Hank Azarian Consulting Inc.

After 20 years optimizing client sites, I deployed my first commercial site yesterday. My hands were shaking. There was such an unexplainable rush watching real world users engage an entire experience. Not a report. Not a page. Not handed off code. Real stakes, no safety net. Everything humming sub 300ms. My idea. My design. Built from scratch using AI to handle the Svelte patterns I'm learning more and more with each implement. Then came the requests. Change of images. New logo. Analytics code. Now I know the difference, and it’s changed everything. I caught myself checking each change's performance hit before touching code. I'll keep it surgical and fast. People were starting to arrive! Swapped images, updated analytics, site still humming. Wow, that felt really scary. More scary than any SEO tactic. No issues right? Checked this morning and noted those sub 300 page load times had climbed by 65%. Head down before breakfast. The culprits? You guessed it. In my haste I forgot to optimize my image files beyond conversion. Left some performance budget on the table and the users paid for it. Half a second is still fast, but I'd handed real users a 65% penalty for my haste for speed. I made the classic MVP mistake: rushing the details that matter. Take your time. Now I run every image through an optimization script before upload. Lesson learned: Those last minute requests really make a difference. Performance isn't fully captured until launch day. Added a Screenshot of the user experience for reference. Can't wait to take it to the next level. What's the dumbest performance mistake you made on YOUR first deploy? The one that still makes you check twice now?