Skeleton Screens: What They Are & Why They Improve UX

These simple placeholders provide a user with a preview of the layout while the content is loading, improving perceived performance and reducing frustration at the same time. But what are skeleton screens, and why are they rapidly becoming essential for contemporary UX design?

In this article, we will examine the concept of skeleton screens, their benefits, and the value of using them in designs to improve user experience.

Key Takeaways

Skeleton screens are a smart way to improve how users experience loading times on websites and apps.

• Skeleton screens improve user experience by showing simple placeholders while content loads, reducing frustration and keeping users engaged.
• They outline the final page structure, making loading times feel shorter and more predictable for users.
• Responsive, well-designed skeleton screens work across devices, ensuring a smooth, consistent experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and more.
• Leading brands like LinkedIn and YouTube use skeleton screens to boost perceived performance and lower bounce rates.
• When implemented with clean design, proper timing, and accessibility, skeleton screens enhance both engagement and brand trust.

When done right, they help keep users engaged, reduce frustration, and make your product feel faster and more polished.

What Are Skeleton Screens?

Everything regarding a website or an app revolves around user experience (UX), especially in web and app design. Users get easily annoyed when a web page loads slowly and can leave to use faster websites.

Source: freecodecamp.org

Skeleton screens have become one of the prominent design solutions for erroneous loading. These loading placeholders respond to user actions by providing immediate feedback, making the interface feel faster and more engaging during loading times.

Skeleton screens provide visual aids where content or information is yet to be displayed and thus improve the impression of suspended periods. By presenting a simplified outline of the page's layout, these screens enhance user engagement and provide a visual cue of what to expect while the content populates.

In other words, skeleton screens give the appearance of a shortened waiting time and an improved experience by reducing stagnancy, thereby helping minimize user disengagement.

How Skeleton Screens Work

Skeleton screens display a bare page layout in gray boxes or shapely outlines resembling the anticipated final content. Such visual aids provide users with some expectations while awaiting content loading.

This technique’s logic is based on psychology: the mind is less frustrated with waiting better when loading results is nothing but an empty space because it feels incomplete.

There are various types of skeleton screens used in user interface design, including content skeleton screens, color placeholders, and animated skeleton screens.

Source: blog.hubspot.com

A skeleton screen displays boxes with mold headshots, circular featured images, and avatars for profile text accompanied by a filled form in which the final content will be arranged. The structure may also incorporate some shimmer effect animation, which is pulsing, indicating the page is actively being worked on while the actual content loads.

This specific effect has been used everywhere, even on platforms such as Facebook and Material Design, and has been very beneficial in helping to soften users’ anxiety regarding the loading process and providing reassurance that progress is being made.

For more complicated tasks, developers use advanced JavaScript frameworks like React Skeleton or Vue, which allow the creation of dynamic skeleton components that respond to and transform with the content. These sophisticated solutions can be tailored for different types of content patterns, including but not limited to articles, product listings, timelines, and profile pages.

Benefits of Skeleton Screens

The main advantage of skeleton screens is their ability to increase perceived performance. While skeleton screens do not technically reduce load times, they diminish the wait time, thus making the process feel faster for users by reducing cognitive load.

Source: nngroup.com

This is particularly true because studies show users are likely to remain on a given page if a loading icon is on display, even if what is loading is just a placeholder.

Skeleton screens also eliminate the dreaded layout shift — when the content appears and abruptly reflows the page, disrupting seamless, otherwise smooth scrolling by mimicking the actual content.

Skeleton screens have proven to enhance a user’s perception of performance. These loading screens actively keep users engaged by displaying the arrangement of the information that will load instead of using spinners or progress bars, which only display blank loading screens.

This user interface design forewarns users, enabling them to stay informed. Without this clarity, users would be frustrated and wonder if the page is loading.

Implementing Skeleton Screens: Best Practices

Creating effective skeleton screens requires thoughtful implementation of design elements to ensure a seamless transition between different states of an application. Here are pointers for the implementation of skeleton screens:

Skeleton screens create anticipation by providing a modern alternative to traditional loading indicators. They actively engage users during loading times, making the waiting experience more pleasant and manageable.

