Trimmed the critical path and code-split aggressively; LCP fell from 550ms to 190ms on mid-tier devices.
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Rendering everything on the client meant a slow first paint and an SEO problem we kept explaining away. I moved the right work to the edge — streamed the shell, hydrated what mattered — and got a fast first view without giving up interactivity.
Trimmed the critical path and code-split aggressively; LCP fell from 550ms to 190ms on mid-tier devices.
The app felt fine on a developer laptop and slow on the devices and networks our users actually had. I made performance a first-class constraint with budgets enforced in CI, then went after the critical path until the numbers held on mid-tier hardware.
Virtualized the list and batched updates; interaction latency fell from 1500ms to 1130ms on mid-tier phones.
Our biggest form was also our biggest drop-off — a wall of fields that punished one mistake by clearing half of them. I rebuilt it around forgiving validation and progressive disclosure, so people could finish without feeling interrogated.
Componentized 23 patterns into one library; 10 product teams now ship from it.
Users were dropping off before they ever reached the thing that made the product worth paying for. I instrumented the funnel, separated real friction from perceived slowness, and rebuilt the first-run flow around the shortest path to that first win.
Reworked the first-run flow; activation rose from 14% to 35% within two release cycles.
Help teams move fast without setting tomorrow on fire.
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