With Google’s new Core Web Vitals update finished rolling out in August, search engine rankings are now affected by more than just content and SEO page optimizations. The new benchmarks incorporate user experience-based principles when assessing a website for its ranking suitability. This means that quick load times and page usability won’t just be important for the eCommerce customer experience but also for appearing at the top of the Google results page.
Here are the three new CWV, what they cover, and what the recommended results are for them:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) judges how long it takes for a webpage’s content (text, images, video) to load. Recommended result: the page should load in 2.5 seconds or less.
- First Input Delay (FID) judges how long it takes a page to become interactive for use. Recommended result: it should take less than 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) judges any unexpected movement of page content. This could be an image that blocks text or a table that isn’t formatted correctly—recommended result: On Google’s Core Web Vitals Report, a score of less than 0.1.
Additionally, Website Builder Expert has released insightful data into how seven eCommerce website builders (Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Shift4Shop, Volusion, Square Online) had been impacted by CWV. From their research, they found two main conclusions. The first is a significant difference in the performance of mobile and desktop versions of websites. Mobile was generally much slower and worse when it came to interactivity and on-page element movement.
The second conclusion is that more asset-heavy website builders offering a better onsite experience – through more intricate design capabilities and a more comprehensive range of features – performed worse for CWV than simpler platforms. This isn’t that surprising – the more elements there are to process, the longer it’ll all take to load and be more likely for something to be faulty.
To understand more about Core Web Vitals and how to test and optimize for them, check out Website Builder Expert’s new infographic below:
