Please help: Very slow "Start Render" time

[akshayranganath]

I'm glad it was useful!

Regarding the availability of tools / plugins, here's what I know:
1. Merging CSS and JS files: There are lot of plugins out there. This site has a huge list of tools available for perf optimization: http://perf.rocks/tools/. Do note that you may need to merge them in right order - especially for JS files. It would be good if you can take help from developers so that dependencies are handled correctly. This can even be integrated to your build process.

As a one time job, this would be quicker. A very rough ball-park is around 20 hours of effort.

2. Re-ordering resources: This is a bit more involved and will need your team to make the change, test it for functionality. After that, you can check for performance benefits. Ideally, you should pick the page that are most critical like home page and then work through the rest of site.

Estimating effort for this would be very hard. Please do note that this will be ongoing effort and could need constant monitoring.