Performance Comparison

Fixture Performance

Market is a really nice theme from Fixture featuring large images, animation, and multiple content callouts.  In the Lighthouse audit, it scores a 98 with a first content paint of 1,100 ms.  

The Competition

We randomly selected a similar theme from a very popular website builder.  We intentionally obscured the theme.  In the Lighthouse audit, the theme scored a shockingly bad 24 with a first content paint of 2,950 ms. 

Why is it so different?

In short, Fixture performs better because it was designed from the ground up to produce fast websites.  We do this with by adhering to a few key principles.  First, all sites are rendered in static HTML and distributed using the CloudFront globally distributed content-delivery network.  This means that all content is cached and distributed to edge locations so that it is physically closer to your web browser.  Second, we avoid frameworks.  You won't find any Angular, React, or Bootstrap being rendered in the background.  While these frameworks are great for beginners and for robust applications (we use Angular in our app), they simply add too much overhead to produce a high performance website.  Finally, we embrace whats new.  We use technology such as CSS Grid Layout because it allows us to accomplish more with less.  We are constantly evaluating new technologies to see how we can speed up our sites.  Expect web manifests, new image and video formats, and more to come to Fixture as they become standardized across the web.

Why does this matter?

Well, would you rather drive a Tesla or a Fiesta?  Fast is important on the web.  Fast websites rank higher in Google and produce a larger amount of page views.  Fast websites also produce overall higher customer satisfaction.