Google PageSpeed Insights results for WPtouch

When analyzing your WPtouch powered website in Google PageSpeed Insights, there may be results that indicate that some of the plugin's scripts should be loaded in the footer, rather than the header area. By design, those scripts/files are meant to load in the header. This is so that mobile users receive a better user experience. Loading them in the footer may result in ‘flash of unstyled text’. For example, the page might be shown to the visitor before fonts and icons are loaded.

Also, because the page can be viewed before the JavaScript has completed loading, there’s a chance a visitor might try to interact with UI controls (like drop-down menus) which will appear to not work.

Additional comments regarding PageSpeed Insights:

It’s a great way to make improvements that are, for the most part, trivial changes to a web server and/or WordPress hosted website. However, the speed at which webpages on mobile devices (while measurable to some degree) depend on several factors that Google’s PageSpeed suite can’t address— things like network type, network congestion, OS platform, device type & internals (CPU, GPU, RAM etc), web host configuration and overall resources, time of day, etc.

While we fully recognize the value of PageSpeed as a way to obtain metrics for webpage speed on mobile and ways to improve it, we mostly determine our trade-offs by how they end up feeling to the visitor. For example, we think choosing that web fonts are loaded first (though they slow page render) offers a superior experience to a visitor and is worth a 500ms delay to do so.

The perceived speed of a webpage differs from its actual speed. And we work hard to ensure that the perceived speed of web pages remains fast in the eyes and hands of visitors.