Source: smashing-prod.netlify.app

To implement skeleton screens effectively, use CSS and JavaScript to create a visually engaging structure that acts as a placeholder while content loads. This approach not only reduces bounce rates but also enhances conversions by improving user engagement during loading times.

Timing and Smooth Transition

Content skeletons or Skeleton screens should overlay on top of the user interface within 300 milliseconds after a user’s actions. This ensures content appears on an active page.

The transition from the skeleton screen to full content must occur without jarring gaps, instead fading out to reveal content less than 30% of the viewport when the skeleton fades out, typically called Cross Fade Pan.

Additionally, specific elements should be gradually loaded, particularly those with longer load times or critical to user experience, to enhance user engagement and create a more satisfying visual experience.

Sequence and Prioritization

The primary page elements, such as navigation bars, primary actions, and visuals, should be prioritized to retain users’ experience while maintaining the feeling of temporal order. Skeleton screens should represent the final UI to ensure users feel the interface is responsive and intuitive.

Users must aim to receive a much more responsive experience and interact with the highlighted portions while other components are still awaiting. For instance, the main navigation bar becomes the #1 X skeleton, which is also loaded.

Maintain Visual Consistency

Skeleton screens are impactful as they give users a preview of the final content before it is fully available. Netflix is a good example of this, where users see rectangles of different sizes representing posters and descriptions of a movie, which they can visualize while waiting.

Source: Allison Saeng on Unsplash

This approach is particularly effective on content-heavy pages with multiple images, as it helps maintain user expectations during loading times and avoids frustration. In addition, subtitle shimmer effect animations increase engagement by visually moving without being overly distracting.

Design for Different Platforms

Skeleton screens must be tailored for each device and its corresponding screen size. While mobile apps typically need a more condensed version of skeleton screens, web applications leave space for more artistry and intricacy in placeholders. On mobile devices, performance optimization pertaining to battery drain and device resource utilization also needs to be addressed.

Smart TVs and wearables may need larger skeleton screens that are high-contrast for visibility. Regardless of the platform, maintaining user focus is crucial. Skeleton screens should provide visual cues during content loading to keep users engaged and improve the overall user experience.

Design Principles for Skeleton Screens

Some guidelines need to be followed when designing skeleton screens to make informed decisions:

First, it is essential to use skeleton screens to enhance user experience during loading times. Skeleton screens are particularly effective in reducing perceived wait times, especially on mobile devices. They maintain user engagement and can positively impact bounce rates and conversion rates by providing a visual cue that content is loading.

Second, when comparing skeleton screens with other design elements, it is important to note that they are more effective than traditional methods, such as abstract widgets. Skeleton screens help reduce cognitive load and enhance anticipation, making them a superior choice for improving user experience during loading times.

Finally, providing a clear indication during loading processes is crucial. Users need an unmistakable signal that an action is in progress, even without visual elements. This clarity ensures a better user experience and helps users understand that the system is working on their request.

Visual Design

Always aim for soft but impactful colors, like light gray (#E0E0E0 to #F5F5F5), which stands out against a white background without being harsh. This color selection enables the default skeleton to function as a neutral placeholder that does not divert the user from the main content.

Source: geeksforgeeks.org

Additionally, incorporating subtle animations can enhance the user experience by creating a sense of progress and making the loading process appear quicker, while ensuring the design remains simple and unobtrusive.

Shape and Form

The shapes used in skeleton elements should correspond to the content they represent. For instance, images can be framed in rounded rectangles, while simple lines can represent text lines. This gives users a moderate sense of what they should be expecting.

These skeleton screens act as a visual cue, indicating to users that content is loading and providing a graphical representation of where content will eventually appear. The animations should also be smooth and soft. Users should not get annoyed by pulse or shimmer effects that are kept slow and gentle at a 1.5-2-second cycle.

