Phones come first
Most Iraqi visitors browse on Android phones using mobile data from Zain, Asiacell or Korek, and speeds differ a lot between Erbil, Baghdad and smaller towns. Design for a mid-range phone on a patchy connection and desktop will look after itself.
Three numbers to watch
- Largest Contentful Paint: how fast the main content appears
- Interaction to Next Paint: how fast the page reacts to touch
- Cumulative Layout Shift: how stable the page stays while loading
Images are the usual culprit
Serve modern formats such as WebP or AVIF at the size they are shown, and load images below the fold lazily. One oversized hero photo can cost more than all your code.
Cut what you do not need
Remove unused scripts, limit third-party widgets and load fonts carefully, especially Arabic fonts, which are heavy. Fewer requests mean faster pages on a weak signal.
Cache and host close to users
Put a CDN in front of the site and cache pages that do not change per visitor. Check speed from a phone on mobile data, not from your office Wi-Fi.
Globalsoft TeamGlobalsoft · Erbil · Istanbul