Quick Summary
The FD/MAS Alliance (a national nonprofit nonprofit that fosters the development of evidence-based treatments for FD/MAS) came to us with a WordPress site scoring 55 out of 100 on Google PageSpeed and a largest contentful paint (LCP) of 22.9 seconds on mobile. In under two weeks, through 19 rounds of front-end optimization, we brought the mobile score to 80-96 across all pages, desktop to 94-99, and homepage LCP down to 2.3 seconds. That is a 10x improvement in load time. No server changes. No hosting upgrades. No redesign. Just smarter delivery of the same site.
“Working with E11 group has helped us ensure people find our site and experience as few technical issues as possible. The people who are looking for our website find themselves there because of an overwhelming and life-altering rare disease diagnosis. Finding reliable, evidence-based answers can make an enormous difference in the quality of care they receive and their long-term healthcare outcomes. E11 Group’s expertise means that our community can quickly access the answers they need at a critical and vulnerable time. We get to focus on being experts of our mission (advancing research, educating caregivers, and channeling the voice of our community) BECAUSE we can trust E11 to be the experts on helping our work reach our community, wherever they are.”
Tovah Burstein
Interim Executive Director, FD/MAS Alliance
The Problem: What Slow Actually Looks Like
A 22.9-second LCP doesn’t mean the site takes 22.9 seconds to finish loading. It means the largest visible element on the page (usually the hero image or a headline) doesn’t appear for nearly 23 seconds on mobile. The user is staring at a blank or half-rendered screen the entire time.
To put that in context: Google’s own research shows that 53% of mobile visitors leave a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. At 22.9 seconds, most people never see the content at all.
The FD/MAS Alliance site wasn’t broken. It looked fine once it loaded. The design was clean, the content was solid, and the hosting was good. But the way the site delivered its assets (stylesheets, fonts, JavaScript, images) was forcing the browser to do far more work than necessary before it could show anything to the visitor.
Here is what the mobile PageSpeed report looked like before any optimizations:
| Metric | Before (Feb 13) |
| Mobile PageSpeed Score | 55 / 100 |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | 22.9 seconds |
| Desktop PageSpeed Score | 74/100 |
A score of 55 puts a site in Google’s “needs improvement” category. But the LCP of 22.9 seconds is the real story. That single metric was tanking the user experience and, as we will get into, actively hurting the site’s search rankings.
The Results: Before and After
Here is where things stand as of February 26, after multiple rounds of optimization across 10 pages:
| Metric | Before | After |
| Mobile PageSpeed | 55 | 80-96 |
| Desktop PageSpeed | ~75-85 | 94-99 |
| Homepage LCP | 22.9s | 2.3s |
| Donation Page (Mobile) | 50 | 88 |
| Pages Optimized | – | 10 |
The 10 pages included the homepage, the donation page, the physician database (which has Google Maps integration), and seven content pages. Every page saw significant improvement, but the highlights are the homepage LCP dropping from 22.9 seconds to 2.3 seconds and the donation page jumping from 50 to 88 on mobile.
And here is the part worth emphasizing: nothing about the site’s appearance changed. Same design. Same content. Same hosting. Same WordPress theme and plugins. The only difference is how the browser receives and processes the files.
What We Did (and Why It Worked)
WordPress site speed optimization is not about one magic fix. It is about finding every place the browser is being forced to wait and removing those bottlenecks one at a time. Over 19 rounds of optimization, here is what we changed:
Eliminated render-blocking resources. The site had CSS and JavaScript files that forced the browser to stop and wait before showing anything on screen. We restructured when and how those files load so the browser can paint the page first and process the rest in the background.
Self-hosted web fonts. The site was loading fonts from Google’s servers, which adds 600 to 1,200 milliseconds of connection overhead on mobile. We hosted the fonts locally, eliminating that delay entirely.
Implemented critical CSS. We identified the minimum styling needed to render the visible portion of each page and inlined it directly in the HTML. The browser can now show a fully styled page almost immediately, loading the remaining styles in the background.
Optimized image delivery. We preloaded hero images, added proper dimensions to prevent layout shift, lazy-loaded below-fold images so they only download when needed, and ensured images are appropriately sized for the device viewing them.
Reduced JavaScript payload. Instead of loading every script on every page, we split code so each page only downloads what it actually uses. Unused libraries were removed entirely.
Managed third-party scripts. Analytics, popups, and tracking pixels serve real purposes, but they do not need to load before the user sees the page. We deferred them so they initialize in the background after the page is already visible and interactive.
Why Site Speed Matters for SEO
If your WordPress site is slow, it is costing you search rankings. That is not speculation. Here is how:
Core Web Vitals Are a Ranking Signal
Google uses three Core Web Vitals as part of its ranking algorithm: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint, which measures loading speed), CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift, which measures visual stability), and INP (Interaction to Next Paint, which measures responsiveness). All three improved across the FD/MAS Alliance site, with LCP seeing the most dramatic change.
Google Uses Mobile-First Indexing
This is the part a lot of site owners miss. Google does not rank your site based on how it performs on desktop. It uses the mobile version. If your desktop score is 95 but your mobile score is 55, Google sees a 55. The FD/MAS Alliance’s mobile score saw the biggest improvement (55 to 80-96), which means Google is now seeing a fundamentally different (and better) site.
