A slow site makes a great brand feel careless. We treat speed as part of the design, from the first sketch.
Saltmarsh Radio is a good example. Most of its listeners open the site on a phone, often outside, to find out what’s on right now. The old site took eight seconds to tell them.
Four rules on every build
Pictures are sized for the screen they’re on, never larger.
Fonts are few, and they load before anything moves.
Motion is made with movement and fade only, so it never makes the page reflow.
Every page is tested on a slow phone, not just a fast laptop.
What it changed for Saltmarsh
The new site answers the only question most visitors have, what’s on now, before anything else loads. The play button is the first thing to arrive and the last thing to break.
A website is fast when it answers before you finish asking.
Speed is a design decision
None of this is glamorous. All of it is felt, every time someone taps.
It’s also cheap to get right at the start and expensive to fix at the end, which is why our developer is in the room from the first sketch.
