An important aspect of any website’s long-running success is continuous optimization, or making sure that your company’s site is properly engaging and informing users. Although every website is different, there are a few key metrics that most – if not all – site owners should check regularly to ensure every encounter with their website is a quality one.
A few years back, Google introduced a new initiative to help website owners understand which “quality signals” were “essential to delivering a great user experience on the web.” These Core Web Vitals are a commonality among websites across industries, and are considered by Google to be critical to a site’s success. You can find your Core Web Vitals measurements for free by creating a Google Search Console account. Today, we’re providing you with a checklist of those Core Web Vitals, including what they are and how you can improve them.
Core Web Vitals
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric represents the render time of the largest element on a page. It measures perceived load speed. A good LCP will be 2.5 seconds or less.
First Input Delay (FID): This metric measures the responsiveness of a page. In other words, what is the length of time between when a user first interacts with a page and when the browser processes or responds to that interaction? Ideally, your FID will be under 100 milliseconds.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP): This metric also measures the responsiveness of a page. How long does it take a page to respond to user interactions for the duration of a page visit? Typically, a good INP score is under 200 milliseconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift: This metric measures visual stability. When visible content quickly shifts on the page, that is considered a layout shift. You want to avoid too much unexpected shifting, with a score of 0.1 or less.
Other Web Vitals
Beyond the Core Web Vitals are other important metrics that you should consider when assessing the health of your website. They include:
Time to First Byte (TTFB): This metric measures responsiveness. Specifically, it measures how long it takes for a browser to receive the first byte of information after a request to the server. Ideally, your score should be 0.8 seconds or less.
First Contentful Paint (FCP): This metric measures the time between the user first navigating to a page, and the first element on the page loading. A score of 1.8 seconds or less is ideal.
How to Check Site Health
There are plenty of tools you can use to check the health of your website. Google provides three field tools that make it easy to get an intimate look at how your website is performing.
The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX): This tool allows for a quick assessment of site performance by providing you with a dashboard that visualizes crucial data.
Page Speed Insights: This tool measures a few of those metrics we talked about earlier. For a more in-depth review of Page Speed Insights, refer to this blog post.
The Core Web Vitals Report: This tool shows URL performance and categorizes URLs as “Poor, Need improvement, or Good”.
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