So I went ahead and removed the additional cache layer via WP Engine support (the only way to do it with them) and that didn’t work. I was still downloading all the images.
Later, I went into Litespeed Cache > Cache > Force Cache URIs and I added the homepage / then all of the sudden I was lazy loading images. All audits, including the ones related to deferring offscreen images and converting images to next-gen formats, were cleared in Google PSI so I’m getting a score of ~96 on mobile devices.
Now that it looks all fixed on Google PageSpeed Insights’ end, which tbh is what a client or competitor might use to monitor site performance, Lighthouse from Chrome DevTools tells a different story with a score of 67 and the following audits popping up:
- Reduce unused JavaScript
- Serve images in next-gen formats
- Reduce unused CSS
- Efficiently encode image
- Eliminate render-blocking resources
- Enable text compression
- Preconnect to required origins
Again, I am pleased with the results on Google PSI but since it uses Lighthouse API anyway, I want to understand why it is differing from DevTools’ Lighthouse and if this could be a cause for concerns/further tunning.
