Identify areas to improve your Core Web Vitals

Google's Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics quantify the user experience on your pages. Google made CWV a ranking signal in 2021, so achieving a strong CWV score is important to improve your organic performance.

Monitoring your CWV performance is the first step you should take to understand what to fix. You can then prioritize the opportunities to tackle the issues that have the greatest impact on your performance.

Google uses several metrics to measure your Core Web Vitals. Here are a few key items:

Largest Contentful Paint

Google measures how fast your page loads using Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). Images usually cause high LCPs. You'll want to:

• Ensure our main images are found in your page's HTML and can load quickly.
• Prioritize the delivery of your main image before less relevant page content. Make sure everything that gets loaded before your main images also gets loaded quickly.
• Consider using a Content Delivery Network to help speed up your page loading.

Cumulative Layout Shift

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of your page. While most sites do not struggle with CLS at the same rate as they do with LCP, it is still common across the web. You'll want to make sure:

• Your web page is assigning space to important parts of your page like the main image.
• Your page is doing a good job of communicating your images' width and height attributes to Google with your HTML and CSS.
• Avoid fancy animations that cause too much sluggishness (or "jank" in industry jargon) when your page loads.

First Input Delay

First Input Delay (FID) measures how responsive your page is. It measures the time it takes for your page to respond to the first user interaction after page load. FID is the best-performing CWV metric for most web content, but it is still vital to ensure you score well. Make sure your page Isn't getting bogged down by a ton of unnecessary Javascript. Consider simplifying your CSS styles that cause your page load to suffer. Balancing aesthetics with web performance is vital.

How do I test CWV performance?

Google provides different ways for testing your CWV performance. Lab data in Google's Lighthouse provides synthetic testing of your pages. You can use it to test pages that have yet to be published under different conditions. Google also provides CWV performance from actual real-world usage from their Chrome browser users. However, keep in mind that if your website doesn't have enough visits, Google won't be able to provide field data.

You can use Conductor Website Monitoring to use both lab data and field data to understand your CWV.

Before you begin, be sure you have:

• Configured Conductor Website Monitoring to monitor your website.
• Enabled Lighthouse Web Vitals Monitoring and Javascript Rendering

1. In Conductor Website Monitoring, go to the Pages report.
2. Use the filter in the header of the URL column to find a page on your site for which you want to check for technical issues. You might choose a page that you are specifically looking to optimize or that is part of an active campaign.
3. Click the page URL in the URL column. The Page report appears.
4. In the Issues section on the right, click the Conductor Website Monitoring Lighthouse Web Vitals issue to check the details for each CWV issue:
   • Read the Issue descriptions to understand how much improvement you need to achieve the optimal score. Be sure to make notes of each area of improvement.
   • Click the Learn why link to review a summary of best practices about how to fix the issue. To go deeper, visit the Academy link provided in the summary.
     
5. On the left, go to the Platform report. This report includes field data when available from Google about your real-world CWV performance.
6. In the Issues section on the right, click the Web Vitals Origin Summary issue to check the details for each CWV issue.
   • Read the Issue description to understand how much improvement you need to achieve the optimal score. 
   • Click the Learn why link to review a summary of best practices about how to fix the issue. To go deeper, visit the Academy link provided in the summary.

What's next?

By reviewing the Page and Platform reports in Conductor Website Monitoring you can understand which Core Web Vitals your website struggles with the most, and learn how to fix these issues. Focusing on these issues are It is important to improve your CWV performance as Google has incorporated it into its ranking signals. Monitor your CWV score and make sure you are providing a good user experience to your customers.