Jono Alderson said it plainly in a post that Remkus de Vries shared on X, and the truth hit me hard: website speed is a competency test. Not a technical footnote. Not a developer’s problem.
A test.
And you’re failing it before a single customer reads your first sentence.
I know because I was failing it too.
My site, JasonHobbsLLC.com, is hosted on Pressable.com, a service I trust enough to be an affiliate for, built by the same people behind WordPress.com. When I tracked down my own numbers, the result was a 46 on mobile with a 12.1-second Time to Interactive.
Twelve seconds. In a world where attention is measured in milliseconds.
I sat with that for a moment. Then I set about fixing it.
Here’s the three-step process, built specifically for Pressable’s architecture, that took me from embarrassing to barely competitive.
Step 1: Turn On the Features Your Host Is Already Hiding From You
Most people never open their hosting dashboard unless something is broken.
That’s a mistake.
In the MyPressable Control Panel, go to Settings > Site Overview, then scroll down to Platform Details. You’ll likely find what I found: Edge Cache and Object Cache sitting there, inactive.
Toggle both to “Active.”
That’s it.
Edge Cache puts copies of your pages on servers physically closer to your visitors — so instead of traveling cross-country to your main server, the page pops up from somewhere nearby.
Object Cache means WordPress stops making unnecessary round-trip requests to its own database every time someone loads a page. It remembers what it already looked up, so it doesn’t have to look it up again.
Together, they do the heavy lifting before any plugin ever gets involved.
Step 2: Let Jetpack Do What It Was Built to Do
Pressable is built by Automattic. Jetpack is built by Automattic. These two were designed to work together, and most people never take advantage of that.
Go to Jetpack > Settings > Performance, then enable Site Accelerator.
Your images and static files now load from Automattic’s global CDN instead of your main server. Your server, freed from carrying all that weight, can focus on what actually matters: getting your content in front of a visitor fast.
Step 3: Add Jetpack Boost (The Free Version Is Enough to Start)
Jetpack Boost is a free plugin with a focused job: make your site faster on the front end. Install it, then turn on the settings shown in the screenshots below.
Here’s what each one actually does, in plain English:
Optimize CSS Loading
Your website loads a lot of styling instructions, fonts, colors, layouts, all at once, even the stuff that’s way below the screen. This setting determines which styles are needed for what the visitor can see first, loads only those at the top, and pushes the rest down. The page feels like it appears instantly because the most visible part of it does.
LCP Images
LCP stands for Largest Contentful Paint, the single biggest visible element on a page, usually your hero image. This setting identifies that image on your most important pages and tells the browser: load this one first, load it aggressively, don’t make the visitor wait on it. It’s the setting most directly responsible for the number your visitors actually feel when the page opens.
Defer Non-Essential JavaScript
JavaScript is the code that runs the interactive elements of your site, such as menus, buttons, tracking scripts, and widgets. Most of it doesn’t need to run until after the page is already visible. This setting holds those scripts back until the content finishes loading. Your visitor never notices the delay. Your speed score does.
Concatenate JS & CSS
Your site normally asks the browser to go fetch dozens of separate files, like making twelve trips to the grocery store instead of one. This setting combines those files so the browser makes fewer, bigger trips. Less back and forth. Faster load.
Image CDN
Your images get automatically resized to exactly what each device needs, converted to a modern lightweight format, and delivered from a worldwide network of servers. Your phone gets a phone-sized image. Your laptop gets a laptop-sized one. Nobody gets a file that’s bigger than it needs to be.
Image Guide
This one is a diagnostic tool, not an automatic fix. Once it’s on, it overlays a small badge on every image as you browse your site, showing the actual file size, the ideal size, and how much you could save by resizing it. It tells you where the problems are. You fix them.
The Results
Where I started:
- Mobile Performance Score: 46
- Time to Interactive: 12.1 seconds
After all three steps:
Mobile — Performance: 92 | Accessibility: 94 | Best Practices: 92 | SEO: 100 First Contentful Paint: 0.9s | Largest Contentful Paint: 3.3s
Desktop — Performance: 99 | Accessibility: 93 | Best Practices: 96 | SEO: 100 First Contentful Paint: 0.3s | Largest Contentful Paint: 0.7s
From a 46 to a 92 on mobile. From 12.1 seconds to under a second for first paint.
One thing worth noting: the mobile LCP is still at 3.3 seconds. That number has room to move. I’ll address it in a follow-up post. Sharing it as-is because partial progress is still progress, and because I’d rather show you the real numbers than a polished story.
Plus, I may need to consult with a page speed specialist to figure out how to get from where I am now to where I want to be: pages loading within 1 second.
Three steps, so far. No developer.
Some Additional Screenshots of My Updated PageSpeed Score
Let me start with a screenshot of the starting scores for my website in the Pressable Portal. They run this every month, so it does not reflect the changes I made.
Here is the Mobile Before Score Again:
Here is the Desktop Before Score:
I ran a new Google PageSpeed score for my website before I started trying to make it load faster. I did not think to grab a screenshot of those original scores, but I think they were lower than the ones you see above.
Now Here Are The After Mobile And Desktop Scores
Mobile PageSpeed Scores
Desktop PageSpeed Scores For JasonHobbsLLC
Now, Over To You
When was the last time you ran a speed test on your own site? Head over to PageSpeed Insights and let me know your score in the comments.
Leave a Reply