When a page takes longer than a few seconds to load, most people close it and go to a competitor. This is not just a feeling. Website speed directly affects how many visitors stay, how many of them buy, and how high Google shows you.
What are Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are three measurable indicators Google uses to judge user experience on a website:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how quickly the main content of the page appears. A good value is under 2.5 seconds.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how quickly the site responds to clicks and taps. The target is under 200 milliseconds.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): whether the content "jumps around" while loading. The value should stay below 0.1.
If you have ever tried to click a button and the page shifted at the last moment, that is exactly what CLS measures.
Why it matters
Speed is one of the factors Google uses to rank search results. The effect on people is even more important. A slow site means a higher bounce rate, fewer orders and a worse experience on mobile, where most visits come from today. Even a small improvement often shows up in conversions.
How to measure your site
You can start for free. All you need is:
- PageSpeed Insights: enter your address and get a score along with specific recommendations.
- Google Search Console: in the Core Web Vitals section you can see which pages have problems for real users.
- A test on your own phone: open the site over mobile data and watch how it behaves.
The most common causes of a slow website
- Huge images. A 5 MB photo on the home page is a classic. Compression and modern formats like WebP help.
- Too many plugins and scripts. Every extension adds code that has to load.
- Weak hosting. Cheap shared hosting can be limiting once traffic grows.
- No caching. The server needlessly generates the same page over and over.
- External services. Tracking codes, chat widgets and embedded videos slow down loading.
Quick steps you can take right away
Compress your images, turn on caching, remove unused plugins, and try loading videos only after a click. This is often enough for a noticeable speedup without any major intervention.
When to optimize and when to rebuild
If the site is fundamentally sound, optimization is enough. But if it is built on a heavy theme full of unnecessary features and every change brings new problems, it is often cheaper and better in the long run to build it again. In that case a cleaner technical solution is worth considering.
Conclusion
A fast website is not a luxury. It is the foundation that SEO, advertising and sales stand on. If you want to check how your site is doing, we offer a quick speed audit with a concrete list of recommendations. You can read more about our approach in Web and e-shop development.