Homepage Loading Speed Optimization

My site’s homepage looks exactly the way I want, yet it still feels sluggish to visitors. The key task is to squeeze every unnecessary byte out of the page without touching the design or layout.

Images come first: almost everything above the fold is JPEG, so I’m expecting high-quality compression, WebP conversion where it makes sense, lazy loading for off-screen assets, and the right src-set rules so retina screens stay crisp.

Beyond the images I need full-stack performance tuning:
• Minify and combine the existing CSS and JavaScript, remove unused rules, and ensure critical CSS is inlined for first paint.
• Re-organise or defer non-essential scripts so they stop blocking rendering.
• Implement solid caching headers and browser-side storage to keep repeat views lightning fast.
• Audit my hosting stack to see whether a CDN should be introduced; I’m currently not sure if one is in place, so clear guidance and, if practical, the initial setup would be appreciated.

Please test with Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, or GTmetrix and document the before/after metrics so the performance gains are visible. Final delivery is the optimised homepage running in production, along with a short report outlining every change made so I can maintain it confidently in the future.