Website speed is not a technical preference. It's a measurable factor in how people (and Google search) respond to a site.
Modern browsers expose this clearly. Google’s Core Web Vitals define performance using three metrics:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How quickly the main content appears
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How responsive the page feels to user input
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How visually stable the page is while loading
These metrics are observable, testable, and publicly documented. They are also used directly in search ranking systems.
Speed affects behaviour before design or copy are fully perceived. Pages that load slowly increase abandonment. Pages that respond slowly to user input reduce interaction. Pages that shift unexpectedly erode trust.
Performance problems usually come from accumulation:
- Excessive JavaScript
- Heavy third-party scripts
- Unoptimised images
- Layered frameworks doing work the page doesn’t need
Static websites avoid many of these issues by default. They deliver prebuilt files directly to the browser, reducing processing, dependencies, and failure points. This built-in simplicity makes performance (speed) easier to achieve and easier to maintain.
Fast websites are not impressive just because they are fast. They are effective because they remove friction. They shorten the distance between intent and action—and in practice, that distance matters.