Request Metrics

Third-party scripts work fine in tests but cause real user pain:

Analytics blocking rendering
Chat widgets slowing interactions
Payment lag

RUM catches this.

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebPerf #ThirdParty

Complete performance strategy:

🧪 Synthetic testing in development
👥 RUM in production
🔍 Investigate with synthetic
✅ Validate with RUM

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebPerf #WebDev

Gmail scores terribly on Lighthouse despite being one of the snappiest web apps ever built.

Context matters for performance measurement.

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebDev #Performance

Synthetic testing: "Your site loads in 1.2 seconds! 🎉"

Real users: "This page is taking forever..." 😤

RUM bridges this gap.

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebPerf #UserExperience

Performance issues only RUM can catch:
🔍 Device-specific problems
🌍 Geographic gaps
💰 Traffic spike disasters
📱 Progressive degradation

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebPerf #RealUserMonitoring

Lighthouse simulates an "85th percentile user" but their simulation is usually wrong for your audience.

RUM shows you YOUR users' reality.

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebDev #Performance

Chrome User Experience Report is like the lite beer of Real User Monitoring 🍺

Better than nothing, but lacks the substance you need for real decisions.

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebPerf #CoreWebVitals

Your CDN looks great in tests but European users get 3x slower load times.

Your checkout tests perfectly but mobile users abandon carts due to lag.

This is why you need RUM.

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebPerf #UX

That moment when your Lighthouse score is 💯 but users are still complaining about slow pages...

Stop guessing, start measuring what they actually experience.

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebDev #Performance

🚨 Plot twist: 50% of websites with perfect Lighthouse scores still fail Core Web Vitals for real users.

Your synthetic tests run in a perfect bubble. Your users live in the real world.

https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/you-need-rum-to-understand-web-perf/
#WebPerf #RealUserMonitoring

YouTube video by TrackJS Lowering the barrier to user feedback #coding #programming #webdesign #debugging

Jordan Griffin discusses lowering the barrier to getting user feedback during the redesign of ⁨TrackJS⁩ .

youtube.com/shorts/e4URn...

Learn more about the TrackJS redesign 👇
trackjs.com/blog/a-fresh...

hello world!

YouTube video by Request Metrics What is Time to First Byte (TTFB) - The Concepts of Web Performance

Discover why Time to First Byte (TTFB) is crucial for website speed in this essential Concepts of Web Performance tutorial with @toddhgardner.com from Request Metrics.

YouTube video by Request Metrics Loading JavaScript on your Website - Concepts of Web Performance

Master the art of loading JavaScript efficiently in this essential Concepts of Web Performance tutorial with @toddhgardner.com from Request Metrics.

youtu.be/vS3-1RQecEE

Web Performance - Prioritising User Experience ahead of Search Rankings Astro description

@duffeh.bsky.social wrote about focusing on the experience of your real users instead of SEO for web performance. He quoted my work on Keyword Vitals that it might not matter for your keywords.

https://iankduffy.com/articles/web-performance---prioritising-user-experience-ahead-of-search-rankings/

David Jacobs at Axos Bank uses Request Metrics to make their websites fast and usable.

"The engineering team behind this make Request Metrics an incredible value. I cannot recommend enough."

🔀 The powerful but dangerous Vary header:

Vary: Accept-Encoding

This creates separate cache entries for gzipped vs uncompressed content. But be careful - Vary on dynamic headers can destroy cache effectiveness 💣

requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/

How to Optimize Website Images: The Complete 2025 Guide Images engage users, drive clicks, and generally make everything better--*except for performance*.Images are giant blobs of bytes that are usually the slowes...

The Image Optimization Hack Nobody Talks About 🎩

💡 Optimize your thumbnails!
✅ Resize before serving (don’t rely on CSS)
✅ Convert to WebP/AVIF
✅ Serve from a CDN or separate subdomain

More image tricks: https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/high-performance-images/

#WebDev #Optimization

💥 Cache busting 101:

styles.d41d8cd98f.css vs styles.css?v=1.2

Both methods invalidate cache when content changes, but the first (filename hashing) is far superior! It enables longer cache times without refresh issues 🔒

requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/

🔄 "no-cache" ≠ "don't cache"!

This actually means "cache but validate before using" - not "don't cache at all" (that's no-store). This confusion causes so many performance issues! 🤦‍♂️

requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/

@joshuaclareflagg.bsky.social uses Request Metrics for his #ecommerce stores to give him Quick and Easy insights into his #CoreWebVitals, and how to make his website faster!

How to Optimize Website Images: The Complete 2025 Guide Images engage users, drive clicks, and generally make everything better--*except for performance*.Images are giant blobs of bytes that are usually the slowes...

Your hero image is probably your LCP element. If it’s slow, your SEO suffers.

✅ Compress it (WebP/AVIF)
✅ Use fetchpriority="high"
✅ Serve via CDN

Fix LCP now: https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/high-performance-images/

#SEO #LCP

How to Optimize Website Images: The Complete 2025 Guide Images engage users, drive clicks, and generally make everything better--*except for performance*.Images are giant blobs of bytes that are usually the slowes...

WebP vs. AVIF: Which One Wins? 🏆

WebP & AVIF crush file sizes, but which is better?
✅ WebP: Smaller than JPG/PNG, widely supported
✅ AVIF: Even smaller, but not universal
Best practice? Serve both with <picture>.

Full guide: https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/high-performance-images/

Lab Scores only represent
🧑‍💻a single load
🌎 from a single location
⏰ and a single point in time.

Generally, the score doesn't matter-- user experience matters. And you measure that with RUM and CrUX.

So why should you trust the numbers from Request Metrics? Because we SHOW OUR WORK!

How to Optimize Website Images: The Complete 2025 Guide Images engage users, drive clicks, and generally make everything better--*except for performance*.Images are giant blobs of bytes that are usually the slowes...

Stop Hosting Images on Your Server 📦

Serving images from your main server? That’s a performance disaster. CDNs cache images worldwide for faster delivery & lower bandwidth.

Move your images to a CDN like Bunny.

More tips: https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/high-performance-images/

🏷️ ETag: the unsung hero of HTTP caching

ETag: "123abc987654"

This simple fingerprint header tells browsers when content hasn't changed, enabling 304 responses that send zero data but keep content fresh 🧠

requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/

What are Long Animation Frames (LoAF)? Long animation frames (LoAFs) can leave your website feeling slow and unresponsive. Learn about Long Animation Frames, what they are, and how to measure them.

Bad animations kill performance. Stick to transform & opacity—they run on the GPU and won’t block frames. 🚀

More tips here:
🔗 https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/long-animation-frame-loaf/
#webperf #perfmatters

📄 Perfect caching for HTML documents:

Cache-Control: public, max-age=300, must-revalidate

Short cache time means content updates quickly, while "must-revalidate" ensures browsers double-check before showing potentially stale content 🔄

requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/

Don't make users download images twice 🛑

Browsers shouldn’t download the same images every visit! Set Cache-Control headers so users store images locally:

Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable

Full caching guide: https://requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/

#Caching

🚀 The optimal way to cache your static assets:

This tells browsers "don't even check if this file has changed" - cutting unnecessary validation requests and dramatically improving load times 💨

requestmetrics.com/web-performance/http-caching/