What to ask your agency about render-blocking resources

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on render-blocking resources, these questions are worth asking early.

Speed is a feature people notice only in its absence, and then they leave rather than complain. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

Scripts and styles in the head delay the first paint. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Third-party tags are frequent offenders. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

How to tell if yours is fine

Performance work is mostly subtraction, which makes it unpopular and effective. Three things worth confirming about render-blocking resources before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Third-party tags are frequent offenders — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.