Core Web Vitals : Be ready !

Google has always attached great importance to “customer experience”. Indeed, it should not be forgotten that when it was founded in 1998, the company wanted to make as much information as possible accessible to the largest number of people. To this end, Google implemented user experience metrics. So, to classify the pages in its search engine, Google take into account the following : a mobile-friendly website, a safe-browsing, a page served in HTTPS, readable / accessible content, and Core Web Vitals.

What are we talking about ?

What are these Essential Web Signals? What are they made for ? Can your website survive without it?

Core Web Vitals are designed to measure the performance and user experience actually offered on web pages. Google already offered tools to calculate this, but until now they have been relatively difficult for most people to use. Core Web Vitals simplify and help site owners and webmasters to focus on the most important settings.

Thus, the “vital elements of the web” focus on 3 axes:

The loading time : (Largest Contentful Paint(LCP))

Marks the point where, in the page load timeline, the main content is loaded. And no longer the “page loading” which only indicated that the page was loaded but without being sure that the content appears correctly. As if we counted the number of flyers distributed without even ensuring that these are not white sheets that we give to our interlocutors … Henceforth, if a part of your website encounters a problem, you risk being demoted in the referencing of the famous search engine.

To avoid giving more space to your competitors you can protect yourself by using our HTTPCS Monitoring tool for a continuous monitoring and being immediately notified when your website is unavailable or malfunctions thanks to the virtual browser technology which reproduces human surfing behavior on a browser.

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Interactivity: (First Input Delay(FID))

Measures time between : the moment when a user interacts with a page (when they click on a link or button) and when the browser responds to that interaction.

Here again, the ranking of your website in the Google search engine risks collapsing if there is a malfunction (errors 404, redirects 301, 302, …) … unless you keep control over the integrity of your site and are alerted in real time of the slightest change to react as quickly as possible. This is possible with a tool such as HTTPCS Integrity which allows you to report all errors including external sources (a mixed content https / http, a CDN for your fonts, JavaScript…)

Visual stability of the page content: (Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS))

Measures visual stability and quantifies the frequency of the unexpected change in layout experienced by the user. If while reading content on your site or clicking on a link, the user suddenly experiences text or content shifting, their experience on your site will be very unpleasant. You must therefore ensure that your website offers stable content, otherwise you will be considered a bad student by Google.

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The content remains, of course, the first indicator taken into consideration in the ranking of Google. But if your website offers content of the same quality as another site on the web, it is the customer experience that can decide between you, so it should not be overlooked.

These Core Web Vitals will be taken into account by Google’s algorithm in 2021 and it would be smart to make your “visitor experience” a priority. Indeed, if you do not take them into account, your website will survive (perhaps), but one thing is sure: it will shine less and less.

The customer is a king and even on Internet there is no exception to this rule.