Fast by default
The slowest websites are rarely slow on purpose. They get heavy one reasonable decision at a time: a font here, a tracking script there, an image nobody resized, a whole library imported for a single function. By launch the site is a stone, and no one remembers throwing it.
Our answer is not a rescue mission at the end. It is a set of defaults every project starts from, so speed is the state we maintain rather than a thing we chase.
The defaults we never undo
- Two typefaces at most, subset and self-hosted, so text appears instantly.
- Images sized and compressed as a build step, never uploaded raw.
- JavaScript kept for the parts that genuinely need it, so a phone is not parsing code just to render a paragraph.
- Third-party scripts treated as guests: they load after the page works, or they do not load at all.
Measured where it matters
We test on mid-range phones over throttled connections, because that is what most people actually hold, not the fast laptop the site was built on. A page that feels instant there feels instant everywhere.
You do not make a site fast at the end. You keep it fast from the first commit.
The reward is boring in the best way. The site loads before a visitor gets impatient, search engines reward the speed, and nobody has to schedule a panicked performance sprint the week before launch.
