A web page that belongs to any business is an asset because it’s the place where the audience lands on and tours around for what they want.
But what if they feel that your website is not up to the mark? loading time, navigation issues or even lack of clarity in the content are some of the factors that contribute to a poor user experience.
Research has shown that 70% online businesses fail to perform because of poor user experience
This is where Core Web Vitals come into the picture.
What are Core Web Vitals?
As the name suggests, Core Web Vitals are the vital factors that Google considers to be important for the user experience of a webpage.
It’s made up of 3 major page speed and user interaction measurements:
- Largest Contentful Paint
- First Input Delay
- Cumulative Layout Shift
And It’s official!
Google has apparently made the plan to include the vitals as a major ranking factor, which tells us why it’s high time we work on the user experience of a website. And when we talk about user experience, the following are some of the factors Google considers important:
- Mobile friendliness
- Website security
- Lack of interstitial pop ups
- HTTPS
Let’s walk you through the 3 vitals in detail
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
LCP (Largest Content Paint) is an important measure/metric/score amongst Web Vitals that tells about the loading time of the largest content element shown to users. It does not tell about the loading time for the whole content, but the important sections.
Some of the elements that come under the LCP are:
- Image elements
- Image tags
- Background images with CSS
- Video elements
- Any element with text
LCP has turned out to become one of the most important measures among the vitals as Google is on a mission to improve user experience.
You wanna know what’s your LCP score? You can get that information on the Google page speed insights and also on Google search console. It shows which URL functions well and which does not, in the form of good, needs improvement and poor.
The ideal loading time of a page is 2.5-3 seconds. Google emphasizes on improving the LCP of the site so that the important aspects on the page loads faster and the users will be able to consume the information without waiting around!
We can check the LCP score from google page insights
Ways to improve LCP
- Avoid using 3rd party scripts. scripts that can be embedded into any site directly from a third-party vendor. These scripts can include ads, analytics, widgets and other scripts that make the web more dynamic and interactive. as they can slow down the page.
- Take a look at page speed insights as it will let you know the element that’s slowing down the page.
2. First Input Delay
Are the users able to interact with the web page? Well, that’s what (FID) First Input Delay looks like.
Examples are:
- Entering an email ID into a field
- Clicking a particular service under the menu tab
- Clicking on a link in the navigation tab
FID gives a clear picture of how the users interact with a web page. Which is why Google considers it as a vital aspect. In short, it takes into account how quickly a user can interact with website.
FID is not necessarily required for blog posts or articles. The interaction takes place when you scroll down a page or click on a picture.
How to improve the FID score?
- Reduce the third party scripts. So that the webpage loads quickly and the audience really doesn’t have to wait to consume the content.
- Use a browser cache. By doing so a web page loads quickly.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift
Cumulative Layout Shift talks about the stability of the page when it loads. When a website loads, you really don’t want to see the elements of a website in motion, but in place. If they tend to move around, then that’s really bad for a website. You have a high CLS in that case.
Source –
So how do we reduce the CLS?
- Use a set size for images, videos, infographics etc. By doing so the browser understands the amount of space it takes up, which avoids movement as the page loads.
- Keep a space reserved for the ads so that it doesn’t push the content downwards or sidewards.
- Add new UI elements. By doing so, the content doesn’t get pushed downwards or sidewards.
You can even get the data for Core Web Vitals on Google Search Console under the section “Enhancements”.
Conclusion: Follow the Google guidelines religiously, and the vitals given above. Each and every miniscule aspect about your web page matters to Google. It’s more like winning trust with Google. And if you really want to win, you’ve got to make the necessary changes so that you never let your audience down.