The easiest performance win in React isn't always your JavaScript. Sometimes it's your images.
I used to think performance optimization meant splitting bundles, memoizing components, and chasing Lighthouse scores.
Then I opened Chrome DevTools on one of my own React projects.
The result? Images were quietly eating most of the page weight — way more than my JS bundle, my fonts, everything else combined.
A hero banner that looked perfect on my laptop was making mobile users download a multi-megabyte file just to see a heading.
