Portfolio · the entry product · 15 audit-shaped openings · 2016 to today
Most of this portfolio shows outcomes. This page sells the thing that comes first: the audit. Before you spend a dollar on fixes, know which fixes matter. It is the smallest engagement here and the one our audit-led engagements grew out of.
01 · inside the report
This is the table of contents of the audit deliverable, and each section carries a sample finding below it: a real line in the voice the report writes in, from a real engagement, paraphrased from project records. Yours will name your plugins, your templates, your numbers.
CrUX · Google Search Console
What real visitors actually experienced over the last 28 days, per page group, at the 75th percentile: the numbers Google ranks by, split by template so a healthy average cannot hide a failing page.
sample finding"CrUX says this origin is fine on average. The homepage is not: the reservation form loads last and pushes everything down."Hotel Okura Amsterdam, 2025
Chrome DevTools coverage · waterfall
Every stylesheet and script weighed and attributed: which plugin or theme file owns it, how much of it executes before first paint, and what can be deferred, delayed, or deleted outright.
sample finding"Theme and plugin CSS and JS ship as one merged, minified bundle. Nothing can be attributed to a plugin until a coverage profile splits it back apart."Aerotime, 2024
TTFB sampling · cache HIT/MISS analysis
How often pages are actually served from cache versus rebuilt in PHP, where the misses are (ads traffic, geolocation, query strings), and whether the host is helping or quietly fighting the cache plugin.
sample finding"Same page, same minute: 3 s TTFB on a cache miss, under 1 s on a hit. A host-side rewrite module is racing the cache plugin."thefelthub.com, 2025
LCP element trace · format audit
Which element is the LCP on each template, whether it is preloaded, fetched with priority, served in a modern format, and the honest size budget of the hero the lab will measure you on.
sample finding"The image you are measured on is being lazy-loaded. The hero arrives last by configuration, not by accident of network."tech4gamers.com, 2024
autoload audit · page-build profiling
What each plugin costs on every request, what the database loads on boot for pages that no longer exist, and the cron jobs that were supposed to be keeping the cache warm.
sample finding"Cache preload is warming 1,300+ zero-value tag URLs while real pages expire; an unused-CSS job has been silently dead for months."thefelthub.com and the Macaw roster, 2025
02 · how it runs
First findings usually land within days. The written report typically follows in one to two weeks. The one variable that has ever stretched delivery is access, never analysis: one hotel audit waited weeks on a Search Console permission chain, and the field data it unlocked was worth every day of the chase.
One site, every template that matters: home, article or product, category, landing. Field data first. Frontend always; server configuration wherever host access is granted.
WordPress admin, Search Console read-only, host panel or file access when possible. Read-only where the client prefers it; the audit adapts to what can be shared.
Lab and field together: CrUX and Search Console p75s per template, real-user monitoring where INP is the mystery, DevTools coverage for per-plugin attribution, cache HIT/MISS sampling for TTFB.
A findings document structured as issue-to-solution rows ready for developer tickets, quick wins separated from involved changes, an effort indicator per item, and monitoring left running so the numbers keep flowing after handoff.
03 · the hero narrative
In December 2025 a craft-education publisher bought an audit titled as a performance audit and strategic roadmap. The diagnostic milestone installed real-user monitoring and named the root causes of volatile TTFB within days: a host-side module racing the cache plugin, an opcode cache running full, and a preload queue warming over a thousand zero-value URLs. The client kept hiring.
Monitoring installed, field data read, root causes named and priced against effort. TTFB volatility explained down to the cache HIT-versus-MISS level; average TTFB about 0.3 s better within 24 hours of the first host-side fix.
LCP render-delay work on the ad-laden article template, under Mediavine scripts, without touching a single revenue tag.
Full hosting and domain migration: content, media, and membership data, redirects, Cloudflare, and the Search Console change of address, plus a custom membership-to-mailing-list plugin replacing a paid automation workflow.
04 · what an audit turns into
Not a pitch tactic: the pattern the contract archive actually shows. 7 engagements on this site are tagged audit-driven, and these four tell the same story four different ways.
Macaw Digital Marketing
bought One PageSpeed analysis of hydromer.com (Jan 2025), delivered as a findings document the agency presented straight to its client.
became An ongoing retainer for the agency's Elementor roster, and in October 2025 the agency came back asking for another audit exactly like the first one.
Dalton Luka
bought A one-day audit-and-fix pass on his own hand-built WordPress site (Jan 2024).
became A working relationship still open in 2026, extending to an Avada client site of his.
boogzelclothing.com
bought A same-day first read: 2.6 s mobile LCP, the Search Console warning behind it, a product image lazy-loaded out of LCP contention.
became An hourly engagement that ran a full year, to September 2025.
Aerotime
bought A speed audit for a news site (Jul 2024), delivered as issue-to-solution rows for their developers.
became Four months of implementation support: fonts, icon subsetting, LCP preloading, a RUM rollout chasing INP under 200 ms.
