What are some best practices for integrating external services into a website without compromising user interaction?

When integrating external services into a website, it is important to ensure that the user experience is not compromised by slow loading times or disruptions in functionality. One way to achieve this is by using asynchronous loading techniques, such as AJAX, to fetch data from external services without blocking the main thread. This allows the website to continue functioning smoothly while waiting for the external data to load.

<script>
    // Make an AJAX request to fetch data from an external service
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('GET', 'https://api.externalservice.com/data', true);
    xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (xhr.readyState == 4 && xhr.status == 200) {
            // Process the data returned from the external service
            var data = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);
            // Update the website with the external data
            document.getElementById('external-data').innerHTML = data;
        }
    };
    xhr.send();
</script>

<div id="external-data"></div>