Your Speed Index is bad but the page looks fine?
Lighthouse records a video of your page loading and scores how fast the viewport fills in. Not just the first pixel, the whole visual experience.
requestmetrics.com/web-performa...
#WebPerf
Lighthouse’s “First Meaningful Paint” sounds important. It isn’t.
It’s deprecated, misleading, and still confusing people into fixing the wrong stuff.
Here’s what FMP actually was, why Google killed it, and what to watch instead.
requestmetrics.com/web-performa...
#webperf #corewebvitals
Your hero image takes 5 seconds to show up? Users already hit the back button. That's Largest Contentful Paint killing your conversions and search rankings.
Here's how to fix it: requestmetrics.com/web-performa...
#WebPerf #CoreWebVitals
First Contentful Pain would be a good name for a talk on front end metrics...
First Contentful Paint isn't about speed. It's about trust.
Every millisecond of blank screen makes users wonder if your site is broken. Under 1.8 seconds tells them "I got you, content is coming."
requestmetrics.com/blog/lightho...
#WebPerf #CoreWebVitals
Missing the viewport meta tag? Your mobile users are waiting an extra 300ms on every single tap. Browsers add that delay to check for double-tap zooming. One line of HTML fixes it.
requestmetrics.com/blog/lightho...
#WebPerf #SEO
Most web servers ignore URL casing. But Node and Python don't.
If /User/Profile and /user/profile are different routes in your app, our new "Preserve Casing" setting keeps them separate in your reports.
requestmetrics.com/blog/product...
#WebPerf #WebDev
Just got our last certificate renewal email ever. All our products are now fully automated with CertKit. No more $144/year wildcard certs. No more renewal reminders. No more "your site will be vulnerable" scare tactics.
Dogfooding feels so good.
#SSL #PKI
Third-party scripts work fine in tests but cause real user pain:
Analytics blocking rendering
Chat widgets slowing interactions
Payment lag
RUM catches this.
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebPerf #ThirdParty
Complete performance strategy:
🧪 Synthetic testing in development
👥 RUM in production
🔍 Investigate with synthetic
✅ Validate with RUM
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebPerf #WebDev
Gmail scores terribly on Lighthouse despite being one of the snappiest web apps ever built.
Context matters for performance measurement.
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebDev #Performance
Synthetic testing: "Your site loads in 1.2 seconds! 🎉"
Real users: "This page is taking forever..." 😤
RUM bridges this gap.
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebPerf #UserExperience
Performance issues only RUM can catch:
🔍 Device-specific problems
🌍 Geographic gaps
💰 Traffic spike disasters
📱 Progressive degradation
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebPerf #RealUserMonitoring
Lighthouse simulates an "85th percentile user" but their simulation is usually wrong for your audience.
RUM shows you YOUR users' reality.
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebDev #Performance
Chrome User Experience Report is like the lite beer of Real User Monitoring 🍺
Better than nothing, but lacks the substance you need for real decisions.
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebPerf #CoreWebVitals
Your CDN looks great in tests but European users get 3x slower load times.
Your checkout tests perfectly but mobile users abandon carts due to lag.
This is why you need RUM.
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebPerf #UX
That moment when your Lighthouse score is 💯 but users are still complaining about slow pages...
Stop guessing, start measuring what they actually experience.
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebDev #Performance
🚨 Plot twist: 50% of websites with perfect Lighthouse scores still fail Core Web Vitals for real users.
Your synthetic tests run in a perfect bubble. Your users live in the real world.
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need...
#WebPerf #RealUserMonitoring
Jordan Griffin discusses lowering the barrier to getting user feedback during the redesign of TrackJS .
youtube.com/shorts/e4URn...
Learn more about the TrackJS redesign 👇
trackjs.com/blog/a-fresh...
hello world!
Discover why Time to First Byte (TTFB) is crucial for website speed in this essential Concepts of Web Performance tutorial with @toddhgardner.com from Request Metrics.
Master the art of loading JavaScript efficiently in this essential Concepts of Web Performance tutorial with @toddhgardner.com from Request Metrics.
youtu.be/vS3-1RQecEE
@duffeh.bsky.social wrote about focusing on the experience of your real users instead of SEO for web performance. He quoted my work on Keyword Vitals that it might not matter for your keywords.
iankduffy.com/articles/web-performance...
David Jacobs at Axos Bank uses Request Metrics to make their websites fast and usable.
"The engineering team behind this make Request Metrics an incredible value. I cannot recommend enough."
🔀 The powerful but dangerous Vary header:
Vary: Accept-Encoding
This creates separate cache entries for gzipped vs uncompressed content. But be careful - Vary on dynamic headers can destroy cache effectiveness 💣
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/
The Image Optimization Hack Nobody Talks About 🎩
💡 Optimize your thumbnails!
✅ Resize before serving (don’t rely on CSS)
✅ Convert to WebP/AVIF
✅ Serve from a CDN or separate subdomain
More image tricks: requestmetrics.com/web-performance/high-per...
#WebDev #Optimization
💥 Cache busting 101:
styles.d41d8cd98f.css vs styles.css?v=1.2
Both methods invalidate cache when content changes, but the first (filename hashing) is far superior! It enables longer cache times without refresh issues 🔒
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/
🔄 "no-cache" ≠ "don't cache"!
This actually means "cache but validate before using" - not "don't cache at all" (that's no-store). This confusion causes so many performance issues! 🤦♂️
requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/
@joshuaclareflagg.bsky.social uses Request Metrics for his #ecommerce stores to give him Quick and Easy insights into his #CoreWebVitals, and how to make his website faster!
Your hero image is probably your LCP element. If it’s slow, your SEO suffers.
✅ Compress it (WebP/AVIF)
✅ Use fetchpriority="high"
✅ Serve via CDN
Fix LCP now: requestmetrics.com/web-performance/high-per...
#SEO #LCP