A website is the cornerstone of any e-commerce company. It is the face of your business, displaying your products or services in a way that will appeal to your customers. Search engines, like Google, prioritize websites that offer enriched UI/UX. These parameters are defined by your Core Web Vital scores.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
In simple terms, Core Web Vitals is a report shared by Google Search Console where a group of URLs are analyzed based on core metrics. The three core metrics analyzed include LCP, FID, and CLS.
LCP, or Largest Contentful Paint, signifies the amount of time it takes the largest content piece on the page to download. Only the largest image or block of content within the viewport is considered, and the part that extends beyond the screen is ignored. Typically, large images, videos, and background images are measured in this context. When considering images on your website, you should maintain the same intrinsic and visible size for the images. Note that LCP is different from FCP. FCP, or First Contentful Paint, refers to the amount of time it takes the browser to render the first piece of content on the screen.
FID, or First Input Delay, measures interactivity and responsiveness. It is the time spent from when a user first interacts with the content until the browser is able to process that request. An example of this is when a user clicks on a link — the FID measures the time from the moment the link is clicked to the moment the site processes and reacts to that click. A good FID score is 100ms or less.
CLS, or Cumulative Layout Shift, measures the shifting of web page elements as the page downloads. This typically includes images, videos, and fonts. CLS is measured in terms of impact fraction and distance fraction. Impact fraction measures how much the elements moving have changed the viewport area between two frames; distance fraction measures how much the elements moved. The CLS score is a product of multiplying both the impact and the distance fraction.
How To Improve Your Core Web Vital Scores
Decreasing Page Load Time For Your LCP Score
- Optimize and compress images: If you resize an image’s visible size, it still retains the same intrinsic size. For instance, if an image has a dimension of 1200×600 pixels, it is the intrinsic size of the image. If the same image is resized to 600×400, the intrinsic value still remains at 1200×600 pixels and the visible value is 600×400. Instead of resizing on screen, resize images before uploading and use lower quality file types.
Improving Responsiveness For Your FID Score
- Minify CSS: Minification of CSS files can help the browser render the layout of the page at a faster pace.
- Minify Javascript: In many cases, the Javascript blocks the main thread of the browser for an extended time period, which hinders the processing of user’s inputs. In order to circumvent this, you can use strategies like deferring unused JS and minimizing unused polyfills. Most importantly, longer tasks block the main thread of the browser, not allowing it to process user inputs. Break longer tasks into smaller ones to facilitate the process more efficiently.
Circumventing Issues Related To CLS
A higher amount of CLS creates a slower user experience. Some telltale CLS issues on web pages include unspecified image & video dimensions, iframes, and embed codes. Avoid issues relating to invisible and unstyled text by using prerendering where applicable.
Using Tools To Monitor And Improve Your Core Web Vitals
What tools can be used to improve your scores?
- Google’s Search console’s Core Web Vitals report
- Google’s page speed insights
- Chrome user experience report
The Core Web Vitals report gives an in and out picture of all possible areas which can be improved to enhance the UI/UX parameters of a webpage, thus making your website more attuned to users as well as search engines. This report, and following its insights, gives your website and business an edge in offering users a superior experience, translating to better CVR and a more pleasant customer experience.
Using additional tools like Lighthouse allow you to ascertain gaps and help you accelerate performance. You can also get exhaustive page speed insights report from LXRmarketplace — this tool will share valuable and specific information such as site load time.
From each of these suggested tools, we recommend downloading a report that specifies the resources which need to be worked to enhance the score and implement the provided recommendations.
NetElixir’s SEO Team Is Here To Help
Core web vitals are key to the success of your e-commerce website. Our SEO team is available to provide expert suggestions and custom insights to help improve your website. Please email growth@netelixir.com with any questions.
