Core web vitals testing, sounds complex, but Google’s set of metrics have been developed to aid website developers to understand and utilise key factors that affect the user experience (UX) of a website.
These user experience metrics are another element being used by Google to position a website, and it is essential to score well on these to rank highly for UX.
Core web vitals testing identifies user experience issues, focussing mainly on page loading times, interactivity and visual stability.
Fast loading of website pages is steering this ship, a page that loads quickly has a positive impact on customer engagement and has proven to have higher conversions than those with slower loading pages (remember the 3 second rule!) The quicker your users obtain the information they require by clicking a button, link or menu on your site, the more likely they’re going to stay on your website and make that all important purchase.
Next is the time it takes for a user to interact with your page, this can be clicking on links, expanding content text, entering information such as contact or login information, or selecting through a menu.
This is very important to eCommerce sites as they regularly have these user interaction pages loading in different areas. If they don’t load quick enough for a user to do what they want to do, Google will mark you down for this UX metric.
The final of the three main core web vitals testing metrics is visual stability. This is how much key elements of your page move around as the page loads. As you’ve probably guessed, the more they move around and shift as the page fully loads, the lower your UX score. There’s nothing more annoying than clicking on an element thinking the page has loaded, only to discover that the part you clicked on has now shifted down the page as it wasn’t fully loaded, and you’ve now opened another element that you didn’t want at all! Causing the user to have to click to return back to the original page, waiting again for it to fully load before making their selection.
Other web vitals you should also pay close attention to are whether your site is set up for safe browsing (HTTPS), if it is mobile friendly (super important!), and how intrusive pop-up advertisements are on your site.
Put simply, if you do not take care of Google’s set of UX metrics relating to your website’s performance you will appear lower in the rankings. thinkTRIBE ensures this won’t happen by constantly monitoring your Core Web Vitals and providing appropriate updates around the clock! Get in touch today to see how thinkTRIBE can help you.