Google has created a set of metrics called Core Web Vitals to make user experience better.
Core Web Vitals measure three key aspects of user experience:
In this post, we’ll be talking about Largest Contentful Paint in more detail.
So, you click on a website and wait for it to load.
How long you wait before seeing the largest element become visible on the viewport is what’s measured in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
What element or content is considered in LCP?
It could be videos, video thumbnails, images, block elements with text, images in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) or background elements that are above the page’s fold.
The “largest” content of the page above the fold is often the hero image—an oversized banner image—and is what users first notice when the page is loading.
You can use Chrome developer tools to know what Google considers the largest content of your page.
Google says the LCP should happen within 2.5 seconds or less. Anything that’s over 4 seconds is considered poor!
If you want to keep your score at 2.5 and ideally improve it, you have to regularly monitor your LCP. You need to monitor any errors in PageSpeed Insights and optimise your website to achieve the desired score.
Watch out for these things as they could potentially harm your LCP score:
You can improve your LCP in several ways:
There are many factors that come into play when it comes to your LCP score. What we can do is review your site to see how it is performing and which areas need to be optimised to get the best LCP score.