Astrowala Belagavi: Desktop PageSpeed Hits 90

The Site

Astrowala Belagavi is an astrology consultancy with a content-rich WordPress + Astra + Elementor Pro setup. Lots of service pages, lots of photography, lots of client testimonials.

The Core Web Vitals Problem

Content-heavy sites on shared hosting face a specific challenge: every page blog post, service description, and Elementor widget adds weight. Without aggressive image optimization, those pages load slowly even on desktop.

Starting state:

• 315 images averaging ~350 KB each (111 MB total in uploads)
• 29 Elementor sections per page with 67 widgets
• Mobile PageSpeed in the 30s, desktop in the 50s
• LCP (largest contentful paint) taking 6-10 seconds

The Fix — Zero Redesign

We didn’t touch a single page. No new plugins to learn. No layout changes. Just configuration.

1. WebP image pipeline (the biggest win)

PHP-GD based conversion with .htaccess rewrite to serve WebP to any browser that accepts it. Originals preserved on disk. 88 MB saved across 315 images.

2. ATIL Site Optimizer plugin

30+ WordPress / Elementor / LiteSpeed settings that agency builds typically leave at defaults.

3. Page cache + browser cache

LiteSpeed Cache configured with proper TTLs. 30 days on static assets. Query strings stripped from cacheable URLs (so ?utm_source=... doesn’t bust the cache).

4. YouTube lazy-load

Video embeds don’t load their player until clicked.

The Result

Metric	Before	After
Desktop PageSpeed	~55	90
Desktop LCP	6-10s	0.8s
Image uploads size	111 MB	23 MB
WebP coverage	0%	100% of images >80 KB

The desktop experience now feels instant. Mobile still has room to improve (JS heavy with multiple Elementor addons), but the foundation is rock-solid.

See live: PageSpeed Insights — astrowalabelagavi.com