A fast, content-first site built on Astro
I built a site about Northern Ireland driving test routes. The audience: people nervous about their test who want to know exactly where they’ll be driving. They’re searching on their phones while prepping, so every second of load time matters.
The brief was straightforward. Useful content. Fast pages. A clean mobile experience. I chose Astro, a static site generator that ships zero JavaScript by default. It proved to be the right call.
The site delivers perfect Lighthouse scores on desktop. No JavaScript overhead. Content loads immediately. And since most visitors arrive on mobile, mobile performance got the most attention. That’s where Google’s eyes are too.
Why Astro instead of WordPress?
A static generator makes sense for this kind of content site. Astro ships no JavaScript by default, so the browser gets HTML and CSS it can render right away. No database queries. No plugin overhead to maintain. That simplicity shows up directly in the speed scores, and it makes the site cheap to host and hard to break.
How the site performed
I tested the output with Google PageSpeed Insights. Desktop scored a perfect 100.
Mobile scored well too. That matters because most people checking routes are on a phone, often while they’re out. I kept the layout simple and the payload small.
Fast pages do two things. They keep visitors around. And they rank better because Google judges your site by the mobile version first. If that’s slow, your rankings sink regardless of how good desktop looks.
What the site covers
The site maps routes for the nine main test centres across Northern Ireland: Belfast Balmoral, Belfast Clarenagh, Antrim, Ballymena, Bangor, Londonderry, Newtownards, Newry, and Omagh. Each centre page breaks down the roads examiners typically use, the manoeuvre types that come up most often, and the local details that catch candidates off guard.
Balmoral is the highest-demand centre. The routes mix A-road and dual carriageway sections near the M1 with tighter residential streets around Finaghy — a contrast that trips up candidates who have only practised one type of road. The site also covers the questions that appear in forums every week: how long the test takes, what the minor and major fault thresholds are, and the most common reasons people fail at each centre.
How it ranks
Six months after launch, the site was drawing roughly 3,800 monthly organic visitors. The primary keyword “NI driving test routes” ranked in the top five positions on Google UK with a 14% click-through rate. Mobile sessions account for 73% of traffic, consistent with candidates checking routes on their phones while out practising. Average session time sits at around two minutes forty seconds — people are reading the route breakdowns, not bouncing.
The site does what it was built to do. Useful content loads quickly. It reads well on any screen. And it ranks.