Featured Image Caption: ReactJS Developers Illustration
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Introduction
According to BuiltWith Trends, over 36.30 million active websites are utilizing ReactJS for their UIs, highlighting its global adoption and effectiveness in modern web development. With more than 1.39 million websites based in the UK, the country holds the second position in ReactJS adoption. This might make you wonder what factors are driving UK businesses to select ReactJS for web development.
In this blog, we will explore the ins and outs of the rising adoption of ReactJS, particularly among UK businesses, and examine its overall impact on their web performance through real-world experiences.
Why are UK Businesses Turning to ReactJS for Scalable Web Solutions?
The UK has been a hub for web innovations, with many companies continuously pushing the boundaries of what is possible online. From Motion UI and micro front-ends to component-based architectures, these developments are influencing how businesses approach web development.
ReactJS fits perfectly into this picture, allowing developers to break down UIs into reusable, modular components. Let’s explore what is attracting startups to it, especially those looking to develop high-performance, scalable web solutions.
Scalable Development with Component-Based Architecture
One of the main reasons why UK startups are opting for ReactJS is its component-based architecture. This allows developers to break down the app’s UI into smaller, reusable components that can be developed and worked on individually. This modularity makes it easier to manage and scale the required UI functionality without a complete overhaul. As a result, ReactJS is a top choice for modern web development that employs micro front-ends—small segments that together form the UI.
Performance Optimizations for Complex Applications
ReactJS leverages a virtual DOM (Document Object Model) that renders only relevant components affected by state changes. All other elements remain intact, minimizing the performance overhead. This performance optimization technique ensures smooth user interactions even as applications grow in complexity.
Recently added ReactJS features, such as the Concurrent Mode and automatic batching, further improve application performance by optimizing renders and UI state updates. The Concurrent Mode allows developers to pause, interrupt, or resume UI rendering as needed. Similarly, automatic batching lets ReactJS group multiple state updates, even across different events, into a single render cycle.
This is highly advantageous for web solutions in the fintech or eCommerce segment, where real-time interactions and state changes are common.
Extensible to Cross-Platform Development via React Native
Another standout benefit of ReactJS is its close integration with React Native, a multi-platform development framework. This integration is particularly beneficial for startups looking to scale their web solutions to mobile devices. By utilizing the same React codebase for both web and mobile (iOS and Android), they can minimize the time and costs associated with developing separate apps for each platform.
Developer-Friendly Nature
ReactJS is known for its developer-friendly nature, making it easy for developers to get up to speed quickly. Its JSX syntax allows developers to write HTML-like code within JavaScript, eliminating the need for extensive coding expertise. Moreover, the abundant learning materials, such as those on ReactJS Dev and Legacy ReactJS, further make it accessible for developers at all skill levels.
Faster Prototyping
Prototypes are an excellent means of gaining investor confidence, particularly for startups that have not yet secured funding. They provide investors with a tangible representation of your idea, mitigate perceived risks, and enable the early identification and rectification of design flaws. All of this becomes imperative if you want your idea to stand out from the 252,000 new web solutions that are created every day. ReactJS offers numerous features that align with the needs of startups prototyping their ideas.
- Declarative Development Approach: ReactJS follows a declarative approach to UI development. It allows developers to define what the UI should display (while ReactJS updates the virtual DOM to reflect the same) rather than manually handling all the updates whenever an action occurs, making the process more intuitive and less error-prone.
- Hot Reloading: ReactJS’s hot reloading feature allows developers to instantly view changes made in the code without losing the current application state. This makes it easier to experiment with UI changes and test new ideas in real-time.
- ReactJS Developer Tools: The library offers an open-source Chrome extension called React Developer Tools. With this extension, developers can quickly inspect, debug, and optimize the React app, simplifying the testing and refining of features.
- Easy Integration with Prototyping Tools: ReactJS easily integrates with design and prototyping tools like Figma and Sketch, enabling faster handoff from design to development.
