The live app is currently running on a Heroku free-tier. This means that the app server goes to sleep when not in use. This is not typical behavior, just a service condition of the Heroku free-tier.
To experience the typical performance, you will need to wake up the app server before hand with a pre-request. If you do this in a different browser than the one used to observe the performance, typical first-time network performance can still be experienced first hand.