A slow site costs you customers before they've read a word. Practical ways to make yours faster.
On mobile networks, every extra second of load time loses visitors. Performance isn't a technical vanity metric — it directly affects bounce rate, conversions and search rankings.
Measure before you optimise
Start with real-user data from Google Search Console's Core Web Vitals report and PageSpeed Insights. Lab scores are useful, but field data shows what your actual visitors experience.
The usual suspects
- Images: serve modern formats (AVIF/WebP), size them correctly and lazy-load below the fold
- Fonts: limit families and weights, self-host, and use font-display: swap
- JavaScript: remove unused libraries and split code by route
- Third-party scripts: audit chat widgets, trackers and embeds — they're often the heaviest thing on the page
Render on the server
Frameworks like Next.js render pages on the server or at build time, so visitors get meaningful HTML immediately instead of a blank screen waiting for JavaScript. Pair this with edge hosting and pages can load in well under a second.
Cache aggressively
Static assets should be cached for a long time with hashed filenames. Pages that don't change often can be statically generated and revalidated periodically rather than rebuilt on every request.
The fastest request is the one you never make.
Treat performance as a budget, not a one-off fix. Set limits for page weight and load time, and check them every time something new is added.