Websites
Static-first is the cheapest performance win left
Static generation removes the largest sources of slow pages: server work at request time, client-side content assembly, and render-blocking third-party requests. Most sites that fail Core Web Vitals fail on those three, not on anything exotic.
The unglamorous causes
Slow pages are rarely slow for interesting reasons. In practice it is a handful of the same things:
- Content assembled in the browser, so nothing paints until JavaScript runs
- Fonts fetched from a third-party host, adding a DNS lookup and a connection before any text appears
- Images without dimensions, so layout shifts as each one arrives
- A decorative script blocking first paint
Static generation removes the first outright and makes the rest obvious.
Self-host your fonts
A font request to a third-party CDN costs a DNS lookup, a TLS handshake and a round trip before a single character renders. Self-hosting a subset, preloaded, removes all of it. On this site it is four woff2 files and zero external requests.
Let the decoration arrive late
If a page has an ambient effect, load it when the browser is idle and gate it on device capability. Anyone on a phone, a low-core machine or a metered connection should never download it.
The test worth running: disable JavaScript entirely and read the page. If the content is all there and legible, your decoration is genuinely optional. If it is not, the decoration is load-bearing and your metrics will show it.
