Core Web Vitals: A Complete Guide for the Marketers


Core Web Vitals

Table of Contents

Did you know that if your website doesn’t load within the first 3 seconds, nearly half of your visitors will leave? 

And if it stretches to 7 seconds, almost 100% will abandon it. That’s how crucial website performance is.

Google launched Core Web Vitals in 2020 to consolidate everything related to site performance—whether it’s how quickly your server loads the site or how elements appear as users scroll. All these factors are now part of the Core Web Vitals framework, making it a vital ranking factor for any website looking to climb Google’s search results, whether through organic or paid campaigns.

This guide is designed to help new marketers understand Core Web Vitals and why they matter. It’s all about optimizing your site’s performance to get better visibility and results on Google.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are basically the key metrics that Google and a bunch of other search engines use to measure how well your website performs and how enjoyable it is for users. Let’s break down the three main metrics you need to know:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

This one checks how quickly the main stuff on your webpage loads—the big image or block of text that you want visitors to see first. If it loads within 2.5 seconds, you’re in good shape!

2. First Input Delay (FID):

FID is all about interactivity. It measures how long it takes for your website to respond after someone clicks or taps on something. Ideally, this should happen in under 100 milliseconds for a smooth experience.

3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):

CLS looks at how stable your webpage is as it loads. You know those annoying moments when things shift around, like a pop-up or new content that suddenly appears? That’s what CLS tracks. A solid score here is anything below 0.1, which means your layout is nice and stable.

How Core Web Vital Scores Impact Website Performance?

Google tests Core Web Vitals scores and gives you almost weekly updates through Search Console. If your website is getting a bad score, it’ll show up clearly in your Core Web Vitals report. There are three categories for website rankings in Google Search Console when it comes to Core Web Vitals:

  1. Good: If your site falls into this category, you’re in a great spot! You’ll rank well for the top keywords you’re optimised for.
  2. Needs Improvement: Websites in this category tend to shuffle around in rankings. Sometimes they load fast, sometimes they don’t. Google recommends that if your site is marked as “Needs Improvement,” you should address those issues; otherwise, you risk losing your rankings.
  3. Poor: If your site is classified as “Poor,” it will likely lose its rankings altogether.
Google Search Console's Core Web Vitals Report

If you’re aiming to achieve a 100% score on your Google Page Speed Test, check out our complete guide on “How To Score 100% On Google Page Speed Test?“.

All of this information is clearly laid out in your Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console, so make sure to keep an eye on it!

Why Core Web Vitals Matter for SEO and Paid Marketing?

Core Web Vitals are important for everything—not just marketing or e-commerce. But let’s be honest, marketing is a huge part of it since it’s where the bread and butter come from.

That said, Core Web Vitals directly impact the kind of traffic your website attracts. Google places a big emphasis on having your Core Web Vitals in check because it affects how much traffic and how many leads you can generate. So, we’ll dive into how Google Chrome affects SEO and paid marketing.

Impact of Google Core Web Vitals on SEO and Search Rankings

If your Core Web Vitals report shows a poor score, you can expect a few things to happen:

  1. Traffic Loss: First off, you’re going to lose traffic. People won’t stick around if your website takes ages to load.
  2. Ranking Drop: Next, say goodbye to your rankings on Google, Bing, and any other search platform. A poor score means your site won’t rank where it used to.
  3. Decreased Impressions: As your rankings drop, so will the number of impressions your website gets.
  4. Fewer Clicks: With fewer impressions comes fewer clicks. If your keywords aren’t ranking anymore, you can kiss those clicks goodbye.

This creates a nasty cycle that hits your bottom line hard, whether it’s the number of leads you’re generating or orders if you’re running an e-commerce site. And let’s be real—nobody wants that to happen!

Similarly, Core Web Vitals impact paid search, not just organic rankings. If you’re running ads on Google Ads, Bing Ads, or any other search engine, and people are landing on your site to fill out lead forms or order from your e-commerce store, those KPIs will take a hit.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Quality Scores Matter: All ad platforms have a quality score for your website, which includes factors like speed and performance. If your site’s performance is slow, the number of visitors will drop due to a higher bounce rate.
  2. Lower Rankings on Ads: Since your website’s performance and quality score are low, ad platforms will automatically rank your ads lower in sponsored listings. Their AI algorithms pick up on these issues and adjust rankings accordingly.
  3. Rising Costs: If your website is slow, it’ll directly impact your cost per click and cost per lead. With a lower ranking in sponsored ads, fewer people will click on your ads, which will drive up your keyword click costs. This means you’ll end up spending more of your budget without getting the desired results.

So, Core Web Vitals aren’t just a concern for organic rankings; they also play a crucial role in impacting paid traffic, leads, and conversions coming to your site—whether from ad platforms or referral websites.

How Marketers Can Optimise Core Web Vitals?

Now that we have a basic understanding of what Core Web Vitals are and how they impact website performance, let’s dive into how marketers can optimise these metrics to boost their website’s performance. 

