Thailand Guide
Contents
Speed & Performance
Website speed directly impacts both SEO and conversion rates. Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. Amazon found 100ms slower = 1% fewer sales. Google found bounce rate increases 32% when load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds.
Speed & Performance: Tools
Use multiple tools together as each measures different aspects. Google PageSpeed Insights measures Core Web Vitals, GTmetrix provides detailed Waterfall Charts, WebPageTest supports multiple locations, Pingdom is simplest for beginners.
What is Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals has 3 main metrics: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measuring main content load speed (target <2.5s), INP (Interaction to Next Paint) measuring responsiveness (target <200ms), CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measuring visual stability (target <0.1).
Optimize
Images are often the main cause of slow websites. Use modern formats WebP or AVIF instead of JPG/PNG for 30-80% size reduction. Set width/height to prevent CLS, use srcset for multiple resolutions, and always compress before uploading.
Caching
Caching stores responses for reuse without reprocessing. Multiple layers: Browser Cache (users don't reload), Server Cache (PHP doesn't reprocess), Object Cache (database query cache), Page Cache (serves static HTML).
CDN Load Time
CDN stores static files at edge servers near visitors, instead of serving from distant origin servers. Reduces latency and origin server load. Cloudflare CDN is free for everyone, enabling in just 5 minutes.
Minify Compress Code
Minification removes whitespace, comments, and shortens variable names in CSS/JS/HTML to reduce file size. Gzip or Brotli compression on the server reduces transfer size by 60-80%. Together these significantly improve page load times.
Hosting
No matter how much you optimize, slow hosting means a slow website. Choose hosting with NVMe SSD, PHP 8.x + OPcache, LiteSpeed or Nginx, HTTP/2, low TTFB, and servers near your target audience.
Lazy Loading Defer Scripts
Lazy Loading loads images only when scrolled into view, not preloading invisible images. Deferring scripts prevents JS from blocking rendering. Use fetchpriority="high" for images and defer/async attributes for scripts.