What are Core Web Vitals?
Find out which parameters need care for a website to be better positioned!
What are Core Web Vitals?
Google PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals
What conclusions can be drawn?
Summary – Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are three basic pieces of information displayed on the Google PageSpeed page, which is also known as Google PageSpeed Insights.
Entering the address of any website, for example, kinderkraft.pl, we will receive information about the web core vitals.
Not all of these 6 metrics affect sales. Only three of them have a real influence. These are:
At the moment, only core web vitals influence how Google’s algorithms evaluate a site and, as a result, how well it fares in organic search results. In other words, how easy it is to optimize a given website for Google search results.
The higher these indicators, the better the site’s position. The three indicators mentioned above are crucial because they have a direct impact on SEO.
Importantly, on March 12, 2024, the First Input Delayed (FID) indicator was replaced by a metric called Interaction to Next Page (INP). It has entered the range of basic web indicators that will affect your website’s positioning.
Until March 12, FID (First Input Delay) was one of the three most important parameters.
I encourage you to continue reading if you want to learn more, such as about myths concerning Google PageSpeed and its impact on sales.
Many directors, ecommerce managers, and ecommerce business owners I’ve spoken with claim that improving Google PageSpeed scores are essential for the site to perform better in Google, be better rated by Google’s algorithms, and consequently receive more free, organic traffic.
Unfortunately, this approach is incorrect.
For example, let’s take the Kinderkraft site already mentioned. I tested it in Google PageSpeed Insights. The site is divided into two sections: a section with web vitals and information about detected performance issues.
When talking about Google PageSpeed results, most people refer to these results.
Note that on the mobile version, there are only 8 points in Google PageSpeed, which is indicated by red color – this is not a good result.
In the desktop version, there are 44 points, which are also marked in red and need improvement for the site to be better rated by Google.
However, this view needs to be corrected because there are data types. The data I presented above are lab results.
These are the results we get when Google checks the site on a specific machine according to its own rules and generates a certain score. This score does not affect Google’s evaluation of your website and does not impact how the site will fare in SEO.
The second type of data is information and metrics calculated based on data received from real users.
These are six metrics calculated based on data from real users, who visited your website within the last 28 days.
Significantly, not all these indicators affect SEO. In reality, the only metrics that Google and its algorithm evaluate are three indicators:
If you care about optimizing your service in terms of SEO and want it to do better in Google’s organic results, don’t focus on Google PageSpeed.
It does not influence the results in any way, and Google’s algorithms do not use these results to rate your site.
As I mentioned, only three metrics are considered when optimizing a site for SEO.
The main problem is that these three core web vitals are usually unmet. This constitutes the primary challenge for this particular site.
For example, on the Kinderkraft page, none of the core web vitals are met. Optimizing these three indicators should be the first step.
An important piece of information is that this data comes from real users. The people who visited your website in the last 28 days and used the Chrome browser on a desktop or Android.
More specifically, this is the 75 percentile. Remember that this metric will change over time.
If you introduce a change to improve one of these metrics, you will only see the full impact after 28 days. This is because the data from the last 28 days are taken into account.
Therefore, if you assign some task to your ecommerce agency, it introduces a change, and you do not see an immediate impact on the basic web indicators, that is why. You will only see the full impact after 28 days.
For an ecommerce manager, ecommerce business owner, or ecommerce director the context of these core web vitals should be to understand these indicators. You can use my list of suggestions or develop your own.
Firstly, I advise ensuring that core web vitals are at the highest level possible.
Especially LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), INP (Interaction to Next Page), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).
Once you have addressed these three indicators and want to optimize the service to generate more revenue, the next step is to avoid optimizing Google Page Speed, which does not directly affect sales.
I would focus on optimizing the ecommerce conversion rate, which has a huge impact on the efficiency of the service in converting visitors into buyers.
If the conversion rate is 1%, raising it by 10%, i.e., to 1.1%, means 10% more revenue from the same number of users who enter the website. You pay the same for users and traffic acquisition but get 10% more revenue and profit.
This is a better way to improve anything on the website to get more people to buy.
In the third order, I would focus on improving Lighthouse Scoring, which we usually understand as Google PageSpeed. This is the last point because these metrics tell us whether using the site is comfortable and fast as perceived by the user.
However, all these actions aim to increase the number of users who make purchases on the website. A site doesn’t always have to be extremely fast to attract customers.
Improving communication on the site, simplifying navigation in the order process, or improving price tags can have a much greater impact on the ecommerce conversion rate and revenue than, for example, improving Google PageSpeed to 90 points on mobile and 99 points on desktop.
In summary, the core web vitals are calculated based on data from the last 28 days showing the real impressions of users for a given website (Google Chrome).
The most important ones affecting Google’s positioning of your site are LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), INP (Interaction to Next Page), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).
The higher the level of these three core web indicators we achieve, the better we will fare on Google. It means more organic traffic, which is naturally free, and therefore – higher sales. With this, we will have more free traffic. This is how Core Web Vitals affects revenue.
