Simon Hearne is a web performance and user experience advocate focused on building faster, more accessible websites. He writes and speaks about performance optimization, UX, accessibility, and data visualisation.
54 articles from this blog
A technical guide on implementing site search for static Netlify sites using Elasticsearch, 11ty, and the Elasticsearch bulk API.
Explains how Core Web Vitals apply to Single-Page Applications (SPAs), highlighting measurement gaps and optimization strategies like SSR.
A developer troubleshoots and fixes empty responses in Cloudflare Workers Sites caused by caching headers and conditional GET requests.
Explains survivorship bias in web performance, using examples like Project Feather to show how missing data from failed users skews metrics.
An independent web performance consultant explains the value they bring to organizations by focusing teams, sharing cross-client best practices, and driving measurable improvements.
A guide to configuring HTTP caching headers for web assets, covering best practices for versioned files, HTML, and cache invalidation.
A technical guide to optimizing hero videos on landing pages for faster load times and better UX, covering aspect ratios and layout shifts.
Article summarizes multiple studies showing how slow website performance increases user stress and frustration, impacting business metrics.
A detailed timeline and analysis of Google's Core Web Vitals updates, their impact on SEO, and how the Page Experience ranking signal works.
Explains how web fonts cause layout shifts (CLS) and provides techniques to prevent them, including font optimization and using font-display: optional.
Explores optimistic UI patterns that improve perceived performance by decoupling user feedback from network requests, using examples like instant cart updates.
Explores psychological principles for improving user experience during web waits, suggesting alternatives to traditional loading spinners.
Analysis of key web performance trends for 2021, including Core Web Vitals, third-party optimization, and edge computing.
Let's Encrypt's root certificate change may cause website trust issues for older Android devices, affecting millions of users globally.
Explores the performance drawbacks of Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, including their lack of full OCSP stapling support.
Explains why website performance should be treated as a permanent feature, not a one-time project, using analogies from elite sports and the YouTube Feather case study.
Analyzes Google's Core Web Vitals and other page speed metrics, explaining how to choose and correlate them with business outcomes.
Data-driven analysis showing how website speed directly impacts bounce rates, conversion rates, and revenue.
A guide to understanding and improving Google's Core Web Vitals metrics (LCP, FID, CLS) for better SEO and user experience.
A guide for software engineers on delivering effective remote software demos, focusing on preparation, customization, and engaging key stakeholders.