Faster Sites Get Crawled More Efficiently
Google allocates a “crawl budget” to every site, which is basically how much time Googlebot will spend on your pages per visit. Faster pages mean the bot can crawl more pages in the same timeframe. For a site with a physician database and dozens of content pages, that matters.
Slow Sites Lose Visitors Before They Even Arrive
Google’s research shows 53% of mobile users abandon a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. A 22.9-second LCP was not just a poor score on a test. It meant more than half of mobile visitors were likely bouncing before the page rendered. Higher bounce rates send negative signals to Google about your content quality, even if the content itself is excellent.
Why Site Speed Matters for Users (and Donations)
SEO is one side of the equation. The other is what happens when people actually use your site.
The Donation Page Got a 76% Score Increase
For a nonprofit, the donation page is the most important page on the site. Every fraction of a second of delay on that page adds friction to the giving process. The FD/MAS Alliance’s donation page went from a mobile score of 50 to 88. That is the difference between a page that feels sluggish and one that loads almost instantly. We do not have donation conversion data yet, but the research on this is clear: faster pages convert better.
Patients Find Specialists Without Waiting
The physician search database (which integrates Google Maps for location-based results) is a core feature of the FD/MAS Alliance site. Patients looking for a specialist in their area need results quickly. A slow search page does not just annoy users; it undermines the entire purpose of the organization’s web presence.
Mobile Users Benefit the Most
The largest performance gains were on mobile, which is where the majority of web traffic comes from for most organizations. Mobile users are often on slower connections and less powerful devices. They are the audience most punished by a bloated site and the audience most rewarded by optimization.
Nothing Looks Different
This is worth saying directly: the site looks and functions exactly as it did before. Same design, same layout, same features. The improvements are entirely under the hood. Visitors do not see “optimization.” They just see a site that works the way they expect it to.
What This Means for Your Site
Everything we did for the FD/MAS Alliance applies to virtually any WordPress site. Self-hosted fonts, critical CSS, deferred scripts, optimized images. These are universal patterns that work regardless of your theme, your plugins, or your hosting provider.
A few things worth noting about this project specifically:
All improvements were front-end only. We did not upgrade the server, change the hosting plan, or add a CDN. The site is running on the same infrastructure it was two weeks ago. That means these gains came purely from delivering the existing assets more efficiently.
We worked within the existing WordPress stack. No theme replacement. No plugin overhaul. No rebuild. We optimized what was already there. This matters because rebuilds are expensive and time-consuming. Optimization gets results faster, with less disruption, at a fraction of the cost.
Every change was measurable. We ran 19 optimization rounds with before-and-after data at every step. There was no guessing. Each change was tested, measured, and validated. If something did not improve the score, we adjusted the approach.
If your site is scoring below 70 on mobile PageSpeed, there is almost certainly low-hanging fruit available. And even sites scoring in the 70s and 80s usually have room for meaningful improvement.
Want to know where your site stands? We will run a free PageSpeed analysis and show you exactly what is slowing your site down, what it is costing you, and what it would take to fix it. Get in touch.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does WordPress site speed optimization cost?
It depends on the size and complexity of the site. A 10-page site is a different scope than a 200-page e-commerce store. We scope every project individually after running an initial analysis. For most small to mid-sized WordPress sites, front-end optimization is significantly less expensive than a redesign or a hosting upgrade, and it delivers faster results.
Will optimization break my site?
Not when it is done correctly. The FD/MAS Alliance site looks and functions identically after optimization. Every change we make is tested before and after. We are not removing functionality or altering the design. We are changing the delivery mechanism, not the content.
Do I need to change my hosting provider?
Not necessarily. This entire project was completed without any hosting changes. Front-end optimization addresses how the browser processes your site’s files, which is independent of your server. That said, if your hosting is genuinely slow (high time-to-first-byte), there is a floor to what front-end optimization alone can achieve. We will tell you if hosting is the bottleneck.
How long does the process take?
This project took under two weeks from start to finish, with 19 optimization rounds. Most WordPress sites in the 10-30 page range can be optimized in a similar timeframe. Larger or more complex sites may take longer.
Will my PageSpeed score stay this high?
As long as the optimizations remain in place, yes. The techniques we use (critical CSS, deferred loading, self-hosted fonts, image optimization) are structural changes, not temporary fixes. The main risk to your score is adding new unoptimized plugins or heavy third-party scripts down the road. We can advise on that too.
Does this work for non-WordPress sites?
The principles are the same. Self-hosted fonts, critical CSS inlining, image optimization, deferred script loading. These techniques apply to any website regardless of the platform. The specific implementation differs based on your tech stack, but the strategy is universal.
What is a good PageSpeed score?
Google categorizes scores as follows: 0-49 is poor, 50-89 is needs improvement, and 90-100 is good. For mobile, hitting the 80s is solid and the 90s is excellent. For desktop, most optimized sites will score in the mid-90s or higher. The FD/MAS Alliance is now in the “good” range on desktop (94-99) and solidly in the upper “needs improvement” to “good” range on mobile (80-96), depending on the page.
What is LCP and why does it matter?
LCP stands for Largest Contentful Paint. It measures how long it takes for the largest visible element on the page (usually a hero image or headline) to fully render. Google considers anything under 2.5 seconds “good” for LCP. The FD/MAS Alliance went from 22.9 seconds (nearly 10 times the acceptable threshold) to 2.3 seconds (within the “good” range). It is one of the three Core Web Vitals that Google uses as a ranking signal.