With Google's constantly evolving criteria and algorithm upgrades, improving your company's website position on Google may seem like an uphill battle.
Although Google's goal with these upgrades is to provide users with better answers to their queries, staying on top of them can be challenging.
By improving Core Web Vitals metrics like largest contentful paint, first-input delay, and cumulative layout shift, web admins can create a better user experience website, leading to better conversions and an increase in ROI.
Google recently updated Core Web Vitals to help website owners and developers optimize their websites for better performance and user satisfaction.
Learn more about core web vitals and how they can help increase your revenue.
So, What are Core Web Vitals?
Google recently introduced a collection of performance metrics called Core Web Vitals to simplify things for developers and marketers.
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure website speed, responsiveness, and overall user experience.
They are already taken into account when determining organic search ranking, increasing the visibility of quicker and more user-friendly websites.
Rakuten 24, an online store that invested in Core Web Vitals, increased its revenue per visitor by 53.37% and conversion rate by 33.13%.
By using core web vitals, a website can create a better user experience that leads to increased engagement and revenues.
How Do Core Web Vitals Help Increase Your Revenue?
Did you know improving all 3 Core Web Vitals metrics, one of the e-commerce companies contributed to a 6% revenue uplift in their Black Friday sale?
User experience is the driving force behind Google's decision to adopt Core Web Vitals.
Also, websites that provide a positive user experience will see increased search traffic as well as a rise in repeat visitors leading to increased revenue.
Therefore, making an effort to raise these indicators for your website is worthwhile. Here are the three primary metrics that makeup Core Web Vitals.
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Did you know Google considers page loading times of less than 2.5 seconds as good and more than 4 seconds as poor?
If you can achieve page loads in less than 2.5 seconds for 75% or more of all recorded page loads, bounce rates decrease by 50%, and page views increase by 27%.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is one of the Core Web Vitals that measures the loading performance of a webpage by tracking the time it takes for the most extensive content element to appear on the user's screen.
By improving the LCP of your website, you can make it more efficient for users, leading to better user experience, increased engagement, and, ultimately, higher revenue.
Users are more likely to stay on a website that loads quickly, navigate through it more efficiently, and complete their desired actions, such as purchasing or filling out a form.
Tips to improve your LCP score
- Optimize images by compressing them and using the correct image format.
- Excessive JavaScript and CSS slow down your website. Minimize them by removing unnecessary code, combining files, and using asynchronous loading.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to distribute your content to servers closer to your users, reducing the time it takes to load your page.
- A slow server response time can significantly affect your LCP time. Minimize it by optimizing your server configuration, database queries, and code.
- Use a fast and reliable hosting provider that can handle your website's traffic.
- Use a caching plugin as it can store a static version of your website and serve it to users, reducing the time it takes to load your page.
- Load the most needed content on your page before any other elements. This ensures that users can quickly see and interact with the needed content on your page.
Overall, it provides a lower bounce rate and higher conversion rates, leading to increased business revenue.
2. First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay (FID) is a Core Web Vital that measures the time it takes for a web page to respond to the first user interaction, such as a click or tap on a button.
It is crucial as it affects the user experience and influences them to stay on the site, engage with the content, and purchase.
If your FID score is under 100 milliseconds, your website is doing well, but speed up if it is 300 milliseconds or more.
Slow FID frustrates users and causes them to leave the site before engaging with the content or purchase, resulting in lost revenue and missed conversion opportunities.
Therefore, optimizing a website for a fast FID is essential. It can improve the user experience and increase the likelihood of users engaging with their content, ultimately leading to increased revenue.
Ways to raise the FID score
- Use a fast and reliable hosting provider that can handle your website's traffic.
- Optimize code by reducing its size using minification and deferring or lazy-loading JavaScript that is unnecessary for the initial page load.
- Third-party scripts, such as those used for analytics or advertising, can cause delays. Only use essential scripts, consider asynchronous or lazy loading, and use a Content Security Policy (CSP) to control which scripts can run on your site.
- Optimize your server configuration, database queries, and code to reduce response time.
- Implement a Service Worker that caches resources, and pre-fetch content, enables background processing, and improves the responsiveness and overall user experience.
- Configure to load the actual content on your page first so users can quickly see and interact with the necessary content on your page.
By implementing these strategies, you can improve your FID score and provide a better user experience for your website visitors.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a metric that measures a webpage's visual stability, quantifying the amount of content on a page that moves around while the page is loading.
A low CLS score is vital because it can improve the user experience of your website.
A low (below 0.1) CLS score means that the page is stable and the content is not jumping around, while a high (above 0.25) CLS score indicates the content is moving around a lot.
Website visitors opt out of the website when the content on the page shifts around unexpectedly.
According to Yottaa, 17% of product detail pages and 12% of category pages comply with the Core Web Vitals benchmark for CLS.
There are several ways you can take to improve your CLS score.
- Always set the width and height attributes for any photos, videos, or other media elements you use on your website to avoid unexpected shifts during loading.
- Avoid inserting new content above existing content.
- Web fonts can cause layout shifts if they are loaded late. Preload them to ensure they do not cause unexpected shifts.
- Layout shifts may result from third-party content like adverts and social media widgets. Minimize their use, and if you must use them, ensure they are optimized for performance.
- Load actual content first on your page before adding other components to minimize the likelihood of unexpected layout shifts.
- Use tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse to test your site and identify layout shift issues.
Leveraging these strategies, you can improve your CLS score and provide a better user experience for your website visitors, leading to increased engagement, longer session times, and ultimately higher revenue.
Conclusion
Gone are the days when marketers could rank their web pages based on keyword stuffing.
With every passing Google algorithm update, search results significantly focus on satisfying user intent and experience.
Therefore, marketers need to improve their website's overall performance to ensure a positive user experience.
Moreover, optimizing your website for these metrics can also help improve your website's search engine rankings and visibility, leading to more traffic and potential revenue.
If you need help with Google’s update to its search algorithm to incorporate Core Web Vitals, get in touch with Searchable Design, the best web development agency in the USA.