The Sub-Second Website

How We Achieved 1,500x Faster Page Loads Using Rust, WebP, and Memory-Resident Architecture

South City Computer | January 2026

1. Executive Summary

This white paper documents our experimental journey to build the fastest possible website for a small business. Through systematic optimization, we achieved:

• 1,500x faster page loads (from 2.4 seconds to 1.6 milliseconds)
• 78% reduction in image payload (20MB to 4.3MB)
• Sub-millisecond response times (36-382 microseconds) for core assets
• 26,000-58,000 requests/second throughput on modest hardware

2. The Business Case for Speed

2.1 User Expectations Have Changed

47% of users now expect load times under 2 seconds, tightened from 4 seconds just a few years ago. 53% of mobile users abandon sites taking longer than 3 seconds.

2.2 The Bounce Rate Cliff

2.3 Conversion Rate Impact

Sites loading in 1 second achieve 39% conversion rates. At 5.7 seconds, this drops to 0.6%—a 65x difference. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% for each additional second of load time.

2.4 Real-World Case Studies

3. Methodology

3.1 Test Subject

South City Computer website featuring:

• Single-page design with 5 sections
• 15 high-quality photographs
• Bilingual content (English/Spanish)
• Contact form with email delivery

3.2 Testing Rounds

Round 1: Baseline
├── nginx + Rust API + JPEG from disk
└── Result: 2.4 second page load

Round 2: Image Optimization
├── Convert all images to WebP
└── Result: 78% size reduction

Round 3: Full Optimization
├── Monolithic Rust binary
├── All assets embedded in memory
├── Minified CSS/JS
└── Result: 52ms page load

Round 4: High-Performance Benchmarking
├── Custom benchmark tools (scc-benchmark, scc-perf-client)
├── High-concurrency testing methodology
├── Reproducible performance measurements
└── Result: 1.6ms full page load, 58,085 req/s

4. Technical Implementation

4.1 Traditional vs Optimized Architecture

TRADITIONAL STACK
─────────────────────────────────────────
User Request → nginx → [Disk Read] → Response
                  ↓
              [Proxy] → PHP/MySQL → Database

MONOLITHIC RUST BINARY
─────────────────────────────────────────
User Request → Rust Binary → [Memory] → Response
                    │
                    ├── All HTML/CSS/JS in memory
                    ├── All images in memory
                    └── API handlers compiled in

Single process, zero disk I/O, sub-ms response

4.2 Why Rust?

Rust web frameworks consistently top performance benchmarks:

Notably, Cloudflare rebuilt their entire edge infrastructure in Rust, achieving a 25% performance improvement.

4.3 WebP Image Optimization

5. Benchmark Results

5.1 Response Times

5.2 Full Page Load

5.3 Optimization Summary

6. Comparison: Custom vs WordPress + CDN

6.1 WordPress Performance Reality

WordPress powers 43% of websites, but performance varies significantly:

• Average WordPress desktop load: 2.5-3 seconds
• Average WordPress mobile load: 13.25 seconds
• WordPress ranks 15th out of 20 CMSs for speed

6.2 Can Cloudflare Fix WordPress?

Cloudflare provides significant improvements for static content, but cannot fix:

• Slow server-side rendering (PHP/MySQL)
• Plugin overhead (average WordPress site has 20+ plugins)
• Database query latency
• Large page payloads

6.3 When to Use What

Choose WordPress when:

• Content changes frequently (CMS features needed)
• Non-technical users manage content
• Time-to-launch is critical

Choose custom code when:

• Performance is competitive advantage
• Content is relatively static
• SEO rankings critical in competitive niche
• Memory/compute costs matter

7. Conclusions

7.1 Key Findings

1. Image optimization has the highest ROI — WebP conversion alone provides 78% size reduction with minimal effort.
2. Rust excels for performance-critical applications — 58,000+ req/s on basic hardware with sub-millisecond response times.
3. CDNs level the playing field significantly — Cloudflare can make WordPress competitive for static content.
4. Custom code in Rust/Go provides 100-1000x better performance than interpreted languages with heavy frameworks.

7.2 The Bottom Line

For most websites, WebP images + Cloudflare CDN provides 80% of the benefit with 10% of the effort.

For competitive niches where every millisecond matters, the Rust + memory-resident architecture provides unmatched performance that no amount of caching can replicate.