A practical performance checklist for portfolios
Fonts, images, third-party scripts, and animation budgets that keep first impressions fast.
Your portfolio is a product demo of how you ship. Visitors decide in seconds whether the craft is real.
Ship less JavaScript
Prefer CSS for hover states and simple reveals. Reserve JS for forms, the chatbot, and mobile menus.
Images with intent
Use modern formats, explicit dimensions, and lazy loading below the fold. Hero media can be prioritized; everything else can wait.
Fonts carefully
Two families max. Subset if possible. Display swap to avoid invisible text.
Measure what matters
Lighthouse is useful, but also test on a mid-range phone on throttled network. That's closer to how recruiters and clients browse.
Final pass
Before launch: remove unused dependencies, confirm keyboard focus states, and verify that every animation still respects prefers-reduced-motion.