Dev Team Cuts Homepage Load Time 4x by Fixing Cache Headers and Simplifying Hero

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A development team reduced their homepage Time to First Byte (TTFB) from up to 800ms to under 200ms during a single sprint. The root cause was an aggressive no-cache server configuration that forced every request to hit the origin server, bypassing CDN caching entirely. Switching to a public cache header with a 60-second CDN cache and a 5-minute stale-while-revalidate window delivered the biggest performance gain. The team also redesigned the hero section by consolidating two competing CTAs into one, removing an auto-loading video, and repositioning trust badges, which brought LCP down from 2.8s to 1.9s and CLS from 0.12 to 0.04. All changes were made using existing UI components, with no new CSS files or custom elements introduced.

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