Notes fromthe orbit
Practical writing on performance, accessibility, e-commerce and building better websites.
Why your website feels slow,and the five fixes that matter most
Most slow sites are held back by the same few things: oversized images, too much JavaScript, render-blocking fonts, slow servers and third-party scripts. Fix them in that order. Start by measuring on a mid-range phone over a normal connection, not on your fast laptop. Set a performance budget so the site cannot quietly get heavier over time.
Headless or traditional CMS? A plain-language decision guide
A traditional CMS such as WordPress is quick to start and familiar to editors. A headless CMS separates content from the website, which gives developers freedom and lets you reuse content across channels. Choose headless when you have several channels, custom design needs or strict performance goals. Choose traditional when speed to launch and a low budget matter most.
Accessibility is not a phase: building WCAG 2.2 in from day one
Fixing accessibility at the end costs far more than designing for it from the start. Use real HTML elements, check colour contrast in the design file, make every interaction work with a keyboard, and test with a screen reader on key journeys. Treat each failure as a bug, not a wish-list item.
What a good discovery workshop actually produces
A good workshop ends with a one-page goal, a clear list of audiences, a ranked feature list and the risks we already know about. It should leave both sides agreeing what success looks like and how it will be measured, so later decisions have something to point back to.
Shopify theme or custom checkout: when to leave the template
Templates are a great start. Move beyond them when your catalogue needs custom logic, when checkout drop-off is your biggest problem, or when your brand experience is being limited by the theme. Test the change first: even small checkout improvements can pay for the work.
Core Web Vitals in plain English
Largest Contentful Paint measures how fast the main content appears. Interaction to Next Paint measures how quickly the page responds when you tap. Cumulative Layout Shift measures how much things jump around while loading. Good scores are a better experience for users and a small ranking signal for search.