A local business came to us with a slow homepage (10+ seconds on mobile) and a high bounce rate. They didn’t want a redesign — they wanted results. Here’s what we did.
Audit & baseline
We ran Lighthouse and WebPageTest. Main issues: unoptimized hero image, render-blocking JavaScript, multiple unused plugins, and a large third-party font.
High-impact fixes (in order)
- Replace hero JPG (1.8MB) with responsive WebP variants (120–300KB) and add width/height.
- Defer non-critical third-party scripts and move them below the fold.
- Consolidate CSS and inline critical CSS for the hero area.
- Replace a heavy slider plugin with a static hero and a light JS-driven slider only for larger screens.
- Remove two unused plugins and replace another with a lightweight alternative.
Results
- First Contentful Paint improved from 3.2s → 0.8s
- Largest Contentful Paint improved from 6.5s → 1.6s
- Homepage load size reduced by 65%
- Bounce rate improved by 18% in the weeks after.
Start with images and blocking JS — those are often the low-hanging fruit.