Core Web Vitals are Google’s measurements of how your website feels to use: how fast it shows content, how quickly it responds to taps, and whether things jump around while loading. They affect your rankings — and, more importantly, your sales.

The Three Metrics, in Plain English

  • LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how long until the main content appears. Target: under 2.5 seconds.
  • INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how quickly the page reacts when someone taps or clicks. Target: under 200ms.
  • CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): how much content jumps around while loading (the reason you tap the wrong button). Target: under 0.1.

Why You Should Care Beyond SEO

Every extra second of load time measurably increases abandonment — studies consistently show conversion drops of 5–10% per second. Speed isn’t a technical vanity metric; it’s revenue.

Check Your Site in 30 Seconds

Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights (free, by Google). Green means healthy; orange or red means you’re losing rankings and customers to faster competitors.

The Fixes That Move the Needle

  1. Compress and resize images — the #1 cause of slow LCP. Use WebP format.
  2. Good hosting — a slow server caps everything else.
  3. Remove bloat — every plugin, tracker and animation library costs milliseconds.
  4. Set image dimensions — reserves space so content doesn’t jump (fixes CLS).
  5. Cache and compress — serve returning visitors instantly.

When to Rebuild Instead of Patch

If your site is on a heavy, plugin-stacked theme and every fix moves the score two points, rebuilding on a lean foundation is usually cheaper than the endless patching — and every site we build passes Core Web Vitals from day one.

Worried about your scores? Our Website Development service includes a free performance audit.