--- title: Four things that made my Eleventy website faster without... description: A web developer shares four practical optimizations that reduced bandwidth and improved page performance on their Eleventy site hosted on Netlify. The changes... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/four-things-that-made-my-eleventy-website-faster-without-removing-the-fun-5pnqlr22o twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Four things that made my Eleventy website faster without removing the fun | daily.dev og:description: A web developer shares four practical optimizations that reduced bandwidth and improved page performance on their Eleventy site hosted on Netlify. The changes... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/four-things-that-made-my-eleventy-website-faster-without-removing-the-fun-5pnqlr22o og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/5pNQLr22o.png og:image:alt: Four things that made my Eleventy website faster without removing the fun og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Four things that made my Eleventy website faster without removing the fun **[Blogging and all that Malarkey](https://daily.dev/sources/stuffandnonsense)** · 4 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A web developer shares four practical optimizations that reduced bandwidth and improved page performance on their Eleventy site hosted on Netlify. The changes include: trimming an RSS feed from 4.5MB to a few kilobytes by switching to summaries and limiting to 25 posts; converting thousands of images from WebP to AVIF for an average 65% size reduction; lazy-loading animated SVGs by initially serving a static AVIF and swapping in the animation after render on larger screens; and adopting a mindset shift from 'how to make things smaller' to 'does the browser need this right now.' The author emphasizes that performance is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How much smaller are AVIF images compared to WebP for photography and illustrations? AVIF produced roughly 65% smaller file sizes on average across a mixed site of photography and illustrations, with some images shrinking by more than 90% while looking nearly identical to the WebP originals. However, graphics with transparency, sharp edges, or text sometimes became larger under AVIF than they were as WebP, so results vary by image type and should be measured rather than assumed. _Comparing AVIF against WebP for a real image library is easier with performance write-ups surfaced on daily.dev._ ### Why would an RSS feed grow to several megabytes and how can it be fixed? An RSS feed can balloon to several megabytes when it embeds the full rendered HTML of every published article rather than a summary. Limiting the feed to summaries and capping it to the latest 25 posts cut one site's feed from about 4.5MB down to a few kilobytes, reducing bandwidth by over 99% while keeping the feed just as useful to readers and feed tools. _Static-site owners chasing hidden bandwidth costs can find similar fixes shared on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Optimizing Images with Eleventy on Netlify](https://daily.dev/posts/optimizing-images-with-eleventy-on-netlify-pqxya44ll) · Kitty says hi. · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [How I made this Astro site build faster and cut its deploy size](https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-made-this-astro-site-build-faster-and-cut-its-deploy-size-x7vte3lsv) · Flavio Copes · 1 upvotes · 1 comments - [Tracking down a nasty Netlify bandwidth burner](https://daily.dev/posts/tracking-down-a-nasty-netlify-bandwidth-burner-ptb85xs1z) · Blogging and all that Malarkey · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [nh3.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/nh3-dev-fsykz8tgx) · Lobsters · 5 upvotes · 1 comments - [I Reduced Our React Bundle by 70% Without Removing a Single Feature](https://daily.dev/posts/i-reduced-our-react-bundle-by-70-without-removing-a-single-feature-szhhzvcpd) · Medium · 18 upvotes · 3 comments --- Tags: [#webdev](https://daily.dev/tags/webdev), [#netlify](https://daily.dev/tags/netlify) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/four-things-that-made-my-eleventy-website-faster-without-removing-the-fun-5pnqlr22o) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Four things that made my Eleventy website faster without removing the fun","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/four-things-that-made-my-eleventy-website-faster-without-removing-the-fun-5pnqlr22o","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/four-things-that-made-my-eleventy-website-faster-without-removing-the-fun-5pnqlr22o"},"datePublished":"2026-07-26T14:36:15.344Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T21:06:50.202Z","description":"A web developer shares four practical optimizations that reduced bandwidth and improved page performance on their Eleventy site hosted on Netlify. 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