I’m on a few slack channels these days and one of my favourite ones has to be the Web Performance Channel. As someone who is incredible passionate about responsive design I’ve also picked up the performance flag and fly it where ever I can.
Unfortunately for me, and most other people that care about the web and making it faster, there isn’t a real demand in business to focus on making their sites faster.
- BBC
- Guardian
- FT
- Etsy
are all putting a significant effort towards making their sites as perceivably fast as they can be and writing wonderful blog posts telling us about the ways we can do the same.
Instead of waiting for business to realise that performance is a key part of their site I think we need to impose ourselves upon business and make this easier to understand by putting the benefits more into a business perspective.
Don’t be slack
The question from the slack channel was around there not being any performance related freelance jobs.
I think there is a solution to this which I outlined in this answer:
It would be rare that businesses look at their websites and immediately think “you know what… I think I need someone to come in and improve the performance of my site”. If you want to get some work in that area I’d suggest looking at freelancer.com and upwork.com for people looking for UX folk. Find their website and send them an email to say “Hey, I know you’re looking for a UX person to improve your customers journey on your site. You know what would _really_ improve their journey? A faster site. Here’s how I can help….”