, you can load external social code asynchronously to boost page speed.
In this guide, I’ll walk through exactly why asynchronous loading matters, how it works, and easy tips to slash seconds off your site’s load times.
Why Website Speed Impacts Business Results
Before diving into the technical details, it’s worth stepping back to clarify why performance matters in the first place.
Here are some stats to put things into business context:
- 1 second delay leads to 7% loss in conversions [Cloudflare]
- Over half of mobile site visitors leave after 3 seconds [Google]
- Fast sites have 2x more SEO traffic [PsychSignal]
Page load delay frustrates users, hurts engagement metrics and reduces ROI…but it’s often fixable!
Optimizing how third-party trackers and social code load is one of the most impactful yet overlooked areas. Just by tweaking when Facebookdownloads in relation to your initial site content, you can gain speed boosts of 500 – 1500+ milliseconds.
That quick fix directly reduces bounce rates and lifts other key metrics like conversion rate, average session duration, SEO rankings and overall traffic numbers.
Now let’s get into the nuts and bolts…
The Problem: Synchronous Loading Hurts Performance
Almost every site uses social sharing buttons for visitor engagement – typically loading code from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
By default, most platforms use synchronous loading patterns to include their JavaScript (JS) code…
This means when a user visits your page, it stops loading altogether and waits while the external social media code downloads and initializes.
Only after this third-party JS finishes does your actual content show for the user!
This complete halt creates a pronounced lag between when basic site assets load vs. usable content appears. Especially on mobile connections where every millisecond matters.
Real World Example
To illustrate, here’s a simplified sequence when you rely on default synchronous social code:
- User clicks your site URL
- Browser makes request
- Your HTML loads
- External JS bundles enqueue
- Rendering halts to download social media JS
- Facebook / Twitter code executes
- Site usable content finally renders
That bolded phase creates extended delays where users stare at a visually broken page.
By contrast, asynchronous approaches allow both first and third-party code to load concurrently.
Going Async for Faster Social Sharing
Luckily social platforms make it fairly straightforward to enable asynchronous loading.
This mode loads your core content first then in parallel kicks off external JS rather than blocking.
For example, here is how a standard Facebook JS SDK init would be tweaked:
/* Default SDK loader */
<script>
window.fbAsyncInit = () => {
// FB SDK inits when ready
}
/* Init script synchronously */
const js = d.createElement(script);
js.src = "fb-sdk.js";
doc.body.appendChild(js);
</script>
/* Async SDK loader */
<script>
window.fbAsyncInit = () => {
// FB SDK inits when ready
}
/* Init script ASynchronously */
const js = d.createElement(script);
js.async = true; // Feature flag!
js.src = "fb-sdk.js";
doc.body.appendChild(js);
</script>Notice the extra js.async = true line enabling asynchronous behavior.
While simplistic, this example demonstrates the key difference in loading cadence.
Your HTML, CSS and core logic load straight away. In the background prefetches third-party social functionality. Once ready it initializes without blocking initial render!
Real World Async Sequence
Visually here is how asynchronous social sharing appears to users:
- User clicks your site URL
- Browser makes request
- HTML loads
- CSS applies for first paint
- Your critical JS executed
- Site content renders visibly
- In background external JS bundles download
- Facebook / Twitter code initializes
- Social media buttons populate
By sequencing external social JavaScript asynchronously, users see actual content faster!
Granular Explanation of Async Benefits
Conceptually asynchronous third-party scripts boost perceived performance. But why specifically does async help and and what tangible benefits emerge?
Faster Time to First Paint
This key metric measures how soon browser visually renders initial UI after a user navigates to your page. Multiple seconds delays are common without async approaches.
Async social code better optimized when code executes in relation to user priority content. Your assets render first by hundreds of milliseconds or even 1+ second faster.
Reduced time-to-first-paint directly alleviates user frustration and improves actual website stickiness.
Increased Time on Page
With a more responsive experience out the gate, async social scripts alleviate bounce rates.
When pages feel faster, visitors spend more time engaging with content instead of abandoning your site altogether.
Higher time on page translates to better business outcomes. Whether that means more ad impressions or increased conversion likelihood, speed is the catalyst.
Decreased Load Times
Obvious but important! Async techniques directly speed up measurable load performance.
Instead of waiting for multi-second pauses whenever third-party functionality downloads, async social code slashes this blocking.
End result is objectively faster page loads. Even onComplex pages with many scripts, async cuts out hundreds of milliseconds or more of lag.
Over extended sessions all those small delays compound user frustration. Async mitigates noticeable lags.
Better Mobile Experience
Slower networks and devices demonstrate async advantages even more drastically. What might be 500ms delay on desktop easily exceeds 5+ seconds for an iPhone…
Async social code thus perfectly pairs with progressive enhancement approaches for resilient cross-device experiences.
Prioritizing user experience on suboptimal networks future-proofs your stack as connectivity evolves. Mobile traffic is already predominant for most sites – andgrowing exponentially.
Async techniques harness this trajectory rather than fighting user behavior shifts.
The bottomline results? Quantifiably faster perceived speeds especially for mobile visitors.
Social Media Tips for Website Performance
Beyond Facebook, many top platforms now support methods to improve integration performance. Here are my top tips for properly configuring popular social channels:
When adding Twitter buttons or embed widgets, use their asynchronous twitter-widget.js loader script. See example
For highest performance, directly call Pinterest asynchronous code rather than their deprecated tag method. See demo
AddThis
If relying on AddThis toolbox, enable asynchronous loading via their async configuration property. See docs
SnapChat
When using Snap Pixel or SnapChat buttons, initialize tracker asynchronously by design. See code
Google Platform
Google Tag Manager inherently supports async injection as a container. But double check social tag template configs match.
Check new LinkedIn page sharing endpoints and components all leverage async patterns by default. See SDKs
Generic
For any other social code unclear if async, I suggest wrapping in script pattern similar to Facebook:
/* Init any third-party JS */
const script = document.createElement(‘script‘);
script.async = true; // Async download
script.src = "some-sdk.js";
document.body.appendChild(script);This forces async behavior when configs unclear. Load your core experience first!
Further WordPress Optimization
For WordPress specifically, standard performance best practices all apply for faster social media loading:
- Lean on caching plugins like LiteSpeed or WP Rocket
- Enable HTTP/2 or PHP FastCGI for faster baseline
- Preload Key social media SDK requests
- Code split vendors JS bundles
- Lazy load below the fold elements
- Profile using DevTools via Utilize browser DevTools
- CDN to distribute asset delivery
Thereafter, I recommend developers use Novashare for consolidating social media requirements into one optimized script. It analyzes social performance too.
For a truly well-rounded optimization approach – asynchronous loading combined with caching, delivery distribution, lazy loading and lightweight social functionality – compound speed benefits add up!
Final Thoughts
While the details may seem complex to the uninitiated, implementing asynchronous social media loading simply involves configuring external JavaScript to load in parallel instead of serially blocking flow.
But what seems like a mundane change has dramatic efficiency impacts to bottom line conversion and engagement rates by accelerating visible website speed.
By careful scheduling when third-party external functionality loads in coordination with your user priority content, you directly mitigate frustrating multi-second delays in page rendering.
The result is faster visual momentum, increased visitor time on site and measurable speed gains…ultimately driving the business impact you care about.
Hopefully this deep dive clarifies both why asynchronous social media optimizations matter and exactly how to implement appropriate async techniques for your stack.
As always, hit me up via the comments with any other questions!
