Performance Optimisation
Core Web Vitals treated as a budget rather than a score to chase after launch.
What actually makes sites slow?
Images, third-party scripts, and fonts, in that order. Almost never the framework. A site can be built on anything and still be fast if it ships correctly sized images in a modern format, defers everything that is not needed to paint, and does not load four analytics tools that each block rendering.
What does a performance budget mean in practice?
Numbers agreed before the build, not measured after it. A ceiling on JavaScript shipped per route, a target for Largest Contentful Paint and Interaction to Next Paint, a limit on third-party requests. Anything that would break the budget has to justify itself, which is a much easier conversation to have before a tag manager is installed than after.
Does this affect rankings?
Less than people claim and more than nothing. Core Web Vitals are a tiebreaker, not a lever. The real argument for speed is that a slow page loses people before it gets to make its case, and on mobile connections that happens constantly.