Shoppers abandon slow stores, and the effect compounds on mobile data where most traffic now arrives.
It is accumulated weight — themes carrying unused features, plugins loading scripts on every page, oversized images.
It delivers the fastest experience and the most control, at the cost of real ongoing engineering attention.
Not a developer laptop on office wifi. Most stores that feel fast in testing fail on mid-range mobile.
Plugin bloat and unoptimised images are often fixable in place, without a replatform.