Technical Questions About Server and Frontend
The technical implementation of performance optimizations naturally raises many questions. What role does hosting play? Is a CDN worthwhile? What does HTTP/3 bring? In this section, we address the specific technical measures that make the difference between a slow and a fast website. Detailed information is also available on our dedicated pages about server optimization and frontend optimization.
- What role does hosting play in website performance? Hosting is frequently the single largest factor influencing load time. A slow server delivers HTML documents with delay (high TTFB), and this delay cascades to all subsequent resources. Typical hosting problems include overloaded shared hosting servers, outdated PHP versions, missing OPcache configuration and insufficient memory. In many projects, through targeted server migration or tuning, we reduced TTFB by 50 to 70 percent, directly impacting all Core Web Vitals.
- Does my website need a CDN? A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is worthwhile whenever your visitors come from different geographic regions. The CDN stores static resources like images, CSS and JavaScript on servers worldwide and delivers them from the nearest location. For a regional website with predominantly German visitors, a CDN is less critical, provided the server is located in Germany. For international websites or shops with a global customer base, a CDN can improve load times for distant visitors by 40 to 60 percent.
- What do image formats like WebP and AVIF provide? Modern image formats like WebP and AVIF offer significantly smaller file sizes at equal visual quality compared to JPEG or PNG. WebP typically reduces file size by 25 to 35 percent compared to JPEG (Google, 2023). AVIF achieves savings of 40 to 50 percent. Since images account for the largest share of data volume on most websites, switching to modern formats directly impacts load time and LCP values. We implement automated image pipelines that provide images in all required formats and sizes upon upload.
- How does JavaScript affect load time? JavaScript is one of the most common performance killers. Every included script must be downloaded, parsed and executed before the page becomes fully interactive. Unused JavaScript that is downloaded but never executed wastes bandwidth and parsing time. Synchronously included scripts block page rendering. We analyze the JavaScript requirements of each page, remove unused code, implement code splitting for page-specific loading and defer non-critical scripts to after the initial rendering.
- What is the difference between HTTP/2 and HTTP/3? HTTP/2 introduced multiplexing, which handles multiple requests over a single TCP connection, noticeably improving load time compared to HTTP/1.1. HTTP/3 builds on the QUIC protocol and replaces TCP with UDP, resulting in faster connection establishment and preventing packet loss from blocking individual streams. In practice, users with unstable mobile connections benefit most from HTTP/3. We ensure your server supports both protocols so visitors automatically use the fastest available variant.
- Can I perform performance optimization myself? Basic measures like image compression, removing unused plugins or enabling browser caching can be implemented with basic technical understanding. For deeper optimizations like server configuration, critical CSS extraction, JavaScript refactoring or database-related performance issues, specialized knowledge is required. In our experience, companies that handle basic optimization themselves and engage a specialized partner for the more demanding measures achieve the best results.