How We Build Websites That Score 95+ on Google PageSpeed
Every website IT Starter delivers targets a 95+ Lighthouse score across all four metrics: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Here's how we achieve it consistently.
Why Performance Matters
A one-second delay in page load time reduces conversions by 7%. Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. Your WordPress site loading in 8 seconds is costing you leads and rankings.
Our Technical Approach
We use Next.js with static export — every page is pre-rendered to flat HTML at build time. No server-side rendering on each request, no WordPress PHP processing, no plugin bloat.
Combined with Nginx + Varnish, pages are served from cache in microseconds.
Image optimisation uses Next.js's built-in <Image> component with explicit width and height attributes on every image. Even on static exports where server-side resizing isn't available, correct dimensions prevent layout shift and stop oversized files downloading on mobile connections.
Font loading is handled through next/font/google with preload: false and font-display: swap. We use two typefaces — Sora for headings, Inter for body text. Swap keeps text visible while fonts download; skipping preload removes render-blocking requests from the critical path.
Minimal JavaScript is a deliberate constraint. Heavy client-side libraries get replaced with static HTML wherever possible. Interactive components — the mobile nav, theme toggle, contact form — are isolated. The rest of the page ships no JavaScript at all, which directly improves Time to Interactive.
Tailwind CSS purges every unused class at build time. The final stylesheet is typically under 20 KB. A standard WordPress theme ships 150 KB or more of CSS — most of it unused on any given page.
Core Web Vitals — What We Target
Google's Core Web Vitals are three measurements that determine whether a page feels fast to real users. We engineer for each one explicitly.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measures how quickly the main content appears. Target: under 2.5 seconds. Pre-rendered static HTML served from cache, correctly sized hero images, and no render-blocking assets above the fold are what get us there.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures visual stability — how much the page jumps as it loads. Target: below 0.1. Explicit dimensions on every image, no late-loading fonts that reflow text, no embeds that inject after the first paint. A page that doesn't shift is a page users trust.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) measures how quickly the page responds to input. Target: under 100 milliseconds. With most pages being static HTML and minimal JavaScript, nothing is blocking the main thread when a user clicks a button or opens a menu.
What This Means for Your Business
Performance is not a developer vanity metric. Google confirmed Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal in 2021 — pages that fail these thresholds lose search positions to competitors who don't.
Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal — slower sites rank lower, even when the content is stronger. For a business generating 100 enquiries a month, a slow site can mean 15–20 fewer leads with no other change. Speed is a sales tool, not a technical detail.
Faster pages also reduce bounce rates. Visitors who don't wait for a page to load don't read your offer, don't fill in your form, and don't enquire. Every second you shave off load time is a second more visitors stay on the page.
If your current website is slow, bloated, or underperforming in search, we can change that. Get in touch — we'll audit your site and show you exactly what's holding it back.