Best Practices for Boosting Website Performance Benchmarks

A one-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by up to 7%. If you are a business owner, you should know that users demand speed – the same way search engines do.

That is why many are now treating website performance not just as a technical metric, but rather, a direct driver of customer satisfaction, SEO rankings, and sales outcomes. If your site isn’t meeting modern speed benchmarks, you’re likely losing traffic and trust before the first click.

1) Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML

Minification is a quick win. By stripping out unnecessary characters like spaces, comments, and line breaks from your code, you reduce file sizes and load times. Tools like Terser, CSSNano, or HTMLMinifier can automate this process during development or deployment.

If you’re using WordPress, plugins like WP Rocket or Autoptimize can handle minification without any coding.

2) Compress and Optimize Images

High-resolution images often contribute to the bulk of a webpage’s load size. Optimising images can drastically improve performance without sacrificing quality. Use next-gen formats like WebP or AVIF. These are known to provide better compression than JPEG or PNG.

For example, switching from JPEG to WebP on a client portfolio page cut image sizes by 40%. This can improve load times by 1.2 seconds.

3) Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN stores your site’s static assets across a network of servers around the world. When users access your site, the CDN delivers content from the server closest to them, reducing latency and improving global load times.

4) Enable Browser and Server-Side Caching

Caching allows browsers and servers to reuse previously fetched data rather than loading it anew with each visit. For dynamic websites, tools like Redis, Varnish, or your CMS’s built-in cache systems can be a game-changer.

Don’t forget to set cache-control headers properly so your caching strategy works as intended.

5) Lazy Load Images and Videos

Lazy loading defers the loading of images, videos, or iframes until they enter the user’s viewport. This reduces the initial page size and makes the site appear to load faster.

A long blog post with multiple images, for example, benefits massively from lazy loading. With this, users can start reading immediately while images below the fold load in the background.

6) Defer or Async Load Non-Critical JavaScript

Scripts such as analytics trackers or social media embeds often block rendering. By adding defer or async attributes to these scripts, you allow the browser to continue loading the page without waiting for every script to finish. Reducing render-blocking scripts can improve metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Time to Interactive (TTI).

7) Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources

Certain stylesheets and JavaScript files can prevent the browser from displaying any content until they are fully loaded. Critical CSS inlining and JavaScript deferring (or moving to the footer) can help address this. You can also use free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify these problem resources for you.

8) Use Responsive Design and Images

A performance-focused site is also about making sure it is mobile-optimised. Use CSS media queries and responsive images with srcset and sizes attributes to serve smaller images to smaller screens. Serving a desktop-sized image to a mobile device is a silent performance killer.

9) Choose Fast, Reliable Hosting

No matter how well-optimised your frontend is, a sluggish server will bottleneck your performance. Choose hosting that offers solid-state drives (SSDs), scalable infrastructure, and HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 support. For WordPress sites, consider Kinsta, WP Engine, or SiteGround for performance-oriented managed hosting.

10) Limit Third-Party Scripts

Third-party scripts like live chat widgets, pop-ups, or ad trackers can significantly slow down your site. Audit your stack regularly and remove anything non-essential. Where possible, load scripts asynchronously. Tools like Tag Manager can help consolidate and control script loading more efficiently.

11) Regularly Audit Performance

Website performance isn’t a one-off task. Schedule regular audits using tools like:

• Google Lighthouse (built into Chrome DevTools)
• GTmetrix
• WebPageTest
• Pingdom Tools

You should also make sure to track metrics like Core Web Vitals, Time to First Byte (TTFB), and Total Blocking Time (TBT) to identify weak points.

12) Optimise Your Database and CMS Setup

If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, bloated databases and excessive plugins can drag down performance. Remove unused plugins, limit revisions, and use tools like WP-Optimize to clean your database. Implementing object caching and query optimisation also helps to reduce server load during peak traffic.

Wrap Up

The web doesn’t wait. And neither do your users.

At Chromatix, we’ve seen firsthand how improving site performance can lead to dramatic increases in engagement and leads. If your website is lagging behind and you’re not sure where to start, let the experts at Chromatix help. 

Contact us today to learn how we can turn slow underperforming websites into high-converting digital assets.