Enable native lazy loading for images

Symptom

BoltAudit finds <img> tags without loading="lazy" on pages with many images. The Lighthouse "Defer offscreen images" audit also flags this.

Impact

• Hero/above-the-fold images compete with below-the-fold ones for the same bandwidth on first paint.
• LCP arrives slower than it should.
• Mobile users with limited data pay for images they may never see.

Manual fix

WordPress core has added loading="lazy" to most <img> tags automatically since 5.5 — but only when the size attributes are present. Themes and page builders that emit images without width/height skip the auto-lazy treatment.

If you're hand-rolling templates, add it explicitly:

CODE0

Apply Fix

One-click in the dashboard. The fix injects loading="lazy" into images in the rendered output, except the first image (kept eager for LCP).

Don't lazy-load the LCP image

The above-the-fold hero image must stay eager — lazy-loading it delays LCP. Use loading="eager" or fetchpriority="high" on that one. The Apply Fix protects this automatically by leaving the first image alone.