The core REC+ system is deployed with performance optimisations in place and updated to incorporate relevant improvements that are compatible with the core system. 


From this base system, each website is then individually designed to deliver the aesthetic and functional requirements agreed with the site owner. 


For example, this can include adding in new javascript to display content from third party sites like displaying reviews, showing tweets and facebook posts, adding large numbers of images, use of video on pages etc. 


It is a responsibility of the web designer to run their own audits and optimise to a reasonable standard during the site launch process. 


It is also the responsibility of the site admin(s) to take due care when adding scripts onto the site and uploading content to check that performance has not been degraded as a result of the changes being made. 


Performance analysis and optimisation can be undertaken for live sites on an individual basis since code and content will most likely have been altered over time, or plug-ins added which affect page load speed. This would therefore be on a chargeable basis. 


In addition, as new web standards evolve, this may give rise to new methods or coding practices that could be applied retrospectively to existing individual sites and this is also on a chargeable basis.


There may be occasions when your site needs to adhere to a certain standard that falls outside of our standard build, in which case you will need to advise us of that requirement so we can investigate and confirm it is achievable. This work is undertaken on a chargeable basis.

Performance Measurement Tools


There are external tools like PageSpeed Insights which produce reports that clients send to us on occasion. 

First, it’s important to note that PageSpeed Insights is a synthetic, single-run test carried out under artificially constrained mobile network and device conditions. It does not measure how the site performs for real users at scale, nor does it reflect overall server capacity or stability. As such, results can vary significantly from run to run and are not uncommon to look pessimistic for complex, content-rich ecommerce sites.

From an operational perspective:

  • Your site is hosted on well-provisioned cloud infrastructure that continuously handles large traffic volumes with a lot of extra capacity built in - we always over-specify the infrastructure and upgrade in regular cycles.

  • We continuously monitor server performance and uptime.

  • We have no evidence of systemic slowness or degradation, and we have not received any other performance complaints from the thousands of users accessing client sites.

    That said, there can be occasions when there is a determined DDOS attack on a website with billions of requests sent which can temporarily cause a slowdown. We have many systems in place to mitigate this of course and thankfully it isn't a common event and we overwhelmingly rebuff such events. That wasn't the case in this instance as we are fully aware of those occasions through our alerting systems.

It’s also worth highlighting that:

  • A single user experiencing slow load times can be influenced by factors entirely outside the website’s control (local network quality, device performance, mobile signal, browser extensions, etc.).

  • PageSpeed scores are heavily influenced by third-party scripts, images, fonts, and analytics tools, many of which are trade-offs between marketing capability and raw performance.

However, if you would like us to carry out a deeper, diagnostic performance investigation on your own website, we are very happy to do so but this work would be chargeable as it is website-specific. However, we'd suggest that would only be needed if there were many ongoing reports of slowness.