Yes sir, and I figured you were but I felt like with the things people believe today someone would believe it or worst a web developer would repeat it as fact. (-;
And speed is just the tip of the spear you’ve got:
1.) 98% of websites aren’t ADA compliant, which can get you sued and fined yet.
2.) The hero image should be powerful, create an emotional connection, and make me believe my life would be happier, better, and more productive if I just owned what your selling but instead most websites have sliders and videos that break you out of the state of flow.
3.) The call to action should guide me down a funnel but the average site doesn’t have one.
4.) Pop ups break the state of flow and force me to take some form of action, like closing it for stupid stuff like trying to get my location when you should be getting my IP address from your stats.
5.) Links to social media sites that are off topic, leak link juice, and the social sites tracks the visitor from my site and shows my competitions ads.
And I could go on with blogs, press releases, image names, image folder names, title tags, meta tags, its almost like the entire websites are meant to be a joke!
So while I figured you were joking with all the bad stuff already being done I figured I’d better point out the truth. 
