You don't need permission to build a fast website

We all know by now that good performance is essential for a great user experience, yet it can still seem impossible to convince clients and stakeholders of the value that performance holds. Now, I can’t promise that I can magically transform your clients’ attitudes toward performance, but what I can do show is show you how to build a fast website without even involving them. In my work delivering high-performance, high-availability websites for some of the UK’s biggest retailers, I’ve come up with a wealth of ways in which we as front-end developers can improve performance without the need for any costly rewrites, new infrastructures, or any kind of work that requires permission (and budget!). We may not be able to make the _fastest_ website without permission, but we can certainly make a fast one!