Why This Site Tends to Score Well in PageSpeed Insights

If you have seen a very high PageSpeed Insights score on this site, the reason is not mystery, and it is not a plugin.

It is mostly the result of choosing a simple architecture and then being disciplined enough not to ruin it.

That sounds less impressive than "performance engineering", but it is usually the truth.

## First, the Honest Bit

PageSpeed scores are not a permanent property of a website.

They vary by:

- the specific page being tested
- network and device assumptions
- Lighthouse version
- test environment
- time

So before turning a screenshot into mythology, it helps to stay precise.

On March 18, 2026, I ran Lighthouse against `https://daliso.com/` from my environment and did not reproduce a permanent `100 / 100 / 100 / 100`.

That run came back roughly as:

- mobile: `88 / 95 / 100 / 100`
- desktop: `68 / 95 / 100 / 100`

That does not contradict the larger point.

It just means the right claim is not "this score is guaranteed forever."

The right claim is: this site is built in a way that gives it a strong chance of performing very well.

## The Biggest Reason: It Is Mostly Static

The homepage is static HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript.

There is no React hydration cost on the landing page.

There is no client-side application shell pretending to be a brochure site.

There is no state management layer, data fetching abstraction, or component runtime doing work just to render a name, a hero image, and a handful of links.

That matters because performance problems usually start before anyone "optimises" anything.

They start when a page that could have been HTML becomes an application.

## The Payload Is Small

The homepage is not trying to ship a lot.

In this repo, the rough sizes are small enough to stay comprehensible:

- `index.html`: about `9.8 KB`
- `css/style.css`: about `8.2 KB`
- `js/main.js`: `256 B`
- all homepage JS modules together: still only a few kilobytes

That is a meaningful advantage.

A lot of performance wins are just the absence of unnecessary weight.

If the browser receives less code, it has less to download, parse, execute, and repaint around.

That sounds obvious, but it is surprisingly rare.

## There Is No Third-Party Tax on the Homepage

The homepage is not paying rent to ten external services.

There are no analytics bundles, chat widgets, ad networks, tag managers, A/B testing platforms, session replay scripts, or heavy embeds on first load.

That choice matters more than many fine-grained optimisations.

Third-party scripts are often the fastest way to turn a clean performance profile into a negotiation with strangers.

## Critical Assets Are Declared Clearly

The site does a few straightforward things that Lighthouse likes for good reason:

- the hero image is preloaded
- the hero image uses `srcset` and fixed dimensions
- the hero image is marked with `fetchpriority="high"`
- fonts are self-hosted WOFF2 files
- fonts use `font-display: swap`
- the shared CSS is served as one bundled stylesheet instead of a runtime import chain

None of that is exotic.

It is just a competent critical rendering path.

The browser gets told what matters early, and the page does not make it guess.

## The JavaScript Is Small and Boring

This is one of the better compliments a site can receive.

The homepage JavaScript exists for practical UI behavior:

- mobile navigation
- theme toggle
- scroll reveal
- conditional carousel logic

That is very different from loading a large JavaScript runtime just to recreate what the browser already knows how to do.

Performance improves when JavaScript stops trying to be architecture theater.

## Accessibility and SEO Are Already in the Markup

A site usually scores well in accessibility and SEO when those concerns are built into the document itself instead of added after complaints.

This repo already includes:

- skip links
- semantic sections
- labeled controls
- alt text
- canonical URLs
- robots directives
- structured data
- sitemap support

Those do not directly make the page feel faster in the way a user describes speed, but they do make Lighthouse and PageSpeed much happier, because those tools are evaluating more than raw rendering performance.

## The DOM Is Small and the Visual Model Is Controlled

In one recent Lighthouse run, the homepage DOM was only `89` elements.

That is not tiny for its own sake.

It just means the page is not built from layers of wrappers, abstractions, and decorative machinery.

The visual design also stays within reasonable limits:

- one small hero image
- no autoplay media
- no massive sliders on load
- no complicated above-the-fold layout
- reduced-motion support for users who request it

Again, boring in the right places.

## What Still Prevents Perfect Scores in Some Runs

This part matters because otherwise performance writing becomes propaganda.

The same Lighthouse run that showed strong overall results still identified a few clear issues:

- some images could use next-generation formats
- some images could be sized more tightly
- cache TTLs on some static assets could be longer
- one contrast issue still affects accessibility

So if you ever see a perfect score, the right interpretation is not "the site is flawless."

It is just that the overall profile was clean enough, on that run, to clear the thresholds.

## Final Thought

The real reason this site can score very well is simple:

it is small,
it is direct,
and it avoids a lot of expensive habits that modern websites treat as normal.

If there is a lesson in that, it is not "chase 100."

It is this:

Most web performance wins happen before optimisation begins.

They happen when you decide what not to build.