Performance and Core Web Vitals
Is a slow website losing you customers? Website speed can be measured and fixed.
I measure website speed with tools rather than with impressions. I find the bottlenecks, fix them, and prove the difference with numbers before and after.
Website speed is an operational property, not cosmetics. A slow site loses visitors before they read the first paragraph, it ranks worse in search, and on an e-shop it directly costs orders. The cause is rarely a single thing. Usually several things add up: unoptimized images, plugin code that runs too long, missing caching, slow redirect chains and hosting that no longer matches the current traffic. Only measurement shows how much each of them costs you, which is why every optimization starts with an audit full of numbers instead of a list of generic advice. The audit produces a list of causes ordered by their impact on the visitor, with an estimate of the work needed to fix each one.
I have been building and repairing websites for 19 years, so I work on speed across every layer: the server and its headers, database queries, templates and plugins, images and frontend code. I am a freelance developer based in Poprad, I work remote-first, and you talk to me directly from the first measurement to the final check. I work at 40 EUR per hour including VAT, so you can turn the scope into a budget yourself: a smaller optimization fits into a single day, a larger intervention into a few days of work.
01
A speed audit with numbers
The starting point is always measurement. I go through Core Web Vitals from real visitor data, add laboratory tests of the key pages and look at the structure of the requests made while loading. The output is a clear picture of where the site loses time: rendering, images, scripts, redirects or the server response itself. Every cause comes with its share of the total time and an estimate of the fix. That way the work happens where it genuinely saves seconds, rather than where a change would only look good in a report.
- Core Web Vitals from real data
- Causes listed by priority
- An estimate attached to every finding
02
Images and media
Images are the most common reason a website feels slow. I handle them completely: conversion to modern formats, responsive sizes matched to the width the image is actually displayed at, correct dimensions on upload and deferred loading for anything below the fold. On e-shops and catalogues I set up thumbnail generation so that a product listing never pulls the original files. Large files, video and auto-scrolling elements are moved off the critical loading path. On older sites I also go through the media library and find the originals that have been quietly weighing down listings, galleries and mobile views for years.
- Modern formats and responsive images
- Deferred loading below the fold
- Tidy e-shop thumbnails
03
Caching, hosting and CDN
The server side decides how much work your website has to repeat for every visitor. I configure page and object caching, headers that let browsers reuse files they already downloaded, and redirects that do not turn into chains costing hundreds of milliseconds. If the hosting simply cannot keep up with the traffic, I say so openly and propose a migration, including what has to change so the move does not break email or your domains. For an international audience a CDN helps as well, because it brings static files closer to the visitor and takes load off the origin server.
- Page and object caching
- Fixing slow redirect chains
- An honest look at hosting limits
04
Code, plugins and rendering
The frontend side is largely about loading order: blocking scripts, styles, fonts and the sequence in which the browser paints the content. I also review the plugin list, because every unnecessary plugin adds queries and scripts. Typical work includes moving scripts out of the head, consolidating styles, cleaning up database queries inside templates and removing duplicates left behind by years of edits. Every change is made carefully and verified on real pages, so that a faster website does not become a broken one.
- Order of scripts, styles and fonts
- Removing unnecessary plugins
- Optimizing database queries
05
Results, monitoring and ongoing care
After the work is done I repeat the measurements and compare the numbers before and after, so the gain is visible to you and not only to visitors. I set up a view of the values you can check at any time, and with ongoing care I keep watching them until new content or a new plugin starts eating the gain again. Speed is not a one-time state but a property that everyday operation slowly changes. That is exactly why I treat it as part of looking after a website rather than as a one-off trick.
- Measurement before and after
- Values you can check yourself
- Watching speed as content changes
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Frequently asked questions about website speed
How much does speed optimization cost?
A smaller intervention fits into 3 to 6 hours and most projects fit into 6 to 15 hours. At 40 EUR per hour including VAT that means an investment starting at roughly 120 EUR. The exact scope comes out of the audit.
How long does the optimization take?
The audit takes a few days and the fixes themselves take up to a week depending on scope. Your website keeps running the whole time, and changes are deployed one at a time and verified.
What if the problem is the hosting?
That accounts for a fair share of cases. I review the hosting and propose either a different configuration or a move to a provider that matches what the site needs. A migration is prepared so it does not break your email or your tracking.
Will search rankings improve as well?
Speed and page experience are among the measurable signals search engines use, so better values help. They are not a cure on their own if the content or the technical SEO basics are weak, and I flag those during the audit.
You mention Core Web Vitals. What are they?
A set of measurements describing the visitor experience: how quickly the main content appears, how quickly the page becomes usable and how stable it stays while loading. They are the main language I use to measure and report the result.
Want a website that stops losing visitors?
Send me your website address. I will run an audit with numbers and propose the fixes ordered by their impact.
Make my site faster