Content Hierarchy

The skeleton screen must represent the page contents in the same order of importance as they are laid out. For example, larger content blocks can represent headings or images, while smaller blocks can stand in for subtext or descriptions.

To effectively implement skeleton screens in content hierarchy, ensure that the placeholders maintain the same structure and visual engagement as the final content. After the page has loaded, please make it easy for users to anticipate each component’s significance seamlessly. Airbnb provides a skeleton interface with property listing placeholders that, alongside the final content, maintain exact dimensions and spacing.

Accessibility

Everyone, even people who can’t see, must be able to view skeleton screens. Skeleton screens serve all users by providing visual placeholders that indicate the layout of content being loaded, which keeps users engaged and reduces frustration.

It is possible with ARIA attributes that let screen readers announce content loading. Moreover, skeleton screens should adhere to users’ reduced motion preferences by providing non-moving static placeholders instead of moving ones.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Skeleton Screens

You should track several UX and performance metrics to know whether your skeleton screens are improving the user experience. Skeleton screens differ from traditional loading indicators by providing a preview of page layouts and content types, which helps set user expectations during loading.

Unlike spinners or progress bars, skeleton screens enhance perceived performance by visually representing the final UI structure, making the loading experience feel faster and more informative for users.

To measure the effectiveness of skeleton screens, focus on metrics that capture user attention during loading times. Techniques like skeleton screens can effectively engage users, making the experience feel faster and more engaging, ultimately reducing the perceived wait time for users.

Additionally, consider the impact of skeleton screens on loading time. Implementing skeleton screens can improve loading time perception, keeping users engaged during the loading process and making it seem faster, despite the actual wait being unchanged.

User Perception

Metrics such as perceived wait time are very important when evaluating how effective skeleton screens are in enhancing user experience. By mimicking the UI layout, skeleton screens help users perceive a page loading 20 to 30% faster than with traditional spinners or loading bars.

User Engagement

Engagement during the loading phase is yet another critical metric. Users are more likely to remain attentive within the page when skeleton screens are deployed than when they are shown a blank screen or a spinning indicator.

Technical Performance

Even though skeleton screens enhance perceived performance, actual performance must always be taken into consideration, particularly load times. In fact, overcomplicated skeleton screens can delay content rendering, which makes optimizing for performance a requirement.

Using a similar technique, platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack, and YouTube enhance user experience during loading times by optimizing their profile pages and other content. Keeping track of First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Time to Interactive (TTI) is essential in ensuring that skeleton screens do not add delays.

Read more:

How to Make a Decent UI Kit? Examples, Tips, Insights from Pros

The Must-Know UX Laws That Drive Great User Experiences

How the Law of Similarity Shapes Web Design

FAQ

Q: What Industries Can Benefit Most From Skeleton Screens?

Industries with content-heavy apps, like e-commerce, social media, news, and entertainment, benefit most from skeleton screens by improving loading feedback and keeping users engaged.

Q: Do Skeleton Screens Replace the Need for Fast Page Loads?

No, skeleton screens enhance perceived speed but do not replace technical performance improvements. Both should be used together for optimal user experience.

Q: Can Skeleton Screens Be Used for Offline or Slow Network Scenarios?

Yes, skeleton screens help maintain user engagement during offline states or poor connections by visually indicating that content is still loading.

Q: Are Skeleton Screens Effective for Complex Interfaces Like Dashboards

Yes, skeleton screens work well for complex dashboards by providing structure and reducing frustration while data-heavy elements load.

Conclusion

Skeleton screens offer a responsive approach to one of the significant challenges in web and app design — loading times. This design technique, which uses minimalist placeholders to show a preview of the page structure, transforms waiting into a seamless experience instead of a frustrating endeavor.

Crucial for mobile apps, web applications, and TV interfaces, skeleton screens are employed by high performing websites like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Slack to enhance perceived performance, lower bounce rates, and maintain user interest during loading times.

Suppose developers adhere to best practices concerning design, timing, and sequencing, and incorporate a progress indicator to provide visual feedback. In that case, they can construct skeleton screens that elevate the user experience and improve site performance.