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Depth 14.4 · Web and product engineering · Level 3

Performance engineering

Performance engineering is the work of making pages load and respond quickly for real visitors on their own devices and networks. Google measures this with Core Web Vitals: how fast the main content appears, how quickly the page reacts to input, and how much the layout jumps while loading. Field data from real users counts for more than a lab test on a fast laptop.

Specification

Input
Access to the site's code and hosting, and to Search Console or another source of field data.
Method
We read field data first to find the slow templates, reproduce each problem in a lab trace, fix the cause in code or configuration, and confirm the result in field data rather than in the lab alone.
Deliverable
Core Web Vitals remediation: a list of causes per template, the fixes merged into your code, and a before and after record from field data.
Measured by
Core Web Vitals in field data against the "good" thresholds Google publishes on web.dev (industry benchmark: LCP 2.5 seconds or less, INP 200 milliseconds or less, CLS 0.1 or less, at the 75th percentile of page loads).

Most often bought inB2B software, Ecommerce

The artefact, before and after

Core Web Vitals remediation: a list of causes per template, the fixes merged into your code, and a before and after record from field data.

Before: a blank performance engineering record with a row for each of field data review by template, image, font and script loading, server response and caching, input responsiveness, layout shift fixes, and no entries. After: every row carries a finding and a checked status, which is the state the work hands over.

Inside it

  • 01Field data review by template
  • 02Image, font and script loading
  • 03Server response and caching
  • 04Input responsiveness
  • 05Layout shift fixes
Deliverable · Level 4→ Core Web Vitals remediationCore Web Vitals remediation is fixing the causes of slow loading, delayed response to input and layout shift on the page templates that matter, measured with field data from real visitors rather than a single lab test.

Typical first engagement

The usual order of a first piece of work. Timing and price are set at scoping, once we have seen the stack.

  1. 01Field baselineYou get: Core Web Vitals from real users per page type, using Google's published thresholds.
  2. 02Cause analysisYou get: The specific scripts, images and requests behind each slow page type.
  3. 03FixesYou get: Changes shipped one at a time so each effect can be measured.
  4. 04BudgetYou get: A performance budget enforced in the pipeline.

Web and product engineering

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