As of May 2021, when Page Experience will be updated, Google will add three new signals to the algorithm used to evaluate user experience quality: the Core Web Vitals.
Since this announcement, minds and keyboards are warming up to decipher these indicators, to figure out how to meet the search engine’s expectations, and to try to find out if there will be an impact on rankings in search results.
In the same way that users need to come first for content and SEO…What if you improve your website performance for your users first? Let’s take a look at the indicators Google will take into account, and what your UX and conversion rates have to gain.
In its Speed Matters report, Google reveals that if a page does not load after 3 seconds, 53% of visitors leave it. In another study, the search engine indicates that just by saving 0.1 seconds of load time alone, conversions can increase by 8%. All in all, the issues of speed go far beyond the comfort of navigation: it is also business.
UX Pyramid: criteria ranked by importance for users
Load time can be observed from different angles: display speed, interactivity, server response time… To measure the UX quality, Google has chosen three metrics called “webperf” (for web performance):
These signals are in addition to the other UX indicators already taken into account in Google’s algorithm:
First of all, to measure the Core Web Vitals and check if your pages meet the thresholds recommended by Google, here are some free tools:
However, for Google to consider your site fast, all three metrics count, as John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, pointed out. Do not expect to be able to boost one of the three Core Web Vitals and leave the others aside. The user experience must be satisfactory from all three points of view: display, interactivity and stability.
Also, if you plan to restrict access to your site to only fast connections and equipment to optimize your scores… Be aware that this is not a good idea either.
So how do you get started? Here are a few things to do if, after measuring them, you realize that your Core Web Vitals need improvement.
If your Largest Contentful Paint exceeds the 2.5 seconds recommended by Google:
If your FID exceeds the 100 milliseconds recommended by Google, the first reflex to have is to reduce the size of JavaScript files, and prioritize them for better interactivity. This matters because as long as the browser is busy analyzing and executing JS, it cannot respond to interactions. To improve interactivity on your pages:
If your Cumulative Layout Shift exceeds the score of 0.1 recommended by Google:
These tips address the most common problems encountered, but as is very often the case in web performance, the causes of slowdowns can be multiple or may be unexpected side effects of other implementations.
To help you accurately diagnose the causes of bad Core Web Vital scores and resolve them, call in the experts!
They will be able to accurately audit the technical aspects of your website and come up with solutions that work intelligently with each other.
Are you ready for flawless UX and conversions that take off?