To begin, we are going to use the metrics highlighted on WebPageTest.org.
Running a test there, we see a few things that stand out:
Timing
- Load Time: 4.438s
- TTFB (First Byte): 0.968s
- Start Render: 2.589s
- Speed Index: 2636
Total weight of the page was 0.99 Megs; which makes the home page actually pretty expensive as far as downloading on a mobile device.
Luckily our hosting provider has done somethings to help our performance out of the box. They have allowed keep-alive and compress files for transfer. This is good. It gives us a few “A”s.
Clearly we have our work cut out for us as far as time to first byte. Let’s start there.