There are 3 type of benchmarks: Performances, Stress load and Security. You should get a good planning on how many user will be able to access your website and

There are 3 type of benchmarks: Performances, Stress load and Security. You should get a good planning on how many user will be able to access your website and make good use of caching. JSON can be improve with Protocol buffer, flat buffer, etc Databases are sufficient if you don't need scaling, this works for WordPress which makes up largest market share, your best investment is on VPS and low latency.