Speed is UX and SEO: Google ranks on Core Web Vitals, and every 100ms of delay costs conversions. Most sites can get 2x faster with an afternoon of work.
Images — 80% of most page weight
- Convert to WebP/AVIF (30–70% smaller than JPEG)
loading="lazy"on everything below the fold- Set width/height attributes — prevents layout shift (CLS)
- Serve appropriately sized images with srcset — not a 2000px photo in a 300px card
Fonts
- Max 2 families;
font-display: swapso text shows immediately - Preconnect:
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com">
Code
deferon script tags — never block parsing- Minify + enable gzip/brotli (one .htaccess block on Apache)
- Cache static assets for a year with hashed filenames
Measure, don't guess
- Lighthouse (DevTools → Lighthouse) — full audit with fixes
- PageSpeed Insights — real-user Chrome data for your actual visitors
The three vitals: LCP < 2.5s (largest element paint), CLS < 0.1 (layout shift), INP < 200ms (input response).