Core web vitals are a set of Google metrics that help developers determine the experience users have on a web page. Generally speaking, if you’re core web vitals are good, your user experience should be good. There are separate vitals for mobile and for desktop with three focus areas.
3 Focus Areas
- Page performance
- Ease of interaction
- Visual stability of the page
What Are The Metrics?
There are three primary metrics including Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift and First Input Delay. Let’s learn more about each of these metrics.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
This is the “Page Performance” part of the equation. A fast loading page is an absolute necessity. If it takes too long for a web page to load, the visitor might leave.
Largest Contentful Paint is a measure of the time it takes for the largest block of content above the fold to load completely and be ready for interaction by the user. “Above the fold” means any content that shows up on screen without the site visitor having to scroll.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
This metric measures the amount of content that moves around on a web page as a visitor is interacting with it. It can be incredibly annoying if blocks of content are moving left and right or up and down while a site visitor is trying to interact with something (can’t click a button because it keeps moving around on the page).
If you have a lot of blocks of content moving around on your web page as the user scrolls or as they interact with things, it makes the page annoying to use. The site visitor has to chase content and they don’t usually enjoy that.
First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay is a measure of the amount of time it takes your web page to respond to a users interaction. A user interaction would include things like clicking a link, clicking a button, clicking an arrow on a slide show or anything else that involves the user doing something themselves.
If your site takes too long to respond to a button click the visitor might think it’s broken and leave.
How do you analyze Core Web Vitals?
Core web vitals is a Google thing so they provide tools developers and SEO practitioners can use to evaluate vitals. There are also other non-Google tools available to help with this. Here is a list of some common tools used for analyzing core web vitals.
So that is the gist of core web vitals! Be sure to use some of the tools listed above to check your site on a regular basis.