Need advice on speeding up a load time

I didn’t get an answer directly on this.

Regarding Q1, I did some experimentation comparing a popup with 25 groups to one with no groups, and it didn’t seem to visibly impact load time.

Regarding Q2, some discussion on that in the below post. Consensus was apply them where it makes sense; no one brought up load time differences:

I figured out a solution to the overall problem I was having and described it here: