Why my widget doesn't display on my site until page refresh
Sometimes you may notice that your Elfsight widget does not appear on the page immediately. Instead, it starts showing up only after the page is reloaded. This article aims to explore two reasons behind this behavior.
In this article
AJAX technique
The most common reason for this is Ajax (short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) - a technique that helps load specific web page elements faster by retrieving data dynamically in the background. This method allows your website to load only the visible part of its content instead of the whole page right away - more web page elements load as you scroll down.
Our widgets are programmed to load after the rest of the page content has loaded. This has been done on purpose - to ensure that optimal webpage loading speed is maintained, avoiding any potential slowdowns. Due to this peculiarity, Ajax prevents the platform from initializing.
To ensure the widget loads immediately, you need to add the first line of the installation code (the widget's platform) into your website's <head>:
<script src="https://static.elfsight.com/platform/platform.js" data-use-service-core defer></script>
The second line of your widget installation code should remain in its original position. Once you've done that with your website, the widget should appear on the page upon the first load.
For example, the bellow screenshot illustrates how to fix this issue on a Squarespace website: you need to insert the first line of your widget installation code into the Code Injection → Header:
SPA (single-page application) website peculiarity
Additionally, this behavior can happen if your website is a Single Page Application (SPA). A single page application is a website or web application that dynamically rewrites a current web page with new data from the web server, instead of the default method of a web browser loading entire new pages.
In such cases, the solution demonstrated above will not help, as the widget requires a different installation approach on such websites. To resolve the issue, we kindly ask you to contact our Support Team. Our developers will gladly assist you in reinstalling the widget.