Merseycode: Ryan Townsend - Building a Fast Website Against All Odds

Building a Fast Website Against All Odds

Fast website performance is essential for a great user experience, particularly in rural areas or emerging markets where poor connectivity and low-power devices can struggle with even the most optimised sites, yet it can still seem impossible to convince clients and stakeholders of the value that performance holds.

Now, I can’t promise that I can magically transform your clients’ attitudes toward performance, but what I can do show is show you how to build a fast website without even involving them. In my work delivering high-performance, high-availability websites for some of the UK’s biggest retailers, I’ve come up with a wealth of ways in which we as front-end developers can improve performance without the need for any costly rewrites, new infrastructure, or any kind of work that requires permission (and budget!).

We may not be able to make the fastest website without permission, but we can certainly make a fast one!

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With over 15 years experience developing for the web, and an undying passion for web performance, Ryan Townsend is the CTO of Shift Commerce – a SaaS e-commerce platform bringing agility to mid-to-enterprise retailers.
His pragmatic and performance-led outlook means that—on the rare occasion that he does wear a shirt—his sleeves stay firmly rolled up: even as an exec, his favourite place is right there in the thick of things with his team.
Outside of the office, you’ll usually find him picking up heavy objects in the gym or falling off his mountain bike down the side of a hill.