Everything You Need to Know About Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vital is an effective website performance-measuring metrics introduced by Google on May 28, 2020. It is a subset of web vital that contains significant factors to upgrade your site’s user experience.

Currently, the Core Web Vitals incorporates three critical factors- speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of websites to rank your user experience. Such factors are measured under Core Web Vitals using Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Display (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

All of these benchmarks represent a distinct aspect of the user experience, are measurable in the field, and reflect the real-world experience of a vital user-centric outcome. Let’s read in detail about these Core Web Vitals.

1. LCP
LCP stands for Largest Contentful Paint which signifies the time taken by your website to load from the visitor’s point of view. This is what makes LCP unique from other load speed metrics. Google PageSpeed Insights can be beneficial as it proffers areas to improve and illustrates how your page performed in the real world.

However, analyzing each page separately is an irksome task. That’s why we recommend using Google Search Console as it enables you to view LCP data on your entire site. Google follows specific guidelines which break down LCP into three categories namely, Good, Needs Improvement, and Poor, depending on the page load speed. You must aim to achieve an LCP score of lower than 2.5 seconds.

Tips to Improve LCP

• You can upgrade your web host as a better web host can provide you with faster loading time (including LCP).
• Setting up a lazy load feature restricts the automatic image load until the user scrolls down the mouse and significantly improves LCP.
• Minimize CSS on your website.

2. FID
FID is an abbreviation for First Input Display which portrays the time taken by your user to interact with your page. Such interactions may include entering details into a field, selecting an option from the menu, and clicking on a link in the site’s navigation.

Technically, FID refers to the time it takes for something to occur on a page which can be linked with the page speed score. But in contrast, FID also accounts for the time taken by users to perform an activity on your page. One need not worry about FID score when dealing with 100% content pages like a blog post as the only real “interaction” here is scrolling down the page or pinching to zoom in & out. Striving for 100 milliseconds or even lesser FID can help you deliver a next-level user experience.

Tips to Improve FID

• Third-party scripts (like Google Analytics, heatmaps, etc.) can adversely affect your website’s FID. Choose carefully which ones to keep and which to remove.
• Consider using the browser cache to load content on your page even faster.
• Minimizing JavaScript can also help you improve FID.

3. CLS
CLS stands for Cumulative Layout Shift which depicts the stability of your page when it loads. You don’t want your website elements to move as the page loads as it will negatively impact the user experience. CLS rates your website’s stability and terms it as Good, Needs Improvement, and Poor depending on the elements like images, links, and fields. As a website owner, you must try to have a CLS score of 0.1 or less.

Tips to Improve CLS

• Consider using set-size attribute dimensions for media elements like video, images, GIFs, infographics, etc.
• Add the latest UI elements below the fold to stop unnecessary movements.
• Reserve a fixed place for ad elements running on your website as it might push down your content.

We hope this helped you comprehend Google Core Web Vitals and briefed you with important tips to improve it. You can find the site’s Core Web Vitals data under the “enhancements” section of your Google Search Console account and use this data to further improve user experience. Enhancing user experience will also assist in boosting your website’s ranking on the SERPs.

Need assistance with core web vitals?

Leave the technicalities to the experts. WordPress Website is India’s leading WordPress development company. We offer top-notch SEO services to improve your site’s ranking on the SERP. Our experts are well-versed in Core Web Vitals and will provide you with useful suggestions to deliver a stunning user experience.
Contact us today!