Okay so you have installed Magento 2, the default theme is showing correctly and you are ready to rumble. The only issue you have left is that the shop just feels a bit slowish. Don't worry, I had the same issue and I solved it by spending many hours altering the Magento configuration. I am happy to share my tweaks with you so you get a fast Magento performance experience!
Checklist:
- Optimize the NGINX configuration
- Optimize the PHP configuration by enabling opcache
- Install and configure Redis
- Optimize the Magento settings