05 · demand
15 audit-shaped openings since 2016: contracts whose title or opening ask was an audit, an analysis, or a diagnosis. 9 of them carry the word "audit" in the contract title outright. The cadence is not slowing:
| Year | Client | Opened as | Turned into |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Byrne Ventures | Site speed analysis, fixes and recommendations | returned two months later for a second pass |
| 2017 | SureShot Books | maintenance audit | the archive's first audit-titled contract |
| 2023 | Alexander Orth | two PageSpeed analysis contracts | CLS-scoped analysis, then a WP Rocket follow-through |
| 2024 | Dalton Luka | Core Web Vitals Audit & Fixes, twice | one-day site audit; working relationship still open in 2026 |
| 2024 | tech4gamers (Banoori) | opened with an audit request | the 3.7s TTFB rescue, then a second publisher site |
| 2024 | Aerotime | speed audit for a news site | issue-to-solution document, then four months of implementation support |
| 2024 | boogzelclothing.com | WordPress performance audit needed | same-day first read, then a year of hourly work |
| 2025 | Macaw Digital Marketing | PageSpeed analysis and optimization | an audit the agency presented to its client; the Elementor roster retainer; a repeat audit request nine months later |
| 2025 | Hotel Okura Amsterdam (Hotelchamp) | hotel website speed audit | recommendations-only report; the CrUX average vs page-level split finding |
| 2025 | Sandy M (thefelthub.com) | performance audit & strategic roadmap | three projects in four months |
| 2025 | Don Carom | audit traffic drop | fourth contract with a returning WooCommerce client |
| 2026 | Odds and Ends Supply | remediation, audit supplied by the client | Shopify Liquid work, Feb to Aug 2026 |
| 2026 | Creative Escapes | Lighthouse LCP diagnosis | client supplied their own audit; closed in a week with 5.0 public feedback |
Counts read from the normalized contract archive (529 contracts, 2014 to 2026). Two of the 2026 openings are remediations where the client supplied the audit document themselves; they count as audit-shaped, not as audits sold. Opening titles are paraphrased contract subjects; thread contents are never quoted.
06 · what it costs
the standing offer
That is the offer everywhere on this site, and it is the same offer here: a free audit, honest findings, no obligation. If the free read shows your problem is small, you will be told it is small.
Get a free auditbeyond the free read
Deeper work is quoted per scope, not off a rate card: agency deliverables with presentation-ready reports, multi-site rosters, code-level render-blocking inventories, diagnostics like a traffic-drop audit. Numbers come after the scope is understood, in writing, before any work starts.
07 · the audit-driven engagements
SEO consultant, own custom-built WP site
Two contracts literally titled "Core Web Vitals Audit & Fixes" (Jan 2024): the first pass audited and fixed his own hand-built WordPress site in a day, tracing the blog template's LCP to the post image (already fetchpriority-tagged, missing preload) and moving fonts and images to modern formats. The second contract is still the working relationship in 2026, and extended to an Avada client site of his. Facts paraphrased from project records.
"Super helpful. Made some quick and highly effective changes to improve LCP, FCP, and TTFB core web vital metrics."
Aviation news publisher, Lithuania
Contract titled "Speed audit for news site" (Jul 2024): the deliverable was a findings document structured as issue-to-solution rows their developers could turn directly into tickets. With staging locked behind corporate IT, the audit ran against production and Chrome DevTools coverage profiling, splitting a single merged-and-minified theme/plugin CSS+JS bundle into per-plugin attribution. The engagement then ran four more months as implementation support: WOFF2 conversion, icon-font subsetting, LCP image preloading, and a DebugBear RUM rollout to chase a mobile INP sitting at 217 ms toward the sub-200 ms green threshold. Facts paraphrased from project records.
Five-star hotel site, Duda platform
Hotel-tech agency Hotelchamp commissioned a standalone speed audit of the hotel website (May 2025) with recommendations only, no fixes. The field-data read found the exact lab-vs-average trap: CrUX origin averages looked healthy while the homepage failed CLS because the reservation form at the top of the page loaded last. Report scoped honestly to frontend performance (images, fonts, CSS, JavaScript), with server-side explicitly out of scope. Facts paraphrased from project records.
Alternative-fashion e-commerce
Contract titled "WordPress Performance Audit Needed" (Sep 2024): the same-day first read pulled real-user averages (LCP 2.6 s mobile), the Search Console warning behind them, a main product image being lazy-loaded right out of LCP contention, and a CLS picture that had been degrading since May. One audit turned into an hourly working relationship that ran a full year to Sep 2025. Facts paraphrased from project records.
Tech media, 20-50k daily traffic
Opened with an explicit audit request (Jan 2024): the first read found the LCP image itself lazy-loaded and a 3.7s average TTFB from broken page caching. Discover pipeline rescue for high-traffic publishers: that TTFB cut with Cloudflare APO (pages at 80+ PSI within weeks), and a broken featured-image pipeline fixed same-day after 404ing crops started costing the client Google Discover visibility on new articles. A second site (eXputer) followed.
Craft-education publisher, Mediavine + MemberPress
One WordPress performance audit turned into three linked projects (Dec 2025 to Mar 2026): DebugBear RUM installed to see real-visitor CWV under Mediavine ads, LCP render-delay work on the ad-laden article template, host-side mod_pagespeed removal (average TTFB about 0.3 s better within 24 hours), then a full hosting and domain migration with Cloudflare APO enabled and logged-in members excluded from cache.
"This contract originally started as a single WordPress performance audit and roadmap, but I was so impressed with his expertise and the way he works that I ended up hiring him for three projects in total."
US agency retainer, Elementor client roster
Speed partner for an agency's Elementor clients (hydromer.com, sciencebranding.com, luxwashauto.com), 2025 into 2026. hydromer.com: most traffic was missing the host page cache and triggering 6 s+ uncached Elementor page builds; after migration and cache coverage, mobile TTFB measured 252 ms over 24 h in DebugBear, a report the client could re-run. sciencebranding.com: audited at 2.54 s TTFB, then EWWW image optimization, WP Rocket unused-CSS removal (its cron had been silently dead, so the feature never ran), and page caching that bypasses the slow host took PageSpeed consistently into the 90s. Same retainer: Elementor editor stalls (10+ AJAX calls with addon widgets), popup cache-render bugs, Elementor Pro forms with reCAPTCHA.
Free audit, honest findings, no obligation. Every audit-led engagement in this portfolio started exactly here.
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