Largest Contentful Paint
Good: < 2.5s
Measures how long it takes for the main content to appear on screen
How to optimize excelsior.co.za
Blocking CSS and JavaScript delays First Contentful Paint by 3.55 seconds, preventing users from seeing content quickly.
Inline critical CSS for above-the-fold content using Autoptimize or WP Rocket. Defer non-essential CSS like WooCommerce styles until after page load. Move mediaelement and cart plugin CSS to load asynchronously using rel='preload'.
A score of 49 falls in the "Poor" range (50-89). While it is better than poor (0-49), you should aim for 90+ to provide an optimal user experience and maximize SEO benefits.
This site is slower than approximately 35% of similar sites. The main issues affecting performance are image optimization, JavaScript execution time, and layout stability.
Addressing these issues could improve your conversion rate by 15-20% and boost your search engine rankings.
Largest Contentful Paint
Good: < 2.5s
Measures how long it takes for the main content to appear on screen
Interaction to Next Paint
Good: < 200ms
Measures how quickly the page responds to user interactions
Cumulative Layout Shift
Good: < 0.1
Measures visual stability - how much content shifts during page load
This WordPress site has poor performance with a score of 49/100, indicating significant loading issues that hurt user experience. The biggest problem is excessive unused JavaScript, particularly from Google reCAPTCHA and other plugins, which is wasting 594 KB and delaying page interactivity by nearly 5 seconds. The site also suffers from render-blocking CSS files that delay content visibility by 3.5 seconds and oversized images that could be reduced by 775 KB through modern formats and proper sizing. Cleaning up unused JavaScript, optimizing images to WebP format, and implementing proper caching could potentially improve the performance score by 30+ points and dramatically reduce the painfully slow 17-second load time.
Why It Matters:
Unused JavaScript accounts for 594 KiB and delays LCP by 4.95 seconds, severely impacting page load performance.
How to Fix:
Remove or defer reCAPTCHA loading until user interaction is needed. Audit Google Tag Manager implementation to load only essential tracking scripts. Use WP Rocket or Asset CleanUp Pro to conditionally load scripts only on pages that need them.
Why It Matters:
Images waste 775 KiB and delay LCP by 1.15 seconds due to oversized dimensions and outdated formats.
How to Fix:
Install ShortPixel or Imagify to automatically convert images to WebP/AVIF format. Generate responsive image sizes using WordPress native srcset. Resize header icons from 980x1298 to actual display size of 577x764 pixels.
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More WordPress Speed Tests
Poor cache lifetimes waste 1,106 KiB on repeat visits and delay LCP by 1.1 seconds for returning users.
602 KiB of unused JavaScript and 112 KiB of unused CSS are blocking rendering and delaying LCP by 4.6 seconds.
Images are causing a 750ms LCP delay and waste 210 KiB, directly impacting your largest contentful paint performance.
Unused JavaScript is adding 1.2MB of dead code that blocks rendering and increases Total Blocking Time.