For this release we focused mainly on improving the speed/loading time of the homepage.
After noticing that our homepage was taking longer and longer to load (TTFB - Time To First Byte) with waiting times exceeding 2000ms, we set about trying to resolve the issue. After time spent on researching the issues affecting TTFB, we have added W3 Total Cache, changed the http calls in the header, resolved a 301 redirect & installed an image optimiser called Kraken to compress the images.
On testing we found the TTFB to drop to below 170ms in places with fair internet speed. We will continue work on this for the site as a whole over the coming weeks.