8 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website's Core Web Vitals Performance

Improving your website's core web vitals is crucial for providing users with a positive browsing experience. Core web vitals measure real-world user experience for things like page load speed, visual stability, and interactivity. Optimizing these key metrics should be a priority for any business wanting to improve SEO and user experience.

1. Improve Largest Contentful Paint

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how long it takes for the main content of a page to load. Slow LCP times frustrate users and lead to higher bounce rates. Here are some tips for improving LCP:

• Optimize images - compress files, lazy load below the fold, and serve next gen formats.
• Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
• Defer non-critical JavaScript.
• Optimize web host performance and use a content delivery network.
• Avoid heavy fonts and limit third-party tags.

For example, a real estate website could significantly improve LCP by optimizing their home gallery images. Converting unwieldy RAW files into compressed JPEGs and only loading images visible above the fold can shave seconds off LCP.

2. Reduce Time to First Byte

Time to First Byte (TTFB) is the time from when a user makes a request to when the first byte of response is received from the server. Fast TTFB enhances perceived performance.

1. Use a web host with powerful servers and solid connectivity.
2. Enable compression and caching.
3. Minify code.
4. Optimize databases and limit database requests.
5. Reduce server response times.

An ecommerce site was struggling with 6+ second TTFB times. We helped them implement Redis caching and code minification to get their median TTFB under 1 second, greatly improving user experience.

3. Increase Cumulative Layout Shift

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability as pages load and elements shift around. High CLS annoys users and makes it hard to interact with moving content. Here are a few CLS tips:

• Set fixed dimensions for images/ads.
• Inline critical CSS.
• Defer non-critical JavaScript.
• Use CSS Grid and Flexbox for better element spacing.
• Avoid lazy loading above the fold.
• Reduce overall page changes after load.

A news website was experiencing frequent CLS issues due to ads and images loading in unpredictably. We helped them add width/height attributes to ads, inline critical CSS, and lazy load lower priority images. This smoothed out page loads and reduced CLS sessions.

4. Keep Requests Under Control

The number of requests your site makes can significantly impact load times. When requests climb too high, it creates congestion and delays. Some tips for optimizing requests:

1. Combine files and scripts when possible.
2. Load non-critical assets asynchronously.
3. Minimize redirects.
4. Optimize databases and eliminate redundant queries.
5. Enable caching and CDNs to reduce requests.
6. Eliminate render blocking JavaScript.

We helped a client reduce homepage requests from over 100 to just 35 by consolidating scripts, removing duplicate fonts, implementing Redis caching, and deferring non-critical assets. Page load times improved dramatically.

5. Keep Downloads Small

Large individual file sizes can stall page loading, even if you have limited requests. To keep downloads fast:

• Compress images, videos, CSS and JavaScript.
• Set budgets for page weight and individual assets.
• Lazy load non-critical assets.
• Use lighter fonts and simplify animations.
• Stream large media files when possible.

A hotel website had 4mb+ homepages from oversized images, multiple sliders, and unoptimized video backgrounds. We helped them compress images, remove excess animations, and lazy load lower priority assets. Page weights decreased by over 75% and LCP improved significantly.

6. Monitor with Real User Monitoring

Real user monitoring (RUM) analyzes how real visitors experience your site. Unlike synthetic monitoring, RUM provides insights into real user journeys across locations, browsers, and devices. Here are some key benefits of RUM:

• Identify high risk journeys impacting conversion rates.
• Pinpoint issues not caught in synthetic testing.
• Reduce reliance on lab testing.
• Detect problems before users complain.
• Continuously optimize user experience.

Implementing RUM provided a travel company with visibility into real user struggles booking flights on iOS devices. By detecting and fixing the iOS issues, the company increased mobile bookings by 22%.

7. Set Performance Budgets

Setting performance budgets helps align teams on speed and experience targets. Rather than arbitrary goals, budgets connect performance to business metrics. Some tips for implementing budgets:

1. Determine key user journeys to optimize.
2. Identify business success metrics like conversion rates.
3. Correlate speed metrics like LCP to business metrics.
4. Set reasonable budgets based on correlation data.
5. Get stakeholder buy-in across teams.

We helped a client determine that high LCP times correlated strongly to lower lead submission rates. By setting an LCP budget aligned to conversion rate goals, they helped focus teams and improve outcomes.

8. Leverage Strategic Performance Tools

A variety of performance tools are available for monitoring, testing, and improving user experience. Choosing the right tools can amplify your optimization efforts. Some recommendations:

• Real user monitoring - get visibility into real user struggles.
• Synthetic monitoring - simulate user journeys for constant testing.
• Speed testing - identify performance opportunities through lab and field testing.
• Page speed tools - discover optimization insights.
• Caching and CDNs - speed up delivery and reduce server strain.

By implementing a suite of RUM, synthetic monitoring, speed testing, and optimization tools, an online retailer improved site speed by over 40% and increased revenue by 8% from higher conversions.

Optimizing core web vitals should be an ongoing effort, not a one-time project. Leverage tools for continuous monitoring and improvement. As you enhance user experience, you will see benefits for SEO and business growth. Small speed gains add up, so persist in trimming milliseconds off journeys through strategic performance improvements.