A 10-point website performance checklist

Slow pages lose visitors and rank lower in search. Before paying for a redesign, go through this list.

The checklist

1. Test on a phone, on mobile data. Your desktop on office wifi hides the problem.
2. Run Lighthouse. In Chrome, open DevTools and select the Lighthouse tab. Aim for 90 or above.
3. Resize images. A photo straight from a camera can be 6 MB. Pages rarely need more than 200 KB per image.
4. Use modern formats. WebP and AVIF are much smaller than JPEG at the same quality.
5. Remove unused plugins and scripts. Each chat widget and tracker adds load time.
6. Limit fonts. One or two font files are plenty.
7. Turn on caching and compression. Your host should send gzip or Brotli and cache static files.
8. Use a CDN if your visitors are in several countries.
9. Set image dimensions in the page so content does not jump while loading.
10. Check again monthly. Performance drifts as content is added.

Want it built right from the start?

Our showcase websites are built with these rules from day one.