min read

Intro to Core Web Vitals

Written by

Joe Krug

Edited by

TL;DR:

Core Web Vitals is a set of page experience metrics for page speed, interactivity, and layout stability

‍Web Vitals are performance metrics that Google created to measure the load time and perceived user experience of a website.

There is a lot of information on Web Vitals and it can get very technical. We'll focus on the most important and practical elements of it—Especially in the context of Webflow.

3 pillars of performance

These are the 3 most important categories of performance that we measure with Core Web Vitals:

Loading: How fast your website will load
Interactivity: How fast can users "use the website"
Visual stability: How stable the loading experience is

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are the performance metrics used to measure the 3 pillars of performance.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — Loading
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — Interactivity
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — Visual stability

“Other” Web Vitals and metrics

Aside from Core Web Vitals, Google has a few other important metrics and benchmarks to measure the performance of a website. These are important factors when high Page Speed Score is a project requirement.

How to test your website for Core Web Vitals?

There are three main ways to test your website for Core Web Vitals:

PageSpeed Insights Tool (https://pagespeed.web.dev/)
Chrome Lighthouse Test (F12 inside your Chrome browser)
Core Web Vitals panel (inside your Google Search Console)

Do Core Web Vitals influence SEO?

The short answer is "no." Core Web Vitals can give you a good understanding of how your users may respond to your website, but excellent scores do not necessarily improve search results.

Users who have an excellent initial experience with your website generally have lower bounce rates, increased page views and even longer sessions on your website. This is what we're really looking for.

Core Web Vitals guide you in the right direction to achieve great website performance —and hopefully reach an excellent user experience. They do not promise any SEO success for your website.

There are other factors that have significant influence your SEO success—like technical SEO, content, and domain authority.

How to optimize Core Web Vitals in Webflow

Each page in the Core Web Vitals category of this Guide has actionable steps you can take to improve your website performance. We share tips and tricks, with Webflow-specific information, about how to optimize speed and performance of your website.