Yep, still matters a lot in real projects — especially on mobile and on sites that are a bit bloated from WP plugins + ad scripts.
What’s working best for me lately:
**1) Kill the heavy stuff first**
– Biggest wins usually come from **third-party scripts** and **bad plugins**
– Analytics, chat widgets, ad networks, social embeds, heatmaps… all of that adds up fast
– If a plugin isn’t directly making money or helping UX, I usually test removing it
**2) Fix LCP with the actual hero element**
– Most of the time the LCP is a **big image, slider, or headline block**
– Compress the hero image hard, use modern formats like **WebP/AVIF**
– Don’t lazy load the LCP image
– Preload the hero image if it’s consistently the LCP element
– Make sure the server response is decent too — slow hosting still kills you
**3) Be careful with lazy loading**
– Lazy loading is good, but people overdo it
– Don’t lazy load above-the-fold images or the main content block
– I’ve seen sites hurt LCP because the browser had to wait too long for the “important” image
**4) Fonts are sneaky**
– Too many font weights = unnecessary drag
– Use fewer variants, self-host if possible, and **preload the main font**
– `font-display: swap` helps avoid blank text issues
– Honestly, a lot of sites don’t need 6 weights and 3 families
**5) INP is mostly JS bloat**
– This one is usually from too much JavaScript, not just “slow pages”
– Reduce heavy sliders, animation libraries, popups, and page builder junk
– Break up long tasks if you can
– If a site feels laggy when clicking buttons or menus, that’s usually where to look
**6) CLS is usually layout stupidity**
– Set width/height on images and embeds
– Reserve space for ads, banners, cookie notices, and popups
– Don’t inject stuff above existing content after load
– This is one of those “easy to fix, annoying to ignore” metrics
**7) Use a CDN + caching, but don’t expect magic**
– Cloudflare or similar helps, but it won’t save a messy site by itself
– Still worth doing for static assets, compression,