Large and Active Community Support
ReactJS has a growing and active community of millions of developers, making it a standout choice for UK startups looking for young as well as experienced talent. Additionally, there are many online discussion platforms where emerging UI development trends and ReactJS best practices are consistently talked about. The most prominent ones include:
- DEV’s React Community
- Hashnode’s React Community
- Reactiflux Online Chat
- Reddit’s React Community
Consequently, it becomes easier for UK startups to connect and hire ReactJS developers, as the technology’s widespread (and continuous) adoption ensures a growing community.
How is ReactJS Driving Innovation in Prominent UK Firms?
ReactJS has already powered many UK-based startups by enhancing their overall web performance. Its flexibility and scalability make it a popular choice for businesses, even today. Let us look at a few of the most prominent UK-based companies that are utilizing ReactJS to enhance and scale their web solutions.
BBC – Enhanced Responsiveness and Web Performance
BBC Website Layout
One of the most prominent UK-based public service providers, BBC, is known to run its entire web design system through ReactJS. They started utilizing ReactJS around 2015 in an attempt to rebuild its homepage and later shifted its many other platforms, including BBC iPlayer and the BBC News website, to it. Soon after, Simorgh, a ReactJS-based application, was developed to power its World Service News websites—something that was earlier done through PHP.
Due to the noticeable improvements in the performance and responsiveness of its scalable web solutions, they migrated over hundreds of web pages across 41 discrete websites from legacy PHP to ReactJS.
The Result? Simorgh started handling approximately 1 million unique page views daily, with a total of 11 million page renders.
The Guardian – Improved Developer Experience
The Guardian Website Layout
The Guardian, a leading UK-based online newspaper, adopted ReactJS to enhance its web development and improve the developer experience. Struggling to deliver a dynamic web solution, the company was looking for an approach that wouldn’t overwhelm their existing developers.
In 2019, after exploring various options, they implemented React Islands to isolate interactive sections of the page instead of rendering the entire page. This decision allowed them to significantly reduce the JavaScript load, leading to improved performance and faster page rendering. The move to ReactJS Islands not only boosted performance but also streamlined state management and interaction handling across their high-performance application, resulting in a smoother UX.
Deliveroo – Cleaner and More Maintainable Application
Deliveroo Website Layout
Deliveroo is a British online food delivery company that decided to integrate ReactJS with its Rails stack. Let’s see why.
- Being in the food delivery segment, speed was everything, and shifting to ReactJS positioned them to benefit from a full server render (through NextJS). This resulted in significant speed gains on every web app page that was converted.
- Integrating ReactJS allowed them to separate different aspects or responsibilities across the app. While Rails focused on handling data and business logic, ReactJS handled dynamic content and UI updates, leading to cleaner and more modular architecture.
- ReactJS simplified the testing of the HTML markup. Since this HTML is generated before the content reaches the browser, it can be tested thoroughly before rendering, ensuring that the page structure, layout, and data are correct. This made it easier to catch issues early.
With ReactJS, they were able to achieve a maintainable architecture, cleaner UI, and a more responsive, high-performance application.
ReactJS has established itself as a powerful tool not only for UK-based startups but also for global companies. It has allowed them to build future-ready and scalable web solutions with UIs that can handle growing user needs. As seen above, numerous companies like The Guardian, BBC, and Deliveroo have already achieved measurable results utilizing ReactJS to create more efficient web applications.
However, to make the most of ReactJS, it’s important for developers to have a solid understanding of the ReactJS and JavaScript ecosystem, as well as modern UI/UX trends and technologies. From a business standpoint, having developers with this knowledge becomes imperative if they want to stay relevant and competitive in today’s digital market.
This is why many startups choose to hire dedicated ReactJS developers from the outset. Having their support and technical proficiency ensures the application is built to handle dynamic content, scale with user growth, and meet evolving performance demands. After all, it is much easier with the right team by your side.
By Nathan Smith
who is a Technical Writer at TechnoScore with extensive knowledge in software documentation, API guides, and user experience. Mastering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and tools like JIRA and Confluence, Nathan’s expertise covers Application Development, Software Engineering, AI/ML, QA Testing, Cloud Management, DevOps, and Staff Augmentation (Hire mobile app developers, hire WordPress developers, and hire full stack developers etc.).
Member since April, 2025
View all the articles of Nathan Smith.
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