# Compression: Send Text Responses in a Smaller Payload

> Why Brotli or gzip matters for HTML and other text assets before a site launch.

Canonical: https://softwareontheweb.com/tools/launch-readiness-checker/compression

HTML, CSS, JS, JSON, and XML compress well. Shipping them uncompressed wastes bandwidth and time.

Launch pages benefit from faster delivery on both strong and weak connections.

## What It Is

Compression means the server encodes response bodies with formats such as Brotli or gzip so the browser downloads fewer bytes.

## Why It Matters

- It reduces transfer size for text-heavy responses.
- It can improve perceived speed, especially on slower networks.
- It lowers bandwidth waste at scale.

## Best Practices

1. Enable Brotli where available, or gzip as a fallback.
2. Apply compression to HTML, CSS, JS, JSON, XML, and similar text formats.
3. Verify the CDN or server is not stripping compression unexpectedly.

## Common Mistakes

- Serving HTML uncompressed.
- Compressing only static assets but not the main document.
- Assuming local dev behavior matches production proxies.

## Quick Checklist

- Compression enabled.
- HTML response compressed.
- Public stack preserves compression.

## Final Takeaway

Compression is simple performance hygiene. Public pages should not skip it.

## Related
- [Home](https://softwareontheweb.com/)
- [Topics](https://softwareontheweb.com/topics)