You don't need a three-month performance initiative. These six changes take less than two hours each and show up in your Core Web Vitals report within 28 days.
1. Specify image dimensions in HTML
Add width and height attributes to your img tags. Prevents layout shift as images load. I added dimensions to 40 images on a landing page and CLS dropped from 0.18 to 0.04. Took 35 minutes.
2. Preconnect to required origins
Add link rel=preconnect for your CDN, analytics, and font domains in your head tag. Establishes connections earlier. Shaved 400ms off LCP on a site loading Google Fonts and Cloudflare assets.
3. Defer non-critical JavaScript
Add defer attribute to script tags that aren't needed for initial render. Chat widgets, analytics, social embeds. One site reduced blocking time by 1.2 seconds by deferring four scripts.
4. Remove unused CSS for above-the-fold content
Extract critical CSS for your header and hero section, inline it, and defer the full stylesheet. Tools like Critical or PurifyCSS automate this. Reduced first paint by 600ms on a WordPress site.
5. Compress images to WebP format
Convert your hero images and largest contentful paint elements to WebP. A 2.4MB JPEG became a 340KB WebP with no visible quality loss. LCP improved by 1.1 seconds.
6. Set proper cache headers
Configure your server to send Cache-Control headers for static assets. Set max-age to 31536000 for versioned files. Repeat visitors load 70% faster.
Pick two of these today. Test them on your slowest template. Measure before and after. Real improvements don't require架构 rewrites.