answer first
The measured median changed from 74.5 to 93.5.
Median Largest Contentful Paint fell from 4.872 seconds to 2.625 seconds. Median First Contentful Paint and Speed Index also fell. Total Blocking Time and Cumulative Layout Shift increased, so they are shown alongside the improvement rather than omitted.
methodology
Comparable live mobile lab samples.
We ran two consecutive Lighthouse samples on the live canonical homepage before the change and two after it. All four used Lighthouse 13.4.1 mobile defaults on August 9, 2026. The reported comparison is the median of each two-sample set. Best Practices and SEO scored 100 in every sample.
Two runs expose some variance but do not establish a field distribution. Network, host, CPU, cache, and third-party timing can change a synthetic result. The downloadable evidence retains the raw numeric values and fetch times used here.
| Sample | Performance | FCP | LCP | Speed Index | TBT | CLS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1 | 74 | 3.083s | 4.884s | 4.813s | 1ms | 0.000153095 |
| Before 2 | 75 | 3.007s | 4.859s | 3.907s | 1ms | 0.000153095 |
| After 1 | 95 | 2.396s | 2.430s | 2.396s | 29ms | 0.004821658 |
| After 2 | 92 | 2.566s | 2.821s | 2.566s | 0ms | 0.004821658 |
implementation
Four bounded changes to the loading path.
Removed a render-blocking font stylesheet request
The same Google-hosted base font files were declared directly in the existing CSS. This removed the stylesheet dependency without changing the chosen typefaces.
Preloaded the heading font used by the LCP element
The exact Archivo font resource already used by the page was made discoverable in the document head.
Deferred scripts in their existing dependency order
The app, marks, themes, and intro assets kept their order and behavior while no longer blocking HTML parsing.
Made versioned static assets immutable
Requests carrying the site’s explicit asset version receive long-lived immutable caching. Unversioned pages and assets remain revalidatable.
verification
Performance did not replace behavior testing.
Automated checks confirmed the script order, font preload, absence of the render-blocking font stylesheet, version consistency, and distinct cache policies for versioned assets and HTML. Existing SEO, attribution, client-event, Stripe webhook, and server tests also passed before deployment.
The release preserved the public interface, themes, opening sequence, GA4 configuration, first-touch attribution, checkout, and verified Stripe webhook behavior. The source change is recorded in commit 0b59c97.
What this result does not establish
- It does not establish real-user Core Web Vitals or a Chrome UX Report assessment.
- It does not cover every route, device, network, geography, or returning-visitor cache state.
- It does not establish a search-ranking, traffic, conversion, or revenue effect.
- It does not erase the measured TBT and CLS increases shown above.
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