Here are some practical strategies:

For LCP:

For optimising Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), here’s what you need to focus on to ensure your website loads quickly and efficiently:

  1. Eliminate Background Scripts: Make sure there are no scripts running in the background that could slow down the loading process when someone visits your site for the first time. These can create hurdles that delay the initial load.
  2. Defer Animations and Non-Essential Elements: Any animations or interactive elements that are not crucial for the first view should be deferred. This way, they won’t impact the initial loading time, allowing your main content to display more quickly.
  3. Optimise Images and Videos: Ensure that any images or videos visible in the first viewport do not load with the initial page request. Instead, defer their loading until after the main content has fully loaded. This will help reduce the overall loading time, enhancing the user experience right from the start.

By implementing these strategies, you’ll significantly improve your LCP score and provide a smoother browsing experience for your visitors.

For FID:

To optimise First Input Delay (FID) and ensure a smooth user experience, here are some effective strategies to consider:

  1. Minimize Background Loading: Ensure that your website isn’t loading any unnecessary elements in the background once the main content has appeared on the screen. Large websites often face this issue, where users see the page load but experience delays because scripts, animations, or heavy images are still processing. This delay can frustrate users, especially if they try to interact with the menu or play a video but face a lag.
  2. Utilize Lazy Loading: Implement lazy loading for images and scripts. This means that only the elements currently in view, or those that the user hovers over, are loaded. By deferring the loading of off-screen content, you can significantly reduce FID and improve overall responsiveness.
  3. Prioritize User Interactions: Any elements that load after the main content should be triggered only when the user tries to interact with them. For example, prioritize loading menus or video players based on user actions using Google Tag Manager or custom scripts. This approach ensures a more immediate response when users take action.
  4. Keep Your Website Lightweight: Avoid using too many heavy elements, such as large images and complex animations. If your site is bogged down by files that aren’t optimised for the web, it will take longer to load. Opt for browser-friendly fonts and image formats like WebP, which are optimised for quick loading. Aim to keep individual images under 200-300 KB to prevent the overall page size from ballooning to 3-4 MB, which can deter visitors.
  5. Optimise Animations: While animations can enhance user experience, they shouldn’t come at the cost of performance. Ensure that any animations on your site are lightweight and don’t hinder loading times. If heavy images or complex interactions look great but slow down your site, reconsider their necessity—after all, a visually appealing site is useless if users leave due to slow performance.

By following these strategies, you can effectively minimise FID, enhance your website’s responsiveness, and ultimately improve user satisfaction.

For CLS:

For cumulative layout shift (CLS), make sure there are no surprising elements on the website that the user isn’t expecting. This includes any fold that triggers due to a click, which can open when the reader is engaged in something on the site. If you’ve watched news websites like CNN or BBC, you’ve likely seen ads pop up in the middle of reading, disrupting the experience. This is bad for viewership, and people generally dislike it. So make sure that:

  1. No Surprising Elements: Ensure that there are no unexpected elements on the website that could disrupt the user experience. This includes any fold that is triggered due to a click and opens while the reader is engaged with the content. For example, when reading news articles on sites like CNN or BBC, hovering over text can trigger ads that disrupt the reading flow. This negatively impacts user experience and viewership.
  2. Avoid Intrusive Pop-Ups: On e-commerce sites, avoid showing upsell pop-ups when users are trying to complete actions like entering credit card details. These interruptions can lead users to close the pop-up and potentially exit the website, which is detrimental to business.
  3. Sticky Bars and Pop-Ups Timing: Ensure that sticky bars, hello bars, or pop-ups only appear when the user is expecting them, not while they are engaged in other activities.
  4. Consistent Content Area: Maintain stability in the content area where users are reading. The paragraphs should not move unexpectedly due to ads or other elements pushing the content down, as this can distract users and cause them to lose focus.
  5. Control Over Layout: Ensure that any animations or scripts do not impact the layout. Users should have control over their experience on the website; if elements move autonomously, users may become distracted and leave the site.
  6. Fixed Layouts for Media: Maintain fixed layouts for images and videos. For instance, if a video appears on the right side, it should play within that designated area and not cover the entire screen.
  7. Close Button for New Elements: If new elements such as ads appear from the bottom or a hello bar shows up after a delay, they should include a close button. This allows users to dismiss them without disrupting their reading or interaction with the site, ensuring they do not interfere with the user’s actions.

Examples of the Impact of Core Web Vitals on Conversions and Engagement

Cloudways:

Cloudways saw a 50% increase in their conversion ratio during last year’s Christmas season just by improving their website speed by two seconds.

Take Cloudways, for example. Their original website used a background animation on the homepage. This animation made the page load time jump from three to five seconds, which obviously hurt both performance and rankings. They then revamped their layout, opting for just a simple gradient background while deferring other elements until after the initial load.

