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How I Fixed A Client's Slow Website By Just Deleting Spaces (true Story)

So last month, I get this call from Sania. She's practically in tears because her jewelry store website is dying. Sales dropped 40%, people are leaving her site immediately, and she just wasted $5,000 on some "SEO guru" who did absolutely nothing.

I open up her website code, and honestly? I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was a complete mess. The previous developer left behind comments from 2021, spaces everywhere, and so much unnecessary junk that it was painful to look at.

Here's the crazy part - it took me about an hour to fix, and her website speed went from terrible to actually good. Two weeks later, way fewer people were leaving her site right away.

I'm sharing this story because everyone's obsessing over fancy new tools while ignoring the simple stuff that actually works.

What I Found (It Was Bad)

Sania's homepage was 87KB total. That might sound normal, but get this - 40KB of that was literally nothing. Just empty spaces, old comments, and formatting that served zero purpose.

Here's what was cluttering up her code:

Comments from developers who quit years ago
So many empty spaces I could write a novel in them
Crazy deep indentation that made no sense
Blank lines scattered everywhere
Extra spaces around every single HTML attribute

Every person visiting her site had to download 40KB of absolutely nothing. With 2,000 visitors daily, that's 80MB of waste being transferred every single day.

The Numbers That Shocked Everyone

I tested her site speed before and after cleaning up the mess:

Before I fixed it:

People waited 2.8 seconds just to see anything
Full page took 4.2 seconds to load
Site froze for 340 milliseconds
Google PageSpeed score: 47 (pretty embarrassing)

After I cleaned it up:

Content appeared in 2.1 seconds
Everything loaded by 3.1 seconds
Freeze time down to 210 milliseconds
PageSpeed score jumped to 70

That's a 23-point improvement just from deleting spaces and old comments. No expensive tools, no complete website rebuild - just basic cleanup.

How I Decided What to Delete

Cleaning up HTML is like organizing your closet - if it doesn't serve a purpose, it goes in the trash.

What I got rid of:

All those pointless spaces and tabs
Line breaks that did nothing
Comments nobody needed
Extra spaces around HTML attributes
Empty attributes just sitting there

What I kept (obviously):

Any spacing inside actual content
Text that people actually read
Comments that actually do something important
Everything that makes the website work properly

The Before and After That Says It All

Here's what Sania's navigation looked like before:

<!-- Old navigation - spacing galore -->  
<nav class="main-navigation">  
    <ul class="nav-list">  
        <li class="nav-item">  
            <a href="/home" class="nav-link">Home</a>  
        </li>  
        <li class="nav-item">  
            <a href="/jewelry" class="nav-link">Jewelry</a>  
        </li>  
        <li class="nav-item">  
            <a href="/contact" class="nav-link">Contact</a>  
        </li>  
    </ul>  
</nav>

After I cleaned it up:

<nav class="main-navigation">  
<ul class="nav-list">  
<li class="nav-item">  
<a href="/home" class="nav-link">Home</a>  
</li>  
<li class="nav-item">  
<a href="/jewelry" class="nav-link">Jewelry</a>  
</li>  
<li class="nav-item">  
<a href="/contact" class="nav-link">Contact</a>  
</li>  
</ul>  
</nav>

Exact same functionality, but 41% smaller. Do this across a whole page and you save serious loading time.

Why This Actually Matters

Google isn't messing around anymore - slow websites get buried in search results. But it's not just about Google. Faster websites mean:

Browsers can figure out what to show without struggling
People don't accidentally click wrong buttons when pages jump around
Mobile users on slow internet actually stick around
Your website can handle more visitors without crashing

The message is clear: make your site fast or watch it disappear from search results.

Mistakes That Break Everything

I've seen people completely ruin their websites trying to make them faster. Here's how to avoid disaster:

Always test your site after making changes. Sometimes your JavaScript expects certain spacing to work properly. I learned this lesson at 2 AM when a client's site broke during launch.

Don't delete comments that actually do something. Some comments are there for a reason and make things work. Good tools know this, but if you're doing it manually, be careful.

Keep your working files readable. Only clean up the version that goes live. You'll thank yourself later when you need to make changes.

Watch out if you use strict security settings. Sometimes cleaning up code can break scripts if your security is really tight.

Mobile Users Saw Even Bigger Improvements

Here's something interesting - people using phones on Sania's site saw the biggest speed boost. That extra 40KB was adding 2-3 seconds on slower connections, and phone processors had a hard time with all that extra code.

Happy mobile users stay on your site longer, which means more sales. It really is that simple.

Make This Automatic (So You Don't Go Crazy)

Doing this by hand every time is torture. Here's how to set it up once and forget about it:

If you use build tools:

// Webpack setup I use  
const HTMLMinifyPlugin = require('html-minify-webpack-plugin');  
  
module.exports = {  
  plugins: [  
    new HTMLMinifyPlugin({  
      removeComments: true,  
      collapseWhitespace: true,  
      removeEmptyAttributes: true  
    })  
  ]  
};

Other ways to do it:

Some hosting companies clean your code automatically
WordPress and other CMSs have plugins for this
You can make your server do it automatically

What Happened With My Other Clients

Since fixing Sania's website, I've cleaned up code on about 15 other projects. The results are pretty consistent:

File sizes shrink 25-40% on average
PageSpeed scores go up 15-25 points
Content shows up 0.3-0.8 seconds faster
Fewer people leave the site immediately (12-25% improvement)

The biggest improvements come from websites built with content management systems that add lots of extra code.

Your Simple Action Plan

Stop overthinking this. Here's what to do right now:

Check your current speed - Use Google PageSpeed Insights
Clean up your HTML - Remove unnecessary spaces and comments
Test again - See how much faster it got
Set up automation - So this happens automatically
Do this for all your websites

Don't wait for the perfect solution. Basic HTML cleanup gives you most of the benefits with almost no work.

Quick Testing Without the Hassle

Want to see how much your code can shrink without setting up complicated tools? You can test this right in your browser. I've found that Web Utility Labs' HTML minifier works great for quick tests - just paste your code and watch it get smaller.

The Simple Truth

While developers argue about which new framework is slightly faster, you can get real speed improvements by cleaning up the mess that's already sitting in your code. It's not fancy, but it works.

Sania's website is fast now, her customers are happy, and her business is recovering. All because we deleted some spaces and old comments.

Sometimes the best solutions are the most obvious ones.

What's the biggest speed improvement you've gotten from a simple fix? Share your story in the comments! ????

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