What is it About?
If you’ve ever opened PageSpeed Insights expecting a green score and instead got slapped with a “Needs Improvement,” welcome to the club. Webflow is an amazing visual builder, but it’s not magically fast by default. And that’s exactly why a proper performance audit matters. Before you apply any Webflow speed optimization tips or start figuring out how to speed up your Webflow website, you need to know what’s actually slowing it down.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through a practical, human-friendly audit workflow, the same process I use when evaluating my Webflow sites. No fluff. No complicated engineering jargon. Just real, actionable steps.
Why Webflow Sites Slow Down in the First Place: Ever Think That?
Webflow gives you a lot of creative freedom, but with great freedom comes great potential to accidentally break performance. Most slow Webflow sites suffer from the same core issues:
Oversized or Unoptimized Images
Beautiful images turn into 3–5MB heavyweights that drag your LCP into the mud.
Too Many Custom Scripts or Integrations
Marketing tools, analytics, widgets, heatmaps, and more each add a network request and delay rendering.
Heavy Animations or Interactions
Scroll effects, parallax, and opacity changes look great until they start dropping frames.
DOM Bloat
Too many div wrappers or unnecessary nested elements increase rendering workload.
Multiple Font Families & Weights
Webflow projects often load 4–6 font files when only one or two are actually needed.
Unused CMS Data or Rich Content
Collection lists pulling large images or content that’s mostly off-screen still impact performance.
None of these issues is unique to Webflow, but still, they are the reason behind your slow website. It shows up when a site is built by non-developers who aren’t thinking about optimization during design. That’s where a proper audit makes your job easy.
Tools You Need for a Proper Webflow Performance Audit
Let’s keep this simple. These are the only tools you need:
Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI)
Gives you Core Web Vitals on mobile + desktop.
You’ll get metrics like LCP, CLS, and INP along with recommendations.
Chrome DevTools → Lighthouse + Performance Tab
Perfect for identifying what blocks rendering, slow scripts, layout shifts, network waterfalls, and paint timings.
WebPageTest.org
More advanced, but great for seeing filmstrips and request-level performance.
GTmetrix
Helpful for waterfall visualization and caching behavior.
Each tool measures performance differently, so don’t panic if results aren’t identical. You’re looking for patterns, not perfection.
Key Metrics to Check (Webflow Core Web Vitals)
You don’t need to memorize every technical term. Just understand what matters:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Measures how fast the main content loads.
Your goal: under 2.5 seconds.
Common Webflow-related LCP issues:
- A huge image set as a hero background
- Custom fonts delaying text render
- Too many script requests before content loads
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Measures how much things move around as the page loads.
Your goal: under 0.1.
Typical Webflow CLS issues:
- Unspecified image dimensions
- Sticky headers shifting the layout
- Embedded media without aspect ratios
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
Replaced FID. Measures how responsive your page feels when someone clicks or taps.
Your goal: under 200 ms.
Webflow INP issues often come from:
- Heavy animations
- Big JavaScript bundles
- Third-party tracking scripts
Focus on these three, and you’ll already outshine most Webflow sites.
Webflow-Specific Issues to Watch During Your Audit
Here’s where things get interesting. Webflow has its own set of quirks, and auditing for them gives you a huge advantage.
Unoptimized Background Images
Webflow doesn’t automatically compress background images the same way it does for elements. If your hero section uses a 3000px-wide PNG background. Yeah, that’s going to hurt.
Too Many Interactions
Every scroll, fade, and movement affects rendering. One or two is fine. Twenty on one page? Rough.
Unused CSS Classes (Style Manager Overflow)
Webflow often stores unused classes that still load in the stylesheet. This doesn’t “break” performance, but trimming unused styles helps limit CSS bloat.
Overloaded CMS Collection Pages
If each CMS item pulls several high-res images or dynamic embeds, those pages will be slow.
Too Many Third-Party Embeds
Calendly, HubSpot forms, YouTube iframes, and Instagram embeds. These aren’t Webflow’s fault, but they are performance killers.
If any of these appear during your audit, mark them as high priority.
Step-by-Step Process: How to Audit Your Webflow Website
Here’s the workflow I personally use when evaluating Webflow performance for clients.
Step 1: Run a PSI test (Mobile first)
Mobile scores are always stricter.
Focus on:
- LCP
- CLS
- INP
- Render-blocking scripts
- Unoptimized images
Make notes on anything red or “needs improvement.”
Step 2: Check the Network Waterfall (Chrome DevTools)
Look for:
- Large image files
- Overlapping JS bundles
- Slow third-party tools
- Fonts loading too late
This is where you identify the real bottlenecks.
Step 3: Check the Layout Shift visualizer
DevTools → More Tools → Rendering → Layout Shift Regions
This highlights what is shifting on load (usually images or sticky UI).
Step 4: Review all fonts
Ask yourself:
- Do I really need 3 font families?
- Do I need 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 weights?
- Can I swap icons for SVGs instead of icon fonts?
Step 5: Inspect Interactions
Look for scroll-triggered elements or animations firing too early or too often.
Step 6: Compress & replace oversized media
Any image over 200–300 KB should be compressed.
Consider WebP or AVIF formats.
Videos should never autoplay in full resolution.
Step 7: Test the page again
Optimization is iterative, each fix bumps your score higher.
Quick Wins to Improve Webflow Performance
After your audit, here are the easiest fixes that usually give instant improvements.
Compress all images
Use:
- WebP
- AVIF
- Compression tools (TinyPNG, Squoosh, etc.)
Images cause 80% of performance issues on Webflow sites.
Reduce font variations
If you can get away with 1–2 weights, do it.
Also preload your main font for faster first paint.
Lazy load non-critical images
Webflow auto-lazy-loads some images, but not all.
Check each media element.
Minimize interactions
Replace complex animations with simpler transitions when possible.
Remove unused third-party scripts
If a widget isn’t helping conversions, ditch it.
Limit CMS queries
Avoid collection lists pulling 20–30 items when only 3–6 are visible.
Preload your hero image
This improves LCP significantly.
Final Thoughts
Most Webflow users jump straight into “how to fix speed issues,” but the smarter move is always to audit first.
Once you know exactly what’s slowing down your site, fonts, images, scripts, or interactions — the fix becomes 10× easier.
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