Before the change:

Cloudways Homepage Before Core Web Vitals Optimisation

As a result, the website now loads in under three seconds, cutting down the load time by about 2 to 3 seconds for most users. This change significantly boosted their website performance and led to an increase in keyword rankings by nearly 35%. You can also see this reflected in open conversion data.

After the change:

Cloudways Homepage After Core Web Vitals Optimisation

WP Creative

WP Creative Homepage

At WP Creative, we’ve also improved our website conversion ratio by enhancing the overall performance. Our developers are constantly working behind the scenes to add more value to the user experience.

Recently, we boosted our own website’s performance. Key strategies included implementing lazy loading and opting for a simple, theme-based design with minimal animations and images. Most of our website is built using HTML and CSS, which has significantly increased load times and reduced paint sizes. As a result, we’ve seen our conversion ratios improve by almost 50%.

Best Practices for Monitoring Core Web Vitals for Marketing Success

Let’s explore some best practices to improve your website’s core web vitals:

  • Conduct Monthly Audits: Regularly audit your website on both desktop and mobile platforms to ensure everything is functioning optimally.
  • Identify Pages Needing Improvement: Create a list of all pages categorized as needing improvement or marked as poor in the Google Search Console. Google Search Console updates its reports bi-weekly, so keep an eye on that.
  • Understand the Reasons for Poor Performance: Investigate the reasons behind the “needs improvement” or “poor” categories in Google Search Console. By clicking on specific pages in Search Console, you can see the reasons for the given ranking. If the issue is with LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), then focus on improving that metric.
  • Test Across Multiple Devices: Once your website audit is complete, test website performance on various screens and devices. Sometimes a site may work well on one device but not on another due to differences in how browsers render websites. For instance, Safari on an iPhone may display the site differently than Chrome on an HP computer. Ensure responsive performance testing is comprehensive for both desktop and mobile.
  • Implement Basic Performance Optimisations: Focus on fundamental optimisations such as:
    • Minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.
    • Enabling image compression.
    • Utilizing server-side compression for large files (e.g., Brotli or Gzip).
    • Reducing the number of redirects on your website.
  • Use Multiple Testing Platforms: Leverage various testing platforms to ensure your website’s performance is at its peak. Useful tools include:
    • Pingdom
    • GTmetrix
    • WebPageTest
    • Google’s own tools, such as Lighthouse (available in Google Chrome) and PageSpeed Insights.

By following these practices, you can significantly enhance your website’s core web vitals and overall user experience.

  • Increased Focus on Performance: Performance will become even more critical moving forward, especially with the introduction of AI tools aimed at website conversion rate optimisation and overall performance improvement.
  • Data-Driven Marketing Takes Center Stage: Expect more emphasis on data-driven marketing. Tools like Google Search Console will begin offering core web vital metrics and similar performance indicators to help users manage and test their websites effectively.
  • Crucial Mobile Optimisation: With around 70% of the population using mobile devices for browsing, mobile optimisation and responsiveness will be paramount. Core web vitals will shift focus to prioritize mobile performance over desktop results.
  • Real-Time Performance Metrics: Currently, Google updates core web vital metrics every 15 days. However, this will transition to real-time or at most 24-hour updates, allowing for more immediate insights into website performance.
  • User Experience Over SEO: User experience will increasingly take precedence over traditional SEO practices. Search engines will concentrate on the interactions users have with a website—such as layout stability, bounce rates, average time on the page, and user interactions. These KPIs will ultimately determine a website’s success in search rankings, aligning with the fundamental intent of search engines to provide the best user experience.

By learning more about these trends, marketers can better prepare their strategies to align with the evolving landscape of core web vitals.

Final Recommendations for Marketers to Stay Ahead

We hope you’ve learned about core web vitals and the major KPIs involved in measuring the performance of any website. Moving forward, core web vitals will not just be a measurement metric; they will become a crucial factor for the success of any business website globally, whether it pertains to organic rankings, paid rankings, or even paid social rankings. Ultimately, these KPIs directly impact user experience, and everything is trending toward enhancing that experience.

To gain a competitive edge and improve your marketing results, it’s essential to optimise your website for performance and speed. By aligning with core web vitals, conducting regular performance audits, and fixing any issues that arise, you can not only gain an advantage but also attract more visitors to your website, which will positively impact your conversions.

How WP Creative Can Help Improve Your Core Web Vitals?

In this article, we shared how we increased our website conversions by nearly 100% simply by enhancing its performance. We can help you achieve similar results! Get in touch with us today to learn how we can improve not just your traffic but also your brand image and business bottom line. Don’t believe us? See what our clients are saying.

Contact Us Today


Updated on: 25 October 2024 |


Nirmal Gyanwali, Director of WP Creative

Nirmal Gyanwali

With over 16 years of experience in the web industry, Nirmal has built websites for a wide variety of businesses; from mom n’ pop shops to some of Australia’s leading brands. Nirmal brings his wealth of experience in managing teams to WP Creative along with his wife, Saba.