Google designed Core Web Vitals to improve the speed, interactivity, and layout of a site’s pages. So if you follow these Core Web Vitals, your site will be looking good in the eyes of Google. Who doesn’t want that?
Here’s what to know about Google’s Core Web Vitals and their UX criteria.
What Are the Core Web Vitals?
There are three Core Web Vitals that Google measures for a page’s user experience:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This measure looks at the time it takes for a page’s main content to load. Ideally it should load within 2.5 seconds.
- First Input Delay (FID): This measure is the amount of time it takes your page to become interactive. This should take no longer than 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This measure is for visual stability and looks at how often a user experiences unexpected shifts in a page’s content. Google has a layout-shift score, from the Google Search Console Core Web Vitals Report. The target is less than 0.1, with a score of zero being ideal.
So What Steps Can You Take to Please Google?
- Implement lazy loading for your less essential content.
- Compress and optimize your visuals for better load times.
- Keep design simple and avoid bloated templates.
- Know your largest on-page element the best to keep your main content fast.
- Test your site on mobile (duh) for CTA functions and enabling Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Wanna see how your site is doing so far? Try Google’s PageSpeedInsights.
Check out the full UXmatters article to learn more about optimizing your site and the Core Web Vitals measurements.
