Cream Meetup 2026 recap: Frontend performance
On September 17, we hosted a meetup at Cream on frontend performance. Together with e-commerce and development professionals, we spent the evening exploring how to make online stores faster and, above all, how to make them feel faster to users.
The program featured three sessions, each taking a different angle. Karlijn Löwik of RUMvision, Edwin Bos of Cream, and Sean van Zuidam of Hyvä shared their expertise on web performance, modern browser techniques, and preventing performance issues.
Between sessions, there was also time for pizza, drinks, and plenty of conversation about frontend, Magento, and performance.
Web Performance in 2026 : CLS-LCP-INP-MCP-AI-WTF?
Karlijn Löwik of RUMvision kicked off the talks with her session Web Performance in 2026: CLS-LCP-INP-MCP-AI-WTF? She showed why performance is about much more than a good score in a testing tool. Even small differences in load time can affect conversion and user behavior, but with so many metrics, tools, and acronyms, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. The real question isn’t just how to make an online store as technically fast as possible, but how fast is fast enough for your business.
Karlijn took attendees from lab scores to the real world, showing how to identify the performance improvements that actually make a difference. She also covered AI and smart tooling, which can help you get to actionable insights faster and better align frontend decisions with business goals.
Faster than a click
After the pizza, it was time for our own Edwin Bos, Lead Frontend Developer at Cream, and his session Faster than a click.
A fast online store is about more than short load times. How a store responds as visitors navigate has at least as much influence on how fast it feels.
Edwin showed how modern browser techniques can prepare pages before a visitor even clicks a link. Get the right information or pages ready at the right moment, and the next page can appear almost instantly. The result: a storefront that isn’t just technically fast, but also responds quickly and smoothly as people browse.
It’s a topic that ties in closely with our everyday focus on Magento and Hyvä: treating performance not as a one-off optimization, but as part of the complete user experience.
Prevention is better than cure
The evening closed with a session by Sean van Zuidam of Hyvä. In Prevention is better than cure, he explored a key principle of frontend development: it’s better to prevent performance issues from the start than to try to fix them later.
A fast frontend doesn’t just happen. Decisions made during development, new features, third-party scripts, and the way an online store evolves over time all affect how it ultimately performs.
Factoring performance into decisions during development keeps an online store from gradually getting heavier. That takes awareness among developers, along with clear technical choices and ongoing measurement of how each change affects performance.
Performance is more than a good score
The three sessions looked at frontend performance from different angles, with one clear common thread: a fast online store isn’t about a single perfect score. It’s about what visitors actually experience, backed by real user data, smart browser techniques, and technical choices that keep a store fast as it grows and continues to develop.
It’s the combination of measuring, developing, and continuously optimizing that makes performance an integral part of a solid e-commerce setup.
Sharing knowledge with the community
With this meetup, we wanted to do more than share knowledge. We also wanted to bring developers and other e-commerce professionals together. So the conversations over pizza and drinks were every bit as valuable as the presentations themselves.
Thanks to Karlijn Löwik, Sean van Zuidam, and Edwin Bos for sharing their expertise, and of course to everyone who came out to our office in Berkel en Rodenrijs.
As far as we’re concerned, it’s definitely worth doing again.
At Cream, we work every day to make Magento online stores faster, better, and more future-proof. Our toolkit includes Magento Open Source and Hyvä, and we’re always glad to share what we learn along the way with the community.
