Cycling UK - Site Performance Audit
We recently ran a performance audit on the Cycling UK site. We’re keen cyclists at Agile Collective, so we were stoked to land this project.
Cycling UK had completed an update from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 a month earlier, so it was the perfect time to run the audit and pick up any issues the upgrade may have caused.
The audit revealed several performance issues, including problems with page caching, an unused CSS library, and oversized images. One of our lead developers, James, set about implementing site improvements with spectacular results. Read on to find out more…
About Cycling UK
Cycling UK aims to create happier, healthier and greener lives through cycling.
For over 140 years, they’ve been making streets safer, opening up new traffic-free routes, and inspiring more people to cycle.
Our audit
Our audit process is well-defined and takes a deep dive into site performance.
In this instance, James used various industry-standard tools (core web vitals) to assess the website's performance, including WebPageTest, PageSpeed Insights, and the Chrome Developer Tools.
He also analysed data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) to understand how the website performed for actual users in real-world conditions. Just because the site is running well on a full-fibre connection on your desktop doesn’t mean it's performing well for someone on a 4G network on their phone.
James is also a Drupal expert, and being a Drupal site, he brought all his knowledge and experience of building and maintaining Drupal sites to the work.
After a few hours of analysis, he provided Cycling UK with a detailed report outlining the problems and recommended remedial actions.
The issues
The audit identified three main issues:
- Page caching was disabled on most pages, which significantly impacted performance
- The CSS library being used included many unused styles, adding unnecessary weight to the pages
- Some images were being served at larger sizes than necessary
James provided specific, Drupal-focused recommendations to address these problems, such as configuring the page caching settings and optimising the CSS and images.
Cycling UK was so impressed with the insights that they also offered James the opportunity to carry out the remedial work.
Rising to the challenge
James set about the word by tackling the most significant issues first, focusing on the most used pages.
Thanks to his knowledge of Drupal and familiarity with the audit results, he could complete the work within a couple of weeks.
The work resulted in measurable improvements to the website's performance, as evidenced by the Core Web Vitals scores increase.
The site's “contentful” score improved dramatically from 53% before the remediation work to 75% after completion.
This is excellent news for the site's users, who will have a far better experience with quicker load times and reduced data usage for mobile visitors.
The site's back end also showed improvement, with no pages flagged as 'needing improvement' or 'poor' in Google Search Console.