It was Green Custard's objective to build their new website embracing Progressive Web App principles to get the best possible experience for users. They strived to get a high score on Google Lighthouse (a tool for measuring the quality of websites) too. To achieve both of these, they needed to address a key factor during development: Web Performance (site speed).
The importance of a website's speed needs to be top-of-mind with Google's Speed Update which went into effect this month, not to mention considering the latest stats, Director James Green learnt whilst at Google I/O 2018:
- Bounce rate increases 53% if a web page takes longer than five seconds to load
- 79% of shoppers who have performance problems don't return to a site
- Conversion rates drop 7% for every one second delay in load time
So, when developing their new website, the Green Custard team measured performance through Google Lighthouse, and worked hard on reducing and optimising the load times. They did this by using techniques such as low resolution image placeholders, only loading images when the user moves to them, and loading data for other pages in advance.
To read the full story and gain further tips on website speed, take a look at their latest blog article.