Deb_W Hi! First off thanks and glad to see you found it easy to set up. First on the web page. Easy peasy. Just add a graphical element (picture) and then for the action use url link. It will fire off browser web link in separate browser tab. On the performance. Keep in mind this is just released Preview. However they are working daily on backend improvements, caching, etc to improve performance. On replacing home page...... That I would not personally recommend. While it is transformative in providing rich immersive experiences I would say for now still early on in this type of experience where you still want to leverage SharePoint Online as Intranet but with addition of Spaces to provide specific experiences.
Much more coming along this front with Spaces but nothing I can say as of now except welcome aboard and you aint seen nothing yet 😉