Performance engineering
Performance audits
What your pages actually send, how long they take to paint, and which change moves which number.
The engagement
What it costs and how long it runs
Stated up front, because these are the questions everything else depends on. The price is where the work starts, not a quote: scope moves it.
- Starts from
- $4,000
- Typical length
- 1 to 2 weeks
- Delivered as
- A written report and a walkthrough
- Re-measure
- Included once, after the fixes
Detail
What the work is
A measured account of what your pages actually send and how long it takes to paint, followed by the specific changes that would move the numbers.
A performance score is a number about a number. It tells you that something is wrong without telling you which request, which script, or which of the four things blocking the first paint is the one worth removing.
An audit here is a list of requests: what each one weighs, when it starts, what it blocks, and what would happen if it were gone. The recommendations that follow are ordered by what they save rather than by how easy they are to write in a report.
Where a fix is a configuration change we will say so plainly, and where it is an architectural one we will say that too, along with what it would cost to make and what it would be worth.
Scope
What it includes
Everything below is part of the price. Anything not on this list is quoted separately rather than assumed.
- Byte-level breakdown of every request a cold visit makes
- Render-blocking analysis, and what inlining would and would not fix
- A prioritised list of changes with the expected saving beside each
Process
How it runs
In this order, with each step finishing in something you can look at rather than a status update.
1. Measure the real thing
Cold and warm visits to the pages that matter, on a throttled connection, recorded as request waterfalls rather than as a single score.
2. Attribute the time
Every hundred milliseconds before the first paint is assigned to something: a redirect, a blocking stylesheet, a font, a script that had to run before the layout could settle.
3. Prioritise the changes
Each recommendation carries the saving we expect and the work we think it takes, so the list can be cut from the bottom without discussion.
Outcomes
What is different afterwards
Not what happens during the work, but what you are left holding when it is over.
A list, not a score
You finish with specific changes attached to specific requests, in the order that moves the most time for the least work.
Trade-offs stated
Where a change costs something — a repeat visit re-downloading an inlined stylesheet, say — the cost is written down rather than discovered later.
Numbers you can re-run
The measurements are reproducible, so the next person to touch the site can tell whether they made it better or worse.
Services
The other three
They combine: an audit often ends in a build, and a migration usually starts with one.
From $12,000 · Web development
Site builds
A complete site, compiled once into plain HTML. Routes, components and content in TypeScript, deployed to an edge that only has to serve files.
From $6,000 · Accessibility consulting
Accessibility reviews
A review against WCAG, done in the markup rather than in a dashboard, with automated checks added to your build so the findings stay fixed.
From $18,000 · Web development
Migrations
Moving a site off a framework it has outgrown, keeping every URL, redirect and search ranking intact through the change.
Sound like the right one?
Describe the site, what you want to be different about it, and roughly when.