First Things to Check to Make Your Site Faster

Start with a quick health check

Open your site in a browser and run Google Lighthouse. The colorful scorecard gives you a fast look at performance, accessibility, and SEO. Screenshot the results so you can compare later.

Lean on Netlify for the heavy lifting

• Global edge network: Netlify automatically serves your pages from servers close to your visitors, so the first byte arrives quickly.
• Atomic deploys: Each publish bundles your site into a single package, reducing odd slowdowns from half-deployed files.
• Instant rollbacks: If a deploy feels slower, roll back with one click and investigate calmly.

Let a CDN handle your images

Editing every image by hand takes hours. A CDN (Content Delivery Network) can resize, compress, and convert formats on the fly. Popular choices:

• Netlify Image CDN: Built into Netlify. Use the <NuxtImg> component or direct URLs with width and quality parameters.
• Cloudinary: Powerful transformations, background removal, and smart cropping.
• Imgix: Flexible on-demand resizing, sharpening, and format changes.
• ImageEngine: Device-aware compression that balances quality and speed.

Practical steps you can do today

1. Switch image tags to <NuxtImg>. This component automatically talks to your selected provider and requests the best format (like WebP or AVIF) per visitor.
2. Add width and height. Giving images their size stops layout jumping and speeds up perceived load time.
3. Use lazy loading. Only load images when they scroll into view so the top of the page appears almost instantly.
4. Cache smartly. Set cache-control headers through Netlify’s _headers file so static assets stay on the edge for longer.
5. Compress text files. Turn on Brotli or gzip compression in Netlify’s site settings for faster CSS and JS delivery.

Keep the wins going

• Schedule a monthly Lighthouse run to catch regressions early.
• Remove unused scripts or fonts—each extra request slows the page.
• Combine analytics and marketing scripts where possible, or load them after the main content.
• Teach editors to upload high-resolution originals; let the CDN handle resizing rather than creating many manual versions.

A fast site feels effortless to browse. With Netlify’s global network and an image CDN doing the messy work, you can focus on content while every visitor enjoys a snappy experience.