Case Study: Yorkshire in Business
Deep optimization to improve Google PageSpeed Insight scores
Client: Yorkshire in Business
Industry: Enterprise agency and start-up business support
Location: Scarborough and Bridlington, North Yorkshire
Project: Improve the Google PageSpeed Insight scores and standardise design across all pages
Website: https://yorkshireinbusiness.org.uk/
The Challenge
The Yorkshire in Business website had been active for many years, with numerous contributors managing and updating it over time. This resulted in a patchwork of different design styles, outdated plugins, and inconsistent practices behind the scenes. Over time, performance suffered with the site becoming slow to load, particularly on mobile, and cluttered with legacy code. When tested using Google’s PageSpeed Insights, the scores reflected these issues: Performance: 35, Accessibility: 92, Best Practices: 57, SEO: 85. Despite these technical challenges, the client wasn’t looking to invest in a full website rebuild, they wanted the current site optimised and revitalised
The Solution
Using a combination of insights from PageSpeed reports and my own technical expertise, I carried out a comprehensive optimisation of the website. This included removing unused plugins and scripts, deferring offscreen assets, optimising images, improving CSS and JavaScript handling, and addressing issues with layout shifts and cumulative layout shift (CLS). I also made adjustments to implement SEO best practices where they were missing. The goal was not only to improve the site’s technical performance but also to enhance the real user experience, particularly on mobile devices and slower connections
The Impact on Yorkshire in Business
After the work was completed, the PageSpeed Insights scores dramatically improved to Performance: 91, Accessibility: 91, Best Practices: 100, SEO: 100. This is a clear indicator of the technical improvements behind the scenes. But the real difference was seen in day-to-day usage. The website now loads much faster, responds more smoothly to user interactions, and provides a more consistent experience across all devices. These improvements have made the site more accessible to a wider audience, helped reinforce the professionalism of the brand, and created a stronger foundation for future growth — all without the need for a full redesign.
The “Performance” score in PageSpeed Insights is often harder to get green on mobile because phones are slower than computers and often use weaker internet connections. Even small things like large images or extra code can slow mobile pages down more, so it takes more fine-tuning to get a high score like this.
The desktop scores for the Yorkshire in Business website are excellent — 100 for performance, best practices, and SEO, and 92 for accessibility. This means the site loads quickly, follows modern web standards, is well-optimised for search engines. The accessibility score of 92 is still very strong, with only a few minor tweaks needed to make it even more inclusive.