Site Speed Optimisation

Why Site Speed Directly Impacts Your Bottom Line

Page speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor, and its impact extends far beyond SEO. According to Google research, as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds, bounce probability increases by 32%. At 5 seconds, it increases by 90%. Every millisecond counts.

Core Web Vitals — Google's set of user-centric performance metrics — are now a direct input to search rankings. Sites that pass all three thresholds consistently outperform slower competitors in organic search, and the gap is widening as Google increases the weight of page experience signals.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals measure three dimensions of real-user experience:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — Measures loading performance. The largest visible element should render within 2.5 seconds of page load. Common culprits: unoptimised images, render-blocking resources, slow server response times.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — Measures interactivity. The page should respond to user interactions within 200 milliseconds. Common culprits: long JavaScript tasks, heavy third-party scripts, main thread blocking.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — Measures visual stability. Pages should maintain a CLS score below 0.1. Common culprits: images without dimensions, dynamically injected content, web fonts causing layout shifts.

How We Optimise Site Speed

Our performance engineering team follows a data-driven approach to speed optimisation:

1. Baseline measurement — We capture both lab metrics (Lighthouse, WebPageTest) and field data (CrUX, real user monitoring) to understand actual user experience, not just synthetic scores.
2. Root cause analysis — We identify the specific bottlenecks causing poor performance using waterfall analysis, JavaScript profiling, and render timeline inspection.
3. Prioritised optimisation plan — We rank fixes by impact-to-effort ratio, targeting the changes that will deliver the biggest improvements first.
4. Implementation — We execute optimisations including image compression and modern formats (WebP/AVIF), code splitting and lazy loading, critical CSS extraction, server-side rendering optimisation, third-party script management, and CDN configuration.
5. Verification — We re-measure after each batch of changes to confirm improvements and track progress against targets.

What's Included

• Core Web Vitals audit with field and lab data analysis
• Performance waterfall analysis for key page templates
• Image optimisation and modern format conversion
• JavaScript and CSS optimisation (code splitting, tree shaking, critical path)
• Server response time analysis and caching strategy
• Third-party script audit and loading strategy
• Font loading optimisation (preload, font-display, subsetting)
• Ongoing performance monitoring dashboard

Results You Can Measure

[PLACEHOLDER: Before/after metrics — e.g., 'LCP reduced from 4.8s to 1.6s, CLS from 0.28 to 0.04, overall PageSpeed score from 38 to 94']

[VISUAL: Core Web Vitals dashboard showing green/passing scores for all three metrics]