Frequently asked questions
Frequently Asked Questions About Performance Optimization
From the fundamentals of load time optimization to Core Web Vitals, server configuration and ongoing monitoring: here you will find well-founded answers to the most important questions about website performance.
General Questions About PageSpeed Optimization
- What exactly is PageSpeed optimization? PageSpeed optimization covers every technical measure that improves a website's load time and responsiveness. It works on two levels: server-side optimization with caching, Brotli…
- Why is my website's load time so important? Load time is not a technical nicety, it acts directly on revenue. Three metrics react especially sensitively: conversion rate drops by up to 7 percent with each additional second…
- What is the difference between PageSpeed Insights and actual user experience? PageSpeed Insights from Google delivers two fundamentally different kinds of data that are often confused. The lab data comes from a synthetic test in a controlled environment: a…
- What PageSpeed score should my website achieve? A Lighthouse score of 90 or higher is considered good and signals green values across the essential metrics. However, the score is only a weighted summary of several lab values…
- How long does a typical performance optimization take? Duration depends on the starting condition and scope. A targeted frontend optimization of a single landing page is often completed within a few days. A full audit with subsequent…
- Can every website be made faster? In our experience from 50+ projects (project experience), every website so far could be noticeably accelerated, though the room to manoeuvre varies greatly with the starting…
Core Web Vitals in Detail
- What are Core Web Vitals and why are they important? Core Web Vitals are three Google-defined metrics that measure the user experience from different angles. LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) captures how quickly the largest visible…
- What thresholds apply for good Core Web Vitals? Google divides each metric into three tiers. LCP is good below 2.5 seconds, needs improvement between 2.5 and 4.0 seconds and is poor above that. INP is good below 200…
- How strongly do Core Web Vitals affect Google rankings? Core Web Vitals are a confirmed ranking factor, but one among many. Google has repeatedly emphasized that content relevance remains by far the strongest signal. So a page sitting…
- What is the relationship between INP and the former FID metric? INP (Interaction to Next Paint) replaced the older FID (First Input Delay) metric as a Core Web Vital in March 2024. FID measured only the delay of the very first interaction, and…
- Why is my CLS value poor even though the page loads quickly? CLS measures something entirely different from loading speed, namely visual stability. A page can load lightning-fast and still have a poor CLS value if elements keep jumping…
- How do I improve my website's LCP value? LCP is the sum of four phases. First, the server response time (TTFB), reduced through optimized hosting, caching and, where appropriate, a CDN. Second, render-blocking resources…
Technical Questions About Server and Frontend
- What role does hosting play in website performance? Hosting is frequently the single largest lever, because it sits right at the start of the loading chain. If the server delivers the HTML document with delay, the TTFB is high, and…
- Does my website need a CDN? A Content Delivery Network is worthwhile above all when your visitors are geographically dispersed. The CDN keeps static resources like images, CSS and JavaScript on servers in…
- What do image formats like WebP and AVIF provide? Modern image formats deliver significantly smaller files at the same visible quality than the classic JPEG and PNG formats. WebP typically saves 25 to 35 percent over JPEG…
- How does JavaScript affect load time? JavaScript is one of the most common performance brakes, because it is more expensive than its file size suggests. Every script must be downloaded, parsed, compiled and executed…
- What is the difference between HTTP/2 and HTTP/3? Both protocols speed up transfer compared to the old HTTP/1.1, but they solve different problems. HTTP/2 introduced multiplexing, meaning several parallel requests over a single…
- Can I perform performance optimization myself? Partly, yes. Basic measures like compressing images, removing unused plugins, enabling browser caching or updating the PHP version can be done with some basic technical…
Platform-Specific Questions
- What performance problems occur most frequently with WordPress? WordPress sites usually suffer from a recurring pattern. The most common brakes are: too many active plugins, each loading their own CSS and JavaScript files on every page even…
- How do you optimize the performance of a Shopware shop? Shopware CE comes with its own set of performance levers that differ from a classic website. The central ones are: the Elasticsearch configuration for fast product and faceted…
- Can JavaScript frameworks like React or Vue also be optimized? Yes, and this is often where great potential lies. Single Page Applications based on React, Vue, Svelte or Angular typically struggle with three problems: a large initial…
- How does optimization for mobile devices differ? Mobile optimization is not a side issue but the main benchmark, because Google uses the Mobile-First Index and evaluates the mobile version of your site. Mobile devices also have…
- Can performance optimization cause SEO problems? Yes, if it is implemented improperly. That is one reason we do not blindly activate standard plugins. Typical risks are: overly aggressive lazy loading that prevents the Googlebot…
- Does my shop need to go offline during optimization? No. An online shop earns from every minute of availability, so we deliberately work without a blanket shutdown. All changes are first made in a staging environment, a copy of your…
Costs and Project Process
- What does professional PageSpeed optimization cost? The investment depends on scope and complexity, which is why we work with transparent ranges rather than flat rates. A targeted optimization of a single landing page or a clearly…
- What does a typical performance optimization project look like? Every project follows a clear, transparent process. It begins with a comprehensive performance analysis: we measure the current state of all relevant metrics in lab and field…
- Do you also offer ongoing performance monitoring? Yes. Performance is not a state you establish once and then forget, which is why we offer monitoring packages that keep your Core Web Vitals and other metrics continuously in…
- How do I measure the success of a performance optimization? Success has to be measurable, otherwise it is just a claim. We document it on two levels. The technical metrics are compared before and after: the Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS)…
- Are there recurring costs after optimization? The one-time optimization itself incurs no mandatory costs afterwards, the improvements achieved remain yours. So you are not locked into a subscription model to stay fast. We…
- Can optimization be divided into phases? Yes, a phased approach is frequently the most economically sensible option, because it spreads the investment over several months and delivers results early. Phase one focuses on…
Caching, Compression and Delivery
- What is the difference between browser cache and server cache? Both caches speed up delivery, but they act at different points. The browser cache stores resources like images, CSS and JavaScript locally on the visitor's device. When the same…
- What is Brotli compression and why is it better than Gzip? Brotli is a compression algorithm developed by Google, tailored specifically to web content and shipping with a pre-trained dictionary of typical HTML and CSS patterns. Compared…
- How does a reverse proxy like Varnish work? A reverse proxy sits in front of the actual web server and keeps complete HTML pages in memory. When a visitor requests an already cached page, the proxy serves it directly from…
- What does Critical CSS mean and how is it implemented? Critical CSS is the minimum set of CSS rules needed to correctly render the immediately visible area of a page (above the fold). Normally the browser must first download and…
- How do I handle third-party scripts that slow down performance? Third-party scripts such as analytics tools, chat widgets, marketing pixels and social media embeds are among the most stubborn performance bottlenecks, because you do not control…
- How do I ensure performance remains stable after optimization? An optimized website can slow down again over time, which is normal and no sign of poor work. Regressions usually arise from new content, plugin updates or third-party scripts…