What are skeleton screens and should my website use them?

Skeleton screens are placeholder content shown while a page loads - animated grey boxes indicating where text and images will appear. They make websites feel faster by giving immediate visual feedback rather than blank screens. Users perceive skeleton screens as 20-30% faster than loading spinners. We implement skeleton screens for content-heavy pages, image galleries, or pages loading dynamic content. They're particularly effective for e-commerce sites and social platforms. However, for fast-loading pages (under 1 second), skeleton screens aren't necessary. We focus on making websites genuinely fast through optimisation rather than relying solely on perception tricks. Skeleton screens are one tool in our performance optimisation toolkit.