What a Lighthouse audit tells you before a homepage update
Before I change a homepage, I run Lighthouse on it. On 25 Oct I ran it on two of my own sites, mobile, three times each.
Astro portfolio: Performance 97, 93, 96. Largest paint 2.0 to 2.4 s. About 240 KiB and 15 files on every run.
Lathmere, my Framer 3D landing page sample: Performance 57, 36, 38. Largest paint 3.7 to 7.9 s. The first run loaded 43 files and 658 KiB. The next two loaded 389 files and 3.7 to 4.9 MB.
What I take from it:
1. One run is not a result. The Framer page went from 57 to 36 about a minute later. I quote the median of three runs and say that I did.
2. Look at the file count before the score. A page that loads 43 files on one visit and 389 on the next has a bigger problem than image sizes. The first job of the update is finding out what those extra files are and whether the homepage needs them.
3. SEO 66 on Lathmere is a single failed check: the page sits on a framer.app preview domain, which is not crawlable. Publishing to the real domain fixes it. Rewriting the copy would not.
When I apply for a homepage job, I open with numbers like these from the client's own site: what is slow, how much it moves between runs, and what the update will and will not fix.