Site Performance and Technical Fixes

What you get

A slow site is rarely one problem. It is a render path carrying work it does not need, assets larger than the space they occupy, and a cache that is not doing its job. Site Performance and Technical Fixes measures all three, ranks them by what they cost you, then resolves them in order.

• Core Web Vitals measurement. Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift on key templates, using field data from the Chrome User Experience Report where it exists and lab data where it does not.
• Ranked issue list. Every problem found, ordered by impact against effort, so you can see what is worth doing and what is not.
• Render path work. Render-blocking CSS and JavaScript, font loading strategy, third-party script cost, and what each one adds to first paint.
• Image and asset handling. Format, dimensions, compression, lazy loading below the fold, and explicit width and height so layout does not shift while loading.
• Caching and delivery. Cache headers, CDN configuration, compression, and whether origin response time is the real problem rather than the front end.
• Regression protection. A performance budget in your build pipeline on the Care Plan, so a later deploy does not quietly undo the work.

Pricing

The $400 Diagnostic is credited against any fix engagement that follows. The Care Plan includes one hour of work each month and bills anything beyond that at $175 per hour.

How it works

1. Diagnostic, about three days. NovaLab measures Core Web Vitals on your key templates, traces the render path, and returns a ranked issue list with an effort estimate against every item.
2. You choose. Fix Sprint for the issue list as found. Performance Overhaul when the problem is structural and sits across templates rather than on one page.
3. Fix Sprint, one week. The issue list gets resolved in priority order, on a branch, with before and after numbers on every template touched.
4. Performance Overhaul, two to four weeks. Render path, asset pipeline and caching layer reworked across key templates, with the same before and after reporting.
5. Care Plan, monthly. Monitoring stays on, small fixes ship, and NovaLab reports what moved and what did not.

Those durations are scoping estimates, not commitments. A site with many templates or an unusual stack takes longer, and NovaLab says so before the work starts rather than after.

Is this right for you

Questions people ask

How much does a site performance audit cost?

The Diagnostic is $400 and produces a ranked issue list with an effort estimate against each item. It is credited against any fix engagement that follows. Fix Sprint is $1,800 for one week of resolution work. Performance Overhaul is $3,500. The Care Plan is $350 a month and includes one hour of work, with overage at $175 an hour.

What are Core Web Vitals and why do they matter?

Core Web Vitals are three Google metrics. Largest Contentful Paint measures how long the main content takes to appear. Interaction to Next Paint measures how fast the page responds to input. Cumulative Layout Shift measures how much the page jumps while loading. They feed Google ranking systems, and they describe what a visitor actually experiences.

Will fixing performance improve my search rankings?

Possibly, and NovaLab will not put a number on it. Core Web Vitals are one ranking signal among many, and a fast page with weak content still loses to a slow page that answers the question better. What Site Performance and Technical Fixes does deliver is measured: the metrics before, the metrics after, and the change that moved each one.

How long does a Fix Sprint take?

One week. The scope is fixed before it starts, taken from the issue list the $400 Diagnostic produced, in priority order. Work happens on a branch so nothing lands on production unreviewed. At the end you get before and after numbers on every template touched, plus a note on anything that turned out to need more than a sprint.

Do you need access to my codebase?

Yes for fix work, no for the Diagnostic. The $400 Diagnostic runs against your public site and needs nothing from you. Fix Sprint, Performance Overhaul and the Care Plan need either repository access or a developer on your side who can merge a branch. Some hosted site builders restrict template and header access, so check that first.

What is the difference between the Fix Sprint and the Performance Overhaul?

Scope. The $1,800 Fix Sprint resolves the issue list the Diagnostic found, in one week, as those issues exist today. The $3,500 Performance Overhaul is for structural problems sitting across templates: the render path, the asset pipeline, the caching layer. Fix Sprint treats symptoms quickly. Performance Overhaul changes how the site loads.

What happens if performance degrades again after you finish?

That is what the Care Plan is for. It costs $350 a month, covers monitoring, patching and small fixes, and includes one hour of work with overage at $175 an hour. NovaLab also adds a performance budget to your build pipeline where the platform supports it, so a future deploy that breaks the numbers fails the build instead of shipping quietly.

Can you improve performance without changing how the site looks?

Usually yes. Most of the work is invisible: image formats and compression, render-blocking resources, font loading strategy, cache headers, third-party script cost. Occasionally a real tradeoff appears, most often a heavy hero animation or a third-party widget. NovaLab brings that to you as a decision with the cost attached rather than making it alone.

Related services

Site Performance and Technical Fixes sits next to two other NovaLab services. AI and Search Visibility finds the queries and citation gaps that make speed worth fixing in the first place. Accessibility and Compliance covers the keyboard, contrast and screen-reader work that a performance pass does not touch. All five sit on the services overview, with every price on the pricing page.

A site that got slower on mobile is one of the seven causes listed in the why traffic fell while rankings held guide, which orders them by how cheap each is to rule out.