Image weight is 80% of the problem
Across most sites, images are 60-80% of page weight. Compress to AVIF or WebP, serve responsive srcset, lazy-load below-the-fold, and use a CDN. This single change typically halves LCP.
Third-party scripts are the second biggest
Audit your tag manager, chat widgets, A/B testing tools, and analytics. Each one blocks the main thread. Defer non-critical scripts and use partytown for chat/analytics where possible.
Cache aggressively at the edge
Pages that don't need personalization should be cached at the CDN for hours or days. Cloudflare, Fastly, Vercel Edge — they're cheap and they fix Time To First Byte (TTFB) for free.
Don't chase 100 Lighthouse scores
Lighthouse is a lab tool. Field data (CrUX) is what Google ranks on. A 75 Lighthouse score with great real-user metrics outranks a 100 score with bad field data every time.