A slow website rarely announces itself. Nobody calls to say your homepage took six seconds to load. They just tap back and choose the next result. Core Web Vitals are Google's way of putting numbers on that first impression.
The three numbers
Each one measures a different moment in a visit, using data from real people on real phones, not a lab test.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how fast the main content shows up. Good: 2.5 seconds or less.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how fast the page reacts when someone taps. Good: 200 milliseconds or less.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the page jumps around while it loads. Good: 0.1 or less.
Why a small business should care
Google uses these numbers as one of many signals when ranking pages. They won't lift a weak page past a better answer, but between two similar businesses, the faster, steadier site has the edge. More important, they describe exactly what your visitors feel in the first few seconds.
How to check yours in two minutes
- Go to PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev).
- Paste your homepage address and run the test.
- Look at the top section, which shows real visitor data. Check the mobile tab first; that's where most of your visitors are.
What usually slows a small site down
- Photos uploaded straight from a camera or phone, at full size
- Sliders, autoplay video and pop-ups above the fold
- Too many plugins or third-party widgets loading on every page
- Fonts and images without set sizes, which make the page jump
Most of these are fixed in a rebuild without changing how the site looks. If your numbers are red, start with the images; they're usually the biggest win.
Sources
- Web Vitals, Google, web.dev
- PageSpeed Insights, Google
