Sometimes a website with reasonable benchmarks can still perform poorly. This dental foundation website is a perfect example. The former site’s 2.2 Mb page size was well within the industry median; and 84 server requests is above optimum, but certainly not atrocious. Still, migrating from a custom-coded Theme to a WordPress-approved Theme (_Underscores) significantly improved perceived page load speed, despite server requests increasing and page size decreasing nominally.
Benchmark Analysis
| Performance Metric | Old Website |
New Website |
| Google Lighthouse: Accessibility | 95/100 | 100/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Best Practices | 92/100 | 100/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Mobile Speed | 31/100 | 73/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Desktop Speed | 81/100 | 91/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Search Engine Optimization | 80/100 | 83/100 |
| WebPageTest Speed Index | 7.309 | 1.926 |
| Total Homepage File Size | 2.2 Mb ( 1.36 Mb Images + 574 Kb Scripts + 156 Kb CSS + 110 Kb HTML) | 1.7 Mb (1.28 Mb Images + 295 Kb Scripts + 63 Kb CSS + Kb Fonts + 124 Kb HTML) |
| Total Web Server Requests | 84 (25 Images + 32 Scripts + 16 CSS + 11 Other + 1 HTML) | 92 (64 Images + 15 Scripts + 8 CSS + 3 Other + 2 HTML) |
| Estimated Mobile Homepage Load Time | ~7.3 seconds | ~ 1.9 seconds |
WebPage Test Speed Index: median = ~3.591; top 10% = <1.388
In 2021, the average page size = ~2.4 Mb and median page size = ~2.1 Mb.
Database-driven websites, like WordPress, are more performance optimized when server requests are < 40 – 60.
Scope of Work
- Accessibility auditing, consulting and remediation
- Performance optimization
- Security hardening
- WordPress training & consulting
Web Design + Development Team
Visual Design by David Owen Hastings
WordPress Theme Development by Scott Marlow
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