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Pillar 02

Build it, fix it, or make it fast again

A slow site is a revenue problem with a technical cause. We find the cause, fix it, and leave you with the measurement so it does not come back.

upgradiq.com/services/website-engineering
LCP

The problem

The site works, technically. It just loads in six seconds on a phone, drops a third of mobile visitors before the first paint, and every agency that touched it added another script. Nobody knows which of the fourteen tags still matters.

Recognise it

You are probably here if

If three or more of these are true, this pillar is where your constraint lives.

  • 01Largest Contentful Paint above 4 seconds on mobile
  • 02Search Console reports failing Core Web Vitals
  • 03The layout jumps while the page settles
  • 04Adding a section requires a developer and two weeks
  • 05The last redesign made it slower
Scope

What we actually do

New build

Marketing sites and product sites built to a performance budget from the first commit.

Rescue

A site that is slow, broken or unmaintainable. We stabilize first, then improve.

Performance

Core Web Vitals brought into the green and held there with budgets in CI.

Accessibility

WCAG 2.2 AA remediation with a documented audit trail.

Re-platform

Move off the CMS that is holding you back without losing rankings.

Care plan

Monthly maintenance, dependency updates and a standing performance report.

Engagement

How it runs, and where you can stop

Each phase ends with something you own. Stopping after any of them leaves you better off than before it.

  1. 013d

    Measure

    Field data and lab data. Real devices, real networks, not a score from one run.

  2. 021w

    Triage

    Rank every finding by impact on the metric that matters, then by cost to fix.

  3. 032-8w

    Fix

    Ship in small increments. Every deploy is measured against the baseline.

  4. 04ongoing

    Hold

    Budgets in CI. A regression fails the build instead of reaching production.

Deliverables

What you receive

Artifacts, not a slide deck. Each one is usable by your team without us in the room.

  • Baseline report with field and lab data
  • Prioritized findings with effort estimates
  • The fixes, shipped and measured
  • Performance budgets enforced in CI
  • Accessibility audit against WCAG 2.2 AA
  • Monthly report if you take the care plan
Tooling

What this is usually built on

Next.jsCloudflareR2Lighthouse CIPlaywrightVercel
Proof

One engagement from this pillar

E-commerceSMBEgypt5 weeks

Deleting nine apps beat rebuilding the store

A Shopify storefront carrying fourteen apps, losing mobile buyers before the page finished painting.

Read the full case
Mobile LCP
6.4s2.0s
CLS
0.280.03
Conversion
1.0x1.28x

CrUX field data, 28 day rolling window, 60 days after launch. Source: Search Console and Shopify analytics, March 2025

Honesty

Not a fit if

We would rather lose the engagement on this page than at week six.

  • You want a visual redesign and do not care about the numbers
  • The site must stay on a platform that cannot be measured or deployed from CI
  • Nobody internally can approve removing a marketing script
Questions

Asked on almost every first call

Do we need a full rebuild?

Usually not. On the last rescue we deleted nine apps and kept the existing theme. Rebuild is the answer when the platform itself blocks the fix, not before.

Will our rankings drop?

Not if the migration preserves URLs, metadata and internal links. We map every route before a single page moves.

How fast is fast enough?

LCP under 2.5s on a mid range phone over 4G. We target under 1.5s because the budget should have headroom.

Can you work with our existing developers?

Yes. About half of our engagements are alongside an internal team rather than instead of one.

What if the problem is the hosting?

Then we say so in the baseline report and you decide. We do not bill fixes for a problem a platform move would solve.

Bring the constraint, not the brief

The first call is 45 minutes and free. If website engineering is the wrong pillar for your problem we will say so and point you at the right one.