Why speed is part of UX — and of search

Speed is the first interaction. Before type, before color, the visitor has already decided whether the site feels expensive or tired.

Heavy images, late JavaScript, and fonts that arrive in a crowd all tax that first second. The design can stay ambitious — 3D, motion, custom type — if the critical text is in the HTML and the heavy layer loads after.

Search engines read a page that exists. If the important sentence is painted onto a canvas, or appears only after a long client script, you have designed a poster for people and a blank for crawlers.

I treat performance as part of the same craft as spacing. A site that looks considered and arrives late is only half designed.