Improving Your PageSpeed Score
Google PageSpeed Insights provides performance scores that can help identify optimization opportunities for your Ghost site. While perfect scores aren’t necessary for most websites, understanding how to improve performance can benefit both user experience and search rankings.
Setting Realistic Expectations
Important Context: Most successful websites, including major news publications, achieve scores between 30-70. Content quality and user experience typically have greater impact on success than achieving perfect performance scores.
Industry Benchmark Scores (March 2025)
Major websites demonstrate that perfect scores aren’t required for success:
| Website | Mobile Score | Desktop Score |
|---|---|---|
| CNN | 30 | 47 |
| The New York Times | 26 | 24 |
| Fox News | 37 | 46 |
| NBC News | 25 | 55 |
| USA Today | 35 | 71 |
| Forbes | 34 | 49 |
Essence-specific optimizations
Essence includes visual features that affect performance. Adjust these in Settings → Design → Theme before chasing generic optimizations:
Shader noise: Static vs Animated
Settings → Theme → Site wide → Shader noise
| Setting | Impact |
|---|---|
| Off | No grain overlay — lightest option |
| Static (Subtle / Medium / Strong) | Lightweight CSS grain, no animation loop |
| Animated (Subtle / Medium / Strong) | Drifting grain animation — adds continuous repaint work |
For better scores, use Static or Off instead of Animated Strong (the default).
Card surfaces: Solid vs Liquid
Post list cards and Post & page cards settings offer Liquid, Glass, and Solid styles.
| Style | Performance note |
|---|---|
| Solid | Lightest — no backdrop blur or WebGL liquid compositing |
| Glass | Moderate — CSS backdrop blur |
| Liquid | Heaviest — requires Chrome; uses advanced compositing |
Switching post list cards from Liquid to Glass or Solid, and post/page cards to Solid, reduces GPU work noticeably.
Page intro animation
Essence plays a cinematic page intro on first load (text reveals, card animations). It respects prefers-reduced-motion automatically.
To disable the intro entirely, edit the theme source — remove or comment out the essence-page-intro script block in default.hbs and the runPageIntro() call in assets/js/index.js, then rebuild. See Editing Theme Code.
Shader backgrounds
WebGL shader backgrounds run continuously. Switching Background style from Shader to Image eliminates the WebGL canvas and is the largest single performance win if you can accept a static background.
Primary Optimization Strategies
Image Optimization
Images often represent the largest opportunity for performance improvement:
- Resize before upload: Keep images under 1MB and approximately 1200px wide
- Leverage Ghost’s optimization: The platform automatically generates responsive image sizes
- Include alt text: Improves accessibility while supporting SEO efforts
Ghost automatically creates multiple image sizes for different devices when you upload properly sized source images.
Hosting Infrastructure
Your hosting environment directly impacts performance scores:
Key requirements:
- SSD storage for faster data access
- Adequate RAM allocation (minimum 1GB for typical sites)
- Server location proximity to your primary audience
- Reliable uptime and response times
Recommended providers:
- Ghost Pro (official managed hosting)
- DigitalOcean
- Linode
- Vultr
Platform Maintenance
Regular updates maintain optimal performance:
- Ghost core updates: Install latest versions for performance improvements
- Theme updates: Keep themes current with security and performance patches
- Media management: Remove unused images and files periodically
Font Strategy
Typography choices affect loading performance:
- Limit font families to 1-2 maximum
- Use system fonts when design allows (zero loading time)
- For web fonts, load only necessary weights and styles
Essence self-hosts Inter and Oswald — avoid loading duplicate font families via Code Injection.
Areas to Deprioritize
Focus Your Efforts: Achieving scores above 90 often requires diminishing returns on time investment. Mobile scores typically run lower than desktop scores due to device constraints. Prioritize actual loading speed over perfect scores.
Implementation Checklist
Immediate Actions
- Test current performance at Google PageSpeed Insights
- Set shader noise to Static or Off; use Solid or Glass card styles
- Audit recent posts for oversized images (>2MB)
- Review hosting performance if load times exceed 3-4 seconds
Weekly Tasks
- Remove unused media files
- Check for available Ghost and theme updates
- Monitor any significant score changes
Monthly Review
- Test key pages for performance consistency
- Evaluate hosting performance under traffic loads
- Clean up accumulated unused content
When to Seek Technical Support
Consider professional assistance when:
- Page load times consistently exceed 5 seconds
- Error messages appear during content loading
- Hosting costs are disproportionately low (< $10/month) with performance issues
- Large content volumes (thousands of posts) create performance bottlenecks
Target Performance Ranges
Practical Benchmarks: Aim for mobile scores of 40-60 and desktop scores of 60-80. Sites performing within these ranges typically provide good user experience while allowing focus on content creation rather than optimization.
Recommended targets:
- Mobile: 40-60 points
- Desktop: 60-80 points
Performance within these ranges indicates solid optimization without over-engineering.