Richard Rudy presented at WordCamp Hamilton 2018 on improving website speed. He demonstrated that website speed significantly impacts conversion rates and revenue. Testing his website before and after optimizing with tools like ACF, Timber and Foundation, he was able to reduce the page load time from 19.2 seconds to 6.2 seconds according to Google Lighthouse. The key factors impacting page speed were reducing payload size and complexity by optimizing images, JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Faster sites benefit search engine optimization, the user experience and have fewer long-term maintenance issues.