Hi <<First Name>>,
For me, every new year brings fresh optimism and enthusiasm... alongside a certain amount of "what is it I do exactly, and why does it matter?" thinking. If you're anything like me, you'll hopefully find this month's edition of Speed Matters galvanizing and insightful, giving you the kickstart you need to tackle your performance work with renewed energy and excitement.
Several of the resources in this month's edition come from two great sources: the performance.now() conference that took place in November and the annual performance advent calendar, helmed by the amazing Stoyan Stefanov since 2009!
Keep scrolling for...
- The fastest and slowest news sites in the US
- How to put performance in relatable terms
- Best practices for creating a culture of performance
- Site speed that sticks
- Is there such a thing as a web-safe font?
- Get started with Core Web Vitals
- How to use compression dictionaries
- A new virtual meetup space for the performance community
- And this month's performance hero: Annie Sullivan!
When I was reviewing all the videos and articles, I was moved by how much passion and generosity each contributor brought to their work. These folks aren't required to share their knowledge. They do it because they care about serving our community... and ultimately because they care about making the web better for billions of people.
Until next month,
Tammy
b: @tammyeverts.com
m: @tammy
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Most US news sites fail to deliver optimal LCP times to mobile
These days we rely on news sites more than ever, especially on our phones. I took a look at our US Media Benchmark dashboard, which tracks the home pages of industry-leading news sites, including the New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, Washington Post, and NPR.
Only two of the sites – USA Today and Forbes – delivered Largest Contentful Paint times – on a 'slow' mobile connection – that were under Google's threshold of 2.5 seconds. On a more positive note, a handful of sites did *start* to render within 2 seconds.
What did the faster pages have in common? Lean images that were served quickly and early in the critical rendering path. For example, on the USA Today home page, which had an LCP time of 2.18 seconds, the LCP image is the fourth request (out of a total of 532 requests).
Slower pages served the LCP element much later. In one case, the LCP element was the 88th resource request (out of 789 requests) on the page. Yikes.
Wondering how to improve LCP times for your pages? Here's everything you need to know to start measuring, debugging, and optimizing LCP.
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Putting performance in relatable terms
Ethan Gardner gives extremely valuable tips you can start using right away to get people throughout your organization – especially your bosses! – to care about and invest in performance optimization:
"...any time I wanted to focus on performance improvements or secure a budget for performance work, I found myself needing to convince others of its value. Admittedly, carrying the torch for performance can be exhausting, but the message starts to get through once you start putting things in familiar terms."
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Best practices for creating a culture of web performance
This is a great companion guide to Ethan's post linked above. What do the most successful websites have in common? They all have a strong culture of web performance and usability. Here are some proven tips and best practices to help you create a healthy, happy, celebratory performance culture. |
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Site speed that sticks
Performance expert Harry Roberts always delivers fantastic talks, and this one might be one of my favourites. He shares hard-won insights into making (and keeping) performance a high priority within your organization.
From choosing the right metrics to connecting those metrics to business KPIs to implementing performance budgets, this talk is packed with best practices you'll want to consider for your org. (You can also check out his slides here.)
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Get started with Core Web Vitals
If one of your goals for 2025 is getting up to speed on Core Web Vitals, look no further – this guide has you covered. It includes:
- What are Core Web Vitals?
- Why do they matter?
- SEO, UX, and business impact
- How to monitor and catch regressions
- Most important, how to fix your pages to improve your Vitals
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Is there such a thing as a web-safe font?
You might be surprised by the answer to that question.
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Getting real (small) with compression dictionaries
Performance hero Pat Meenan delivers a deep dive into compression dictionaries:
"Compression dictionary transport is a relatively new feature in HTTP that allows for using custom compression dictionaries to improve the compression of HTTP responses. The results can be pretty dramatic, with responses anywhere from 60-90+% smaller than using the best non-dictionary compression currently available.
"This article will discuss how to implement and ship a production-quality implementation that uses dictionary compression on the edge without having to modify an existing application (based on what we learned with several implementations that have shipped or are getting ready to ship)." |
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Introducing PerformanceObserver!
The wonderful duo of Sia Karamalegos and Estela Franco have teamed up to create a new – and much-needed – virtual meetup for the performance community.
"Our community is spread out around the world, and not everyone can easily access in-person tech events. Thus, our mission was to create a meetup that is more accessible to the broader community."
A calendar of speaker talks is in the works! Sign up for email updates about upcoming events.
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Performance Hero: Annie Sullivan!
Continuing our series of Performance Heroes, this month we celebrate Annie Sullivan! As leader of the Chrome Speed Metrics team at Google, Annie and her team have arguably had the most significant impact on web performance over the past year. Cliff Crocker caught up with Annie to learn more about her punk-rock roots and what she's excited about in